The Daily Writer

Dividing

2012-02-15T15:09:00.003+13:00

Jesus is the incarnation of God's love.... But Jesus also said he came into our world to disturb the peace -- to drive a wedge into the divided society that holds us captive. "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth," he says in Matthew's Gospel. "I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." That sword is a wedge to interrupt the way things are, not a weapon to wield in

Invisible places

2012-02-09T20:09:00.002+13:00

And how many such invisible, nameless, powerless places are there in this world? All the world, as a matter of fact, is a mosaic of little places invisible to the powers that be. And in the eyes of the powers that be all these invisible places do not add up to a visible place. They add up to words and numbers. Jayber CrowJayber Crow by Wendell Berry

Imprisonment

2012-02-09T10:57:00.002+13:00

I lost all feeling of my own identity. I reflected on the desolation of poverty, of destitution, of sickness and sin. That I would be free after thirty days meant nothing to me. I would never be free again, never free when I knew that behind bars all over the world there were women and men, young girls and boys, suffering constraint, punishment, isolation and hardship for crimes of which all

Workable territory

2012-02-04T08:50:00.003+13:00

If you imagine trying to solve all the world’s problems at once, you’re likely to quit before you finish rolling up your sleeves. But if you stake out your own workable territory, if you settle on a manageable number of causes, then you might accomplish a great deal, all the while trusting that others elsewhere are working faithfully in their own places. Scott Russell Sanders Hunting for

Question

2012-02-04T08:46:00.000+13:00

Jesus wants to engage people at their point of real concern, and he does this by asking them to articulate their need. Is that not a better way for the Church than proclaiming dogmatic truths from a great height? The historian Diarmaid MacCulloch wrote a piece in The Guardian addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury. It ended: You will know the saying of Thomas Aquinas which a wise old

Scatter, clutter, weight

2012-02-04T08:37:00.001+13:00

The opposite of simplicity, as I understand it is not complexity, but scatter, clutter, weight. Returning from a journey ... I yearn to pare my life down to essentials. I vow to live more simply, by purchasing nothing that I do not really need, by giving away everything that is excess, by refusing all chores that do not arise from my central concerns. I make room for silence. I avoid

Bigger isn't better

2012-02-02T20:02:00.001+13:00

Bigger is better, so we hear. We live in a world that wants things larger and larger. We want to supersize our fries, sodas, SUVs and church buildings. Cities build bigger stadiums and conventions want to draw the biggest crowds. Amid all the supersizing, I want to make a modest suggestion: our goal should be not to get larger and larger but to get smaller and smaller. I think of the

Idolatry

2012-01-27T11:01:00.001+13:00

The redistribution of the world’s wealth cannot be central, the concern for ecology cannot be central, the desire to get out of the rat race cannot be central, the desire for simplicity itself cannot be central. The moment any of these become the focus of our concern, it has become idolatry. Only one thing is to be central: the Kingdom of God. And, in fact, when the Kingdom of God is

Simplicity

2012-01-27T09:57:00.003+13:00

Voluntary simplicity [is] a manner of living that is outwardly more simple and inwardly more rich, a way of being in which our most authentic and alive self is brought into direct and conscious contact with living. This way of life is not a static condition to be achieved, but an ever-changing balance that must be continuously and consciously made real. Simplicity in this sense is not simple.

Giving away

2012-01-21T17:18:00.001+13:00

Avarice, greed, concupiscence, and so forth are all based on the mathematical truism that the more you get, the more you have. The remark of Jesus that it is more blessed to give than to receive is based on the human truth that the more you give away in love, the more you are. It is not just for the sake of other people that Jesus tells us to give rather than get, but for our own sakes too.

True grace

2012-01-19T08:39:00.000+13:00

True grace is shocking, scandalous. It shakes our conventions with its insistence on getting close to sinners and touching them with mercy and hope. It forgives the unfaithful spouse, the racist, the child abuser. It loves today's AIDS-ridden addict as much as the tax collector of Jesus' day. Philip YanceyWhat's So Amazing About Grace?

