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Quit separating faith and works
“The basic problem is: What is right living? And life is indivisible. The inner sphere is never isolated from outward activities. Deed and thought are bound into one. All a person thinks and feels enters everything he does, and all he does is involved in everything he thinks and feels.” — Thunder in the Soul: To Be Known By God…
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The desire for the old wine
Luke 5:36–39 (NIV) 36 He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the…
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The end of the world
I grew up in a pre-tribulation atmosphere in church. Those were the days of “A Thief in the Night” movies and books like The Late Great Planet Earth. I wrote an essay in a high school writing class on the final clash of the Soviet Union taking on Jesus’ army or some such crazy end time story.
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In an age of despair… don’t
“We live in an age of despair, and those who despair would seem justified, considering the compounding crises we face, whether they be economic, viral, political, or environmental. Yet despair, my father used to remind me, is forbidden; to despair is to deny that God is present, with us, caring for us, and that there is no challenge we are…
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The prophetic words of Abraham Herschel
“Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned riches of the world.” Anywhere injustice takes place, Heschel said, “few are guilty, but all are responsible.” We are all responsible for evil because only a world indifferent to suffering will tolerate injustice and systematic inequality. Thus, “indifference to…
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Basic discipleship
What Jesus treated as basic discipleship in his time on earth we’ve made into a rarity and some “specialist” work. In Mark 9 Jesus has come down from the Transfiguration and a father runs straight to him.
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We keep striving for greatness and power while Jesus constantly calls us to service
I am not a fan of the phrase “servant leaders.” I think it’s a cop out phrase in large part. Just serve. If people notice and follow in that path, then you’ve led in some way. Just not the way that people who throw out the phrase “servant leader” meant to say “lead.”
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The abuse in sports… and I can’t stop watching
I understand my own dilemmas and there is nothing a bigger issue of hypocrisy in my life than sports. I grew up loving sports, especially baseball. I always cheered on our local teams in professional sports and my guilty pleasure in college ball has been the Kansas Jayhawks basketball program. And then I get into love/hate relationships with the game…
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Understanding Justice
I am working my way again through Fleming Rutledge’s marvelous work, The Crucifixion. The understand the depths of the meaning of the cross and its importance, we have to understand what is meant by injustice. Therein lies the rub.
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Tolerating demons
When I began Lent I had in mind a practice I read in Esau McCaulley’s new book, Lent. I was going to go through the New Testament books that weren’t the Gospels or Paul’s writings. I would start in Acts and move through and end up in Revelation. Once I opened my Bible to try that while I was in…
