Well, after a couple of months break from the book, I picked up Earl Creps' Off-Road Disciplines again today and read Chapter 5 on Witness: The Discipline of Spiritual Friendship. I think Earl "gets it" in that people seeking God (or God seeking people) is often played out in the real world in the context of living relationship with other people. I like his construct of God as "The Seeker" and those He seeks as "The Sought." He talks about having spiritual conversations with hitchhikers and workers in coffee houses, musing over relational ways to reach "The Sought" with the message of God's love and care. What amazed me, though, is this chapter contains so examples of someone actually receiving God, which sort of begs the question on the models he's using. The most disappointing part of the chapter is when in an airport reading a book he overhears the grief of a father who has lost a child, talks about the impact it had on him (Earl) personally, and yet made no effort to engage in a relational conversation with the man. As if the man's grief was only an instrument of transformation in Earl, and Earl's presence was a potential conduit of God's love and care, and yet out of that conduit flowed nothing. Although he didn't exactly point this out in the text, that's what struck me. How often do we "pass on the other side" to avoid people in pain? We should each make a greater effort to be conduits of God's love and care.
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