Life is a miracle

2012-01-12T10:57:00.003+13:00

For quite a while it has been possible for a free and thoughtful person to see that to treat life as mechanical or predictable or understandable is to reduce it. Now, almost suddenly, it is becoming clear that to reduce life to the scope of our understanding (whatever "model" we use) is inevitably to enslave it, make property of it, and put it up for sale.... This is to give up on life, to

Meting out judgement

2012-01-12T06:22:00.004+13:00

Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends. Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

A new day

2011-12-31T09:32:00.003+13:00

We are a restless and uncertain people. Our lives may not be centered anymore on plantings and harvests, but they will always center around buried failures and fresh undertakings. By celebrating and making conscious our endings, we take time out from our restless searching and allow ourselves hope for a new beginning. New Year's Eve can be one of the great washdays of the year. We can shed

Hospitality

2011-12-30T07:40:00.000+13:00

The practice of hospitality is a good example of what can be lost when we forget a story. Although hospitality was a significant practice in earlier centuries, its recovery has involved a deliberate effort to find it and tell the story again. We have had to be intentional in connecting ourselves with sources that empowered previous generations of Christians. Recognizing the importance of

Beatitudes

2011-12-28T17:18:00.000+13:00

Too often those characteristics [of the Beatitudes] - the poor in spirit, those that mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted - are turned into ideals we must strive to attain. As ideals, they can become formulas for power rather than descriptions of the kind of people characteristic of the new age brought by Christ;

Arms wide open

2011-12-28T09:56:00.002+13:00

We might grieve for someone who’s missing from the table this year or lament the hold of consumerism over our family’s observance, even while we delight in a true expression of generosity or the nostalgia of a meaningful dish. And maybe we’ll experience conflicting emotions at the same time about the very same thing: gratitude and lament over a gift choice or pain and happiness at seeing a

He did not wait

2011-12-27T09:47:00.000+13:00

He did not wait He did not wait till the world was ready, till men and nations were at peace. He came when the Heavens were unsteady, and prisoners cried out for release. He did not wait for the perfect time. He came when the need was deep and great. He dined with sinners in all their grime, turned water into wine. He did not wait till hearts were pure. In joy he came to a

This is no time...

2011-12-24T11:24:00.003+13:00

The Risk of Birth by Madeleine L'Engle This is no time for a child to be born,With the earth betrayed by war & hateAnd a comet slashing the sky to warnThat time runs out & the sun burns late. That was no time for a child to be born,In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;Honour & truth were trampled by scorn --Yet here did the Saviour make his home. When is the time for love to be born

Theologians

2011-12-24T10:27:00.000+13:00

Christians are a people that have a faith that forces people like me to exist. Christians are a people whose faith demands we understand what we believe. Accordingly, theology is an office in the church which some are called to perform. That does not mean that "understanding the faith" is restricted to those that identify themselves as theologians, but by being so identified you at least know who

George Eliot

2011-12-23T12:04:00.001+13:00

[We] discern that the mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims, and that to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and sympathy. George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, page 311 New York Century edition.

Advent

2011-12-23T07:53:00.000+13:00

We can miss Advent by not being ready, or by simply not waiting because we feel that we have nothing to wait for in our state of arrived self-sufficiency. Even if we know that we have not arrived and we are not self-sufficient; even when we realize that we still live in an empire that scoffs at justice and continues to neglect the poor, abuse the environment, and trust the technologies of war,

Creating and begetting

2011-12-21T09:00:00.002+13:00

In the case of man, that which he creates is more expressive of him that that which he begets. The image of the artist and the poet is imprinted more clearly on his works than on his children. from The Destiny of Man, by Nicholas Berdyaev Quoted by Dorothy L Sayers, in the Preface to her book, The Mind of the Maker.

Mystery

2011-12-20T08:18:00.001+13:00

When you do recognize a mystery, though -- when you really recognize a mystery -- I believe you're compelled to address it, to try to speak its name and describe its features, to give it a face so that you will recognize and remember it until the end of your days. Because it's no small thing, the recognition of a mystery, even though it happens all the time and we may not even be properly aware

New World?

2011-12-14T07:13:00.001+13:00

The created order, which God has begun to redeem in the resurrection of Jesus, is a world in which heaven and earth are designed not to be separated but to come together. In that coming together, the "very good" that God spoke over creation at the beginning will be enhanced, not abolished. The New Testament never imagines that when the new heavens and the new earth arrive, God will say, in

Note on Psalm 22

2011-12-14T07:02:00.002+13:00

What people think, how they treat us, even how we feel God is ignoring us, are all, in the end, unimportant: praising God openly for Who He is and what He has always been doing for us are what will finally get us back on our feet. Note in one of my older Bibles - not sure now if it was written by me or copied from somewhere else (!)

