Dear All of Us,
When it comes to financial investments,
I know next to nothing about margins.
When it comes to life investments,
I know a thing or three about margins.
In the first case I totally rely on
a trusted friend and financial adviser.
His name is Darrell.
In the second case I totally rely on a trusted guide
who keeps teaching me the secret of life on the margins.
His name is Jesus.
Jesus is totally invested on the margins.
That's where he is to be found.
He centers with the outsiders, the ordinary,
the humble, the hurt, needy, deprived
- the no accounts.
He accounts them blessed.
He factors them first.
It's a higher math.
It's the paradox that flips conventional evaluations:
The only way to maximize is to marginalize.
Expansion happens at the margins.
Jesus said it.
Jesus lived it.
Marginalized, pushed to the edge,
he died it and received an unlimited return.
What a yield for us all.
All this was countercultural - and it still is.
World wisdom centers on self.
Its portfolio is to accumulate fame and fortune.
Its accounting draws inward.
It closes in on self.
That grabbing and pulling in
isolates and limits.
What's locked in
locks in.
Jesus goes out to the edges and keeps going.
No limits on the margins.
Expansion happens on the margins.
With him, the pushed-out become outgoing
and that without call.
There are no hedges at the edges.
Those there are needful and thus open,
ready to be in on God's expanding creation.
Put a whole other way,
Clutch Clutters, Closes In.
Need Widens, Opens Up and Out.
In any economy return results from market exposure.
That's certainly so investing with Soul Self.
Play it tight in and we're squeezed out.
Play it wide open on the margins
and the compounding widens.
Being at the edge makes
most of us extremely "edgy."
That's for sure.
That's also the only opening for more.
It's been a while since I've done this,
so counting on your loving tolerance,
here's a hokey, homespun analogy.
God gives us a sandbox.
We really like playing there.
God takes away the sandbox
and wants to send us to Harvard.
Lack hurts, upsets.
Lack opens.
Do we?
The "we" extends, includes all.
With Jesus we head out to the edges,
to those marginalized among us:
- those in poverty
- those victimized by injustice
- the lonely
- the ill of body or mind
- the discards of society
- the abused and the confused
- the befuddled by puberty and mid-life
- the dying, being edged out of what has been
to what will be and that without limit or end.
Simply Divine
With Jesus we get close in out on the edge.
With Jesus we care and companion.
With Jesus we share what we can;
- We become a Big Brother/Sister.
- We tutor.
- We challenge injustice, raise hell for heaven's sake.
- We slim down our goods so others will have some goods.
- We support food pantries.
- We visit the lonely.
- We are patient with the troubled who bother us.
- We pray worldwide and deep.
Living on the margins is scary.
It tests and stretches our risk tolerance.
For those wiling to chance a wider exposure
to Jesus' life expanding economy,
please consider what follows
slowly, deeply, prayerfully, practically.
******
JESUS' MARKET STRATEGY
Risk all on the margins.
It goes like this.
"So the last will be first
and the first will be last"
Matthew 20:15
What the world figures as first
- stuff and status -
is faux fatal.
It devalues to nothing.
Those last aren't burdened with it.
They don't have it or the illusion of it.
That sure puts them ahead.
Up front of the line
the little we have
is all we'll ever have
and that not for long -
certainly not as long as we will be.
It will loss its currency,
leave us broke.
The danger of being first:
We can't get more ahead
than being first.
Truncated by immediacy.
Lots of openness, though,
at the end of the line
and the bottom of the pile.
At the end of the line
there is nothing to fall back on.
Scary hard.
Plenty of room, though,
for furtherance in the Great Reversal.
The last will be first.
What a flip - solid and for ever.
We're not here on earth
to force a faux first
but to be open
and to be in community with the last.
There's all the room in the world
and the heavens for that
at the end or the line.
******
HIGH YIELD RETURNS
Fortunate, happy, blessed,
are the undervalued:
- the poor in spirit - uncomplicated, uncompromised, God ready
- those who mourn - loss clearing to furtherance.
- the meek - gentle strong enrichment
- those who hunger and thirst for righteousness - eager righting fullness
- the merciful - caring cared for
- the pure in heart - love ready
- the peacemakers -unifiers "oned" in God
- those persecuted for righteousness - "the righters" earth-hurt, heaven-homed.
The Beattitudes Matthew 5:1-12
Living on the edge,
what are moments, movements,
situations for us
individually and collectively
of
-"lasting" to "firsting"
- being poor in spirit
- mourning
- being meek
- craving rightness
- being merciful
- purity of heart
- being peacemakers
- taking hits working for righting?
It'll make all the difference in the world
and forever beyond that.
******
A BLESSING AND A THANKS
In the past month plus
we have been blessed with
hundreds of participants from
Singapore
joining in with us here.
Thanks for the gift you are.
Welcome to you and to all.
frankly speaking
spirituality for the street
johnfrankshares.blogspot.com
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Looking forward
to seeing all next week.
Great to be together.
Praying us all to be market wise -
out here on the margins.
Love to all
John Frank
******
