Keep Your Eyes On The Bagels…

I was in Tim Horton’s last week (picking up bagels, for the record…), and I noticed an interesting form of advertisement. Right in front of the cashier, where the customer would stand to place their order and pay the bill, there was a small plastic placard with an ad for (I think) a Tim Horton’s card. So far, so mundane. What caught my eye was the tiny white flashing LED embedded in the ad. It was almost impossible not to look at! It’s like someone took a look at the collective attention deficit accumulating in our culture and said, “What can we do that offers people an irresistible shiny thing when they step up to the counter with their money already out of their pockets?”

In this instance at least, I didn’t buy the shiny thing – just the bagels.  Good job, Tim! But the fact that this advertising technique is being used is worth noting, not just so we can resist it at the donut shop but also so that we can resist it in our spiritual quests.

An awful lot of serious, consequential church dogma has been built on shiny little bits of the Bible; winking white lights that catch our attention and hold it, even though the environment all around them is what really tells the story we came looking for. This week, as an introduction to the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, we’re going to explore the shiny thing that comes right before it in the story – the text that forms the basis for the church (and many individuals) practice of un-forgiveness and ultimately excommunication or the severing of relationships.

We will meet on Wednesday, 6:30 p.m., in our lovely room above the Vera Wang picture frames.

I look forward to being with you all.

Peace,

Tim Plett