sustain:if:able kiwi

mat theology: a dictionary of everyday contemporary spirituality

God is everywhere. While sadly sometimes Christianity reduces God to Sunday and to buildings, God by very definition belongs in all of everyday life. In honour of this, I’m building a dictionary of everyday spirituality.

This is a mat on the ground floor of a central city business.

It was the word “devine” that caught my attention. I checked the spelling. “Devine” not “divine.” So it’s not a correctly spelt God reference. (It’s a housing company). Yet the symbol is interesting. The colours are warm and welcoming and the sign looks like a sun.

And then the tag line – “Welcome. Find your ideal place.” Which seems to me to be what Christianity is about. A faith of welcome. An invitation not to be forced into a cookie cutter or someone else’s image, but to find our unique and special place. I often talk about how each person has their own unique fingerprint and so the task of spiritual growth is simply to grow into who we are truely, uniquely, meant to be.

Churches can be very, very poor at laying out this type of mat and putting it into practise, at “Welcome. Find your ideal place,” at hospitality and uniquely personalised growth, at participation based not on one-size fits all, but accessible and intentional processes based on uniqueness.

So it was nice to be reminded that my experiences of some church are not actually the gospel. That the real message of God’s “devine” grace is in fact “Welcome. Find your ideal place.”

(This is another entry in dictionary of everyday spirituality. For the complete index of all entries, go here).