It seems like I've had a number of conversations that have been about orienting, so to speak...
Orienting, in a general way, is about adjusting to better read or understand one's position in one's context or placement. People often have to go through an orientation when they go to a new school or get a new job. Think of it as reflexive contextualization for the benefit of those in the place you are now within. Businesses orient their new employees for efficiency's sake: you make more profit from trained employees who understand their job and its role in the larger picture of the business. Schools orient new students so they can find their classes, financial aid, etc..., as to get the best and most beneficiary education as possible. Those who are not oriented are those who miss the first fifteen minutes of their first class looking for the classroom--they have to orient themselves to their new context to, in essence, survive in it.
It's actually this getting-of-the-big-picture that most of my recent conversations have hubbed around. It's not surprising--so much of life is about striving to understand one's context to better understand what it means to live within it. What I do in my world largely depends on how I understand my world to be, and so orienting becomes crucial to those who believe that what they do matters, and even more crucial to those who believe that those actions matter to God, and to their world as God's people.
I believe our actions matter, and therefore, I believe orientation should be taken seriously.
In the conversations I've been involved lately, I've seen two obstacles to orienting that have been rather problematic to the people I've been talking with, and both of these obstacles are linked to time and place. All context involves time and place--nothing every happens outside of a context, and so, all are actions are contextualized by time and place. How we understand our time and the place we're in will directly inform the way we act in that context. I believe Scripture directly speaks to how we are to understand our time and place, and I'm going to try (try being the key word) to expand on a couple of ideas I've been working through lately that have helped me begin to biblically orient, and therefore, better understand how to live in the moments I'm in. I'm going to do this in a series of posts, probably beginning with time and them moving to place. However, I wanted to write an intro of sorts...
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, orienting literally means "to cause to face or point to the east". This practice is specifically linked to the building of churches or temples; an oriented building is one who's longitudinal axis point directly east, and whose altar is on the eastward end. Estes Chapel at Asbury is an oriented building--the people sit facing east, and the altar is physically toward the east. In various religions, the direction of east has differing meanings, but in orthodox Christianity, the east is the direction from which Christ will return--
And so a building that is oriented is literally "easterned" to position the people in that building and the actions performed on the altar towards the east, the direction from which Christ will return. Now why would that matter?
Well, the coming of Christ is the last chapter of a story in which believers (and to a larger extent, the world) finds themselves within. This physical reminder helps us all orient ourselves, contextualize ourselves, within the larger story of the world. Creator God is redeeming the world through His Son, Jesus Christ, and as the Holy Spirit moves in the church, our actions are pointed towards the ultimate realization of this redemption--His return, the world new and without end.
This is orienting 101 for the church... we are to live eastwardly, towards his return and the reconciling of the world to Him.
As I continue this thought, I'm going to argue that all orienting has to begin with easterning, and with that, contextualizing ourselves within the larger story of God. I hope, especially with the celebration of Advent drawing near, that this kind of orienting can help us (me needing it more than anyone) to refine the way I act in my world though a proper and more true orientation.
