Ok so discipleship and Ikea are two juxtaposed ideas…

But… if you have ever been to Ikea then you know that the people traffic is set up to go in one direction only, to guide you thru the tempting array of sterile and banal euro-furniture that is currently trendy.

All’s good so long as you follow the plan and keep moving with the crowd, but if you want to back track – if you want to shop ‘in the opposite direction’ then you inevitably find yourself bumping into people and weaving against the flow.

Its easy to flow with the crowd in the direction you are expected to go, but try challenging that and it becomes awkward and difficult. In Ikea you aren’t meant to move in a contrary direction… (you might not hit the cash register and buy stuff)

Its a snapshot of discipleship – choosing not to go with the flow, but to swim upstream and to move in a whole different direction. Jesus’ sermon on the mount is your guide here. You never leave the environment, but you choose to live differently within it.

If you do, expect the forces of society to try and constrain you back into the ‘right direction’, but also know that you don’t have to go…

You can walk right back out the door you came in thru and buy your stuff on Gumtree…

(Thanks to my mate Billy for the conversation over coffee this morning that percolated this thought)