Community

2011-12-06T15:26:00.001+13:00

We do not undertake the spiritual quest alone. We need communities which nurture and hold us, communities which keep traditions and charisms alive and which hand them on to the next generation.... Thus an individual, privatized or purely personal spirituality is an oxymoron. Authentic spirituality can never be an isolated, privatized or an individual affair. It is always located in a

Authority

2011-12-05T08:37:00.001+13:00

The authority that the church has in culture does not come from how right, cool, or loud it is, or how convinced it is of its doctrinal superiority.... A church's authority comes from somewhere else -- it comes from how we've been broken open and poured out, not from how well we've pursued power and organized ourselves to triumph. Rob Bell & Don Golden

Personal vs social

2011-12-03T09:51:00.001+13:00

What we ask from Christianity is not a narrow concern for personal salvation but a social ideal that will stir enthusiasm and gain our devotion. Christianity must not give a warning to set one's face against this world but a vision of the worth and meaning of the work to be done in this life. Robert Roth quoted in Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries and other Christians in

Diner theology

2011-11-29T14:02:00.001+13:00

Churches seem to have offered teenagers a kind of "diner theology": a bargain religion, cheap but satisfying, whose gods require little in the way of fidelity or sacrifice. Never mind that centuries of Christians have read Jesus' call to lay down one's life for others as the signature feature of Christian love, or that God's self-giving enables us to share the grace of Christ when ours is

Pastoral work and prayer

2011-11-17T12:09:00.001+13:00

In short, the Psalms provide the language, the aspirations, the energy for the community as it comes together in prayer, and they then call into being and are formative for the activities of prophets, wise men, and historians. The Psalms initiate; the prophets follow. The inner action of prayer takes precedence over the outer action of proclamation. The implication of this for pastoral work is

Facing death

2011-11-17T09:15:00.001+13:00

Of course we're all going to die one day, and we become so adept at ignoring or obscuring that unalterable reality that it's easy to become impatient with someone who's facing up to their own mortality. A voice in each of us says, "What's so special about you? What about me?" So the person who can look you straight in the face as you name the truth of your own mortality isn't just

The constant idea

2011-11-14T18:55:00.001+13:00

Already the only constant idea is that there exists something infinitely more just and happier than myself, it entirely fills me with immeasurable tenderness and glory, oh, whoever I am, whatever I have done. For man, a good deal more indispensable than his own happiness is to know and in every moment to believe that there exists in a certain place a perfect and calm happiness for everyone and

Boring Bible?

2011-11-11T09:43:00.001+13:00

Have you ever wondered why parts of the Bible are boring? Like this text? [1 Kings 15:33-16:7] They're boring because they are the records of sinful men who simply repeat the sins and evil of those before them. Sin is never creative but merely imitative and repetitious. Maybe you can sin with a flair but you can't sin with freshness. You can only ape what's already been done. Goodness has

Being Christian

2011-11-10T22:19:00.001+13:00

I think really, that as in all other fields, we must be Christian. That is essentially what a Christian has to do. There are some Christians who I have met in the media and their influence has been out of proportion to what it might seem to be, just because they were Christians and were known to be Christians. I don't think that a Christian has to be a particular type of Christian to be a

Poetry religion

2011-11-10T22:12:00.001+13:00

At first I steered clear of the church, having a sort of 'poetry religion,' but a Christian can't develop much on 'poetry religion.' We all need the religion of ordinary people and the love of other converts. That's why, in the end, I went back to church; to worship around people who don't like poetry. It's a good discipline. I can't put myself apart from them as someone very special. As a

Winners and Losers

2011-11-08T11:50:00.005+13:00

We are not the same in gifts, talents, advantages and disadvantages, joys and sorrows, but we still need each other; our common humanity, more than our differences, is the key to our future. We are a community one way or another, either with destructive and dysfunctional relationships or with creative and healthy ones. The issue is one of solidarity, and it is the decisive choice we must

The souls of the old

2011-10-28T07:02:00.000+13:00

Dale Ralph Evans writing in The Wisdom and the Folly, page 115, and referring to Solomon's gradual turn towards other gods because of his relationship by marriage to so many foreign women: We must take a moment to be frightened. 'When Solomon was old...' How that text ought to goad older believers to pray the last petition of the Lord's Prayer [deliver us from evil]. Is there not a warning

Lack of imagination

2011-10-26T09:09:00.003+13:00

Our deficiency is not motivation or money, but imagination. Our ability to live Christianly and be the church corporately has failed because we do not believe it is possible.... Wanting to obey Christ but lacking his imagination, we reinterpret the mission of the church through the only framework comprehensible to us -- the one we've inherited from consumer culture.

Seeking the excluded

2011-10-21T09:49:00.001+13:00

Christ opens up the idea of a system that seeks always to find those who are excluded from the system that is in power. The Christian "worldview" is thus manifested as always seeking out those who have been rejected from the worldviews that have authority. The way this works itself out in practice is that whatever political or religious idea is dominating the society at any given time,

Skepticism

2011-10-19T18:17:00.000+13:00

Skepticism—like relativism—tends to eliminate personal or moral responsibility since truth (which is crucial to knowledge) is systematically being ignored or evaded….We should consider the personal, motivational questions which, while not being an argument against skepticism, raise important issues that may be driving the skeptical enterprise. Blanket skepticism is an affliction of the mind

Writing

2011-10-19T11:22:00.000+13:00

‎"I have always found it a mistake to attempt to complete a manuscript in one day. I like to do part of it--enough to get the theme well on to my mind--and then go to bed with the work half-done. I do not consciously review the matter during the night: yet I invariably wake up with a batch of ideas that were not there the previous day." Ships of Pearl, 16, by F W Boreham.

