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<TD vAlign=top width="25%"><FONT size=4><B>Brother Ed in
Richmond</B><BR></FONT><FONT class=smaller size=4>August 14,
2010<BR></FONT></TD>
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<DIV><FONT size=4>...the recent picture on the cover<BR>of TIME magazine
of the Muslim young woman who had<BR>her nose and ears cut off because she
was not<BR>obedient to her abusive parents-in-law. It was<BR>not that the
law was unjust so much as the<BR>punishment was unjust. Jesus, taking on
himself<BR>the punishment shows us God's way of dealing
with<BR>injustice.<BR></FONT></DIV></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4><A
href="http://www.desperatepreacher.com/bodyii.htm">http://www.desperatepreacher.com/bodyii.htm</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>Page 2</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><BIG><BIG><FONT
size=5>Surfing the Edge of Chaos</FONT></BIG></BIG></DIV>
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<DIV style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; LINE-HEIGHT: 11pt; FONT-STYLE: italic"
class="paragraph Description"><SMALL><FONT size=2>A sermon on Luke 12:49-56 by
Anne Wilkinson-Hayes, 19 August 2007</FONT></SMALL></DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt; TEXT-DECORATION: none"
class="paragraph Sermon_Text"><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt" class="paragraph Sermon_Text">Last month some of
you are aware that I attended the BWA Council meetings in Accra. 2 weeks before
going I was talking to a Liberian woman – Louise - at the Transformation course
@ Whitley – she is a deacon at Reservoir and I told her that I was going to
Ghana soon. After the session I was teaching, she came up and asked me whether
she could come with me. She told me that she had just discovered that her
husband, who she thought had been killed in the war in Liberia, was alive and in
a refugee camp in Ghana. They had not seen each other for 17 years. </DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt" class="paragraph Sermon_Text">Through a series of
extraordinary events we got her onto our flight and organised her visa in less
than 10 days, and I was privileged to witness their re-union, their getting to
know each other all over again, and their remarriage all in the space of a
week!</DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt; TEXT-DECORATION: none"
class="paragraph Sermon_Text"> </DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt" class="paragraph Sermon_Text">When the fighting
broke out in Liberia in 1989 Boakai (her husband) had gone north to protect his
parents. He got there just as the soldiers arrived in the village and had to
watch his father have petrol poured over him and be set alight. He was then
forced to sit in a locked room while his mother and three sisters were raped,
tortured and killed in the room next to him. At some stage he escaped and
lived in the jungle for many weeks until he finally made it across the border to
Sierra Leone. He hoped to wait there until the fighting died down and he could
get back to Louise. Instead war broke out in Sierra Leone and he had to
continually move around to avoid the violence, eventually being forced into a
refugee camp in Guinea Bissau. He had to wait here several years, as he had no
money and trying to get through Sierra Leone and Liberia was certain suicide.
</DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt; TEXT-DECORATION: none"
class="paragraph Sermon_Text"> </DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt" class="paragraph Sermon_Text">Meanwhile Louise
(with her three month old baby and younger brother and sister) escaped east to
Ivory Coast and was in a refugee camp there for 12 years hoping that Boakai
would come and find them. After a while the Ivory Coast could not cope with the
volume of refugees and some were forcibly shifted to Ghana. After 3 years in
Ghana Louise was suddenly given a UNHCR visa to come to Australia. She had to
conclude that Boakai must be dead by now, but she still held out hope.</DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt" class="paragraph Sermon_Text">Boakai did finally
make it to Cote d’Ivoire, but just after Louise moved to Ghana. When he got to
Ghana, she had gone to Australia, but news began filtering through to Louise
that Boakai was alive and last year they talked on the phone for the first time
in 16 years!</DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt; TEXT-DECORATION: none"
class="paragraph Sermon_Text"> </DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt" class="paragraph Sermon_Text">I spent the weekend
in the refugee camp outside Accra– 20, 000 Liberians are still there, separated
from their families. Not allowed to work in Ghana; they survive in the informal
economy – living on a pittance – many forced into prostitution, petty crime and
the oblivion of drugs and alcohol.</DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt" class="paragraph Sermon_Text"><></DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt" class="paragraph Sermon_Text">
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt" class="paragraph Sermon_Text">There was a popular
book in business circles a few years back called “Surfing the Edge of Chaos”. It
was written by a group of business people who observed nature as a way of
understanding how best we can learn to organise ourselves. One of the key things
they saw was that in nature – equilibrium – ie a stable state, is the precursor
of death.</DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt" class="paragraph Sermon_Text">Only a system that
maintains significant internal variety can withstand the threat of external
variety. So the inter-tidal zone is the most fertile context for spontaneous
mutation. This is a region swept by extremes – inundation and flood followed by
drought and desiccation, and this amazing variety forces the system to the edge
of chaos, and demands that organisms adapt or die. It is here that
fish grew legs, and roots learnt to breathe. It is in the place of extremes that
life comes forth.</DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt; TEXT-DECORATION: none"
class="paragraph Sermon_Text"> </DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt" class="paragraph Sermon_Text">Businesses and
churches have to learn that equilibrium is life–threatening. If we do not
embrace risk and change, if we do not encourage extremes of experience and
ideas, we will die. The birthing of peace, and all good things, is forged in the
crucible of life lived on the edge of chaos; life that is open to risk and to
new possibilities. </DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt; TEXT-DECORATION: none"
class="paragraph Sermon_Text"> </DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt" class="paragraph Sermon_Text">And I think that
this is what Jesus is talking about in this passage. </DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt; TEXT-DECORATION: none"
class="paragraph Sermon_Text"> </DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt" class="paragraph Sermon_Text">No wonder that
churches are struggling to survive. We do not welcome change. We don’t like
hearing people we disagree with. We don’t move much beyond our comfort zones, so
we don’t nurture much internal variety, and then we are surprised that we are
threatened by changes all around us!</DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt" class="paragraph Sermon_Text"> </DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt" class="paragraph Sermon_Text"><A
href="http://www.laughingbird.net/ComingWeeks.html">http://www.laughingbird.net/ComingWeeks.html</A></DIV>
<DIV style="LINE-HEIGHT: 14pt" class="paragraph Sermon_Text">Sermon
3.</DIV></DIV>
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class="paragraph Sermon_Text"> </DIV></DIV></DIV></FONT></DIV>
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