Clarence Jordan has been called a “theologian in overalls.”  He is perhaps best known for founding Koinonia Farm,  a pioneering interracial farming community in the heart of the deep South.  Started in 1942, this bold experiment challenged the racism of rural Georgia.  Jordan was both a simple man and a brilliant scholar.  His academic degrees included a Ph.D. in New Testament Greek.  He was a prolific writer including the Cotton Patch versions of Matthew’s and John’s gospels.  At the same time, his church was a farm and his pulpit a plow.  Jordan brought the Gospel to life in the culture of his own time.  By the way, you may have noticed that Crossroads Church is presenting the music The Cotton Patch Gospel:  the Greatest Story Ever Retold in January of 2009. 

Clarence Jordan “lived in contradiction to the tendency of those around him to make Christ less than a man by making him more than one.”  Folks in rural Georgia often applauded his sermons on justice until they realized that he planned to practice what he was preaching.  It turned out “that reconciliation at the lunch table, where black and white shared together, was as scandalous to his neighbors as reconciliation on a cross.”  This was the path that Clarence Jordan walked.  (the above quotations are from Cloud of Witnesses, Joyce Hollyday and Jim Wallis, Orbis Books, 2005)

Clarence Jordan has modeled for us what we can count on in life.  It is that God has placed eternity inside each of us.  The literal presence of God’s life is in, around, and through ours, and each of us has the task of brining that presence to light.  There is a song that states, “Heaven is in my heart.”  This message, without limiting heaven to only what is in my heart, is absolutely true.  We may seek God’s presence around us, but it is always deep within us that the divine presence is waiting to be found in a compelling way for our lives.

Sabbath is a place of stillness in our lives to remind us of who we are at the core of our being.  The life journey we take is a time of remembering the eternity in which we were created and to which we belong.  God’s life takes flesh in my life and in yours.  Our lives exist in God’s life.  This good news is that one thing we can always count on despite economic recessions, life-threatening illness, and all the other fears that can sometimes dominate our minds and our hearts..  The truth that we are always held in God’s presence can counter all our fears because life in God transcends death in all its forms.  There is never a time when we are out of God’s hands.  Our task is to be awake to that reality.

Thanks for continuing to bless me as we journey together.

--Jack Price