So how should Christians live in society?

2011-10-16T14:48:00.004+13:00

Very carefully; but, I would also say, joyfully. That's the most important thing Christians can do. They should live in the United States, for example, without pretending they are at home here because they are not at home anywhere. Every social order is going to give Christians peculiar challenges. Christians belong to a

Different aspects of love

2011-10-11T13:07:00.003+13:00

The love for equals is a human thing -- of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing -- the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world. The love for the more fortunate is a rare

RIP Steve Jobs

2011-10-07T09:38:00.001+13:00

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the

Listening

2011-10-05T16:44:00.003+13:00

Until I learn to listen -- to the Scriptures, to those around me, to my own underlying life messages, to the wisdom of those who have already maneuvered successfully around the dangers of a life that is unmotivated and unmeaningful -- I will really have nothing whatever to say about life myself. To live without listening is not to live at all; it is simply to drift in my own backwater.

Waking up alone

2011-10-05T16:43:00.003+13:00

There is all the difference in the world between waking up in a single bed and waking up in a double bed with nobody on the other side. Many in our Western culture may be atheists or agnostics, but they still find themselves wondering why the other side of the bed still feels warm, and the sheets a little rumpled. And I think this is true in ways that were not the case even ten, let alone

Ministry is impossible

2011-10-04T09:03:00.004+13:00

As ministers we ought to speak of God. We are human, however, and so cannot speak of God. We ought therefore to recognize both our obligation and our inability and by that very recognition give God the glory. This is our perplexity. The rest of our task fades into insignificance in comparison. Karl Barth, in ‘The Task of the Ministry’ in The Word of God and the Word of Man (pg 186)

The small things

2011-09-23T08:40:00.001+12:00

Cynics look high and low for wisdom - and never find it, the open-minded find it right on their doorstep. Proverbs 14: 6 (Message translation) The ineffable inhabits the magnificent and the common, the grandiose and the tiny facts of reality alike. Some people sense this quality at distant intervals in extraordinary events; others sense it in the ordinary events, in every fold, in every nook;

Circus

2011-09-19T09:39:00.002+12:00

The circus – that ancient institution, that spectacle of ecumenism, that tent of democracy, that circle of sobornost, that festive assemblage of man and beast, sensuality and austerity, laughter and terror, life and death – the circus: is it not one of the great enduring signs of humanity in a world grown cold, bloodless, and inhuman? In a world ruled by the Machine, does not the circus

Conservatism

2011-09-19T09:25:00.001+12:00

We have remarked that one reason offered for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow better. But the only real reason for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow worse. The corruption in things is not only the best argument for being progressive; it is also the only argument against being conservative. The conservative theory would really be quite sweeping

Our nothingness

2011-09-19T09:18:00.001+12:00

It is not that we find God and then realize he created us from nothing. Rather, it is only in finding our own nothingness and embracing it that we realize God exists. For only an encounter with our nothingness takes us far enough outside our world for us to realized there is a giver of being who does not belong to it. One finds God by dying. And what dies last and most reluctantly is our

A new community

2011-09-16T13:23:00.003+12:00

The work of Jesus was not a new set of ideals or principles for reforming or even revolutionizing society, but the establishment of a new community, a people that embodied forgiveness, sharing, and self-sacrificing love in its rituals and discipline. In that sense, the visible church is not to be the bearer of Christ's message, but to be the message. Peter Steinfels On John Howard

Kinship

2011-09-14T07:39:00.000+12:00

These unjust inequalities, these masses living in misery who cry out to heaven are a sign of our anti-Christianity. They are declaring before God that we believe more in the things of the earth than in the covenant of love that we have signed with him, and that because of our covenant with God, all human beings should consider themselves brothers and sisters.... Human beings are more

Love your enemies

2011-09-13T14:53:00.002+12:00

Loving our enemies has become, in our time, the criterion of true Christian faith. It may seem impossible, yet it can be done. At no point is the inrush of divine grace so immediately and concretely perceptible as in those moments when we let go our hatred and relax into God's love. No miracle is so awesome, so necessary, and so frequent. Walter Wink Engaging the Powers

Answers

2011-09-12T07:50:00.000+12:00