Steve Chalke talks about how that whenever two people love one another, there is always one party who loves more than the other and that the one who loves less (if you can quantify love) actually ends up having more power than the one who loves more. By loving deeply and kindly and sacrificially you may put the person that you love in a position to have more power than you do.
I was thinking about this and wholeheartedly agree but thought to myself that the person who loves more still needs to have power to accomplish what we've been given to do on the planet and therefore where does that power come from. If you love less, you don't have power but the power for the person who gives up the power still needs a source of strength and influence instead of just being a doormat or a scapegoat. This is where the Holy Spirit comes in and it seems can only come in when we are weak and powerless because we have given up our rights to have power through loving those with whom we don't see a reciprocation of love. The lack of power as a result of love enables the Holy Spirit to rush in and fill the void and empower us.
If we seek power from others by not being vulnerable, not giving in and not loving then the power we have is legitimate power but it is our own and we got it through sin and selfishness. We still have strength and power to hand out but the use of it is actually to give it up in order to love others at times and therefore its use isn't only a direct show of power but also the ability to empty oneself of the power that we have a right to use to protect ourselves thereby allowing the Holy Spirit to move in through our own emptying in. The Holy Spirit couldn't come to earth until Christ left - when his presence and power left the earth - the Spirit came and empowered the disciples for what - to love through preaching, teaching, sacrificing, dying, etc... but not through violence.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
John Ortberg's seven political sins
This is an article that I found out about on a friend's facebook notes and went and looked up on this page,
http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2008/11/john_ortbergs_l.html
John Ortberg's Lessons from the Election
The seven deadly sins of evangelicals in politics.
by John Ortberg
My son has a bumper sticker on his car that reads: “I poke badgers with spoons.” Its significance is not self-evident to everybody who reads it, so let me tell you the story.
It comes from a British stand-up named Eddie Izzard. Eddie grew up in the church, and heard early on about the doctrine of original sin, but was a little fuzzy on the concept. He assumed that it meant that priests get tired of hearing the same old boring confessions time after time—greed, lust, gluttony, and lying to the tax man. Eddie thought the priests wanted to hear some truly original sins.
So he came up with something he figured no one had ever confessed before: “I poke badgers with spoons.” My wife thought it was so funny that she had it printed on a bumper sticker and placed it on my son’s car. Oddly enough, he sometimes fails to appreciate that his parents are two of the funniest people in the world. But he wanted the car. So he gets the sticker that goes with it.
Debates have raged for centuries now over the phrase “original sin,” which of course doesn’t actually show up in the Bible. Augustine argued that there is a fundamental flaw, a bentness, that gets passed on to every human being before they are even born. (He believed it was intrinsic to the sex act, which may be part of why he never had a little Augustine, Jr.--at least not legitimately.) The classic counter-argument was raised by Pelagius, who claimed that each human being was a blank slate, a morally neutral free agent who had a clean shot at maintaining perfect innocence. Pelagius clearly never had children.
The church came down, with a few caveats, on the side of Augustine and not Pelagius. But Eddie Izzard gets a shout out now and then. The Vatican recently published a list of sins (such as environmental transgressions) which, if not completely original, at least give an updated twist to the old seven deadlies.
Which brings me to the election...
I am a political junkie. During a presidential campaign, I will often buy a couple of newspapers a day just to keep up. But it strikes me that presidential campaigns can often bring out the worst as well as the best in us.So I want to propose the “Seven Deadly Sins of Evangelicals and Politics.” You may have a few of your own to add. But the spirit of such lists in the past was not to add to our store of information but to contrition. So feel free to confess while you read.
Messianism. The sin of believing that a merely human person or system can usher in the eschaton. This is often tipped off by phrases like: “The most important election of our lifetime” (which one wasn’t?); or “God’s man for the hour.”
Selective Scripturization. The sin of using Scripture to reinforce whatever attitude toward the president you feel like holding, while shellacking it with a thin spiritual veneer. If the candidate you like holds office, you consistently point people toward Romans 13: “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.” If your candidate lost, you consistently point people to Acts 4:10 where Peter and John say to the Sanhedrin: “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God.” It’s just lucky for us the Bible is such a big book.
Easy Believism. This is the sin of believing the worst about a candidate you disagree with, because when you want them to lose you actually want to believe bad things about them. “Love is patient, love is kind,” Paul said. “Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth.” But in Paul’s day nobody ran for Caesar. There was no talk radio.
Episodism. The sin of being engaged in civic life only on a random basis. The real issues never go away, but we’re tempted to give them our attention only when the news about them is controversial, or simplistic, or emotionally charged. Sustained attention to vital but unsexy issues is not our strong suit.
Alarmism. A friend of mine used to work for an organization that claimed both Christian identity and a particular political orientation. They actually liked it when a president was elected of the opposite persuasion, because it meant they could raise a lot more money. It is in their financial interests to convince their constituents that the president is less sane than Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Alarmists on both sides of the spectrum make it sound like we’re electing a Bogeyman-in-Chief every four years. I sometimes think we should move the election up a few days to October 31.
One Issue-ism. Justifying our intolerance of complexity and nuance by collapsing a decision into a simplistic and superficial framework.
Pride. I couldn’t think of a snappy title for this one. But politics, after all, is largely about power. And power goes to the core of our issues of control and narcissism and need to be right and tendency to divide the human race into "us" vs. "them."
What might happen if the world were to see those of us who claim to be the church vote, and speak, and campaign, and respond to the results in a humble and repentant spirit?
John Ortberg is editor-at-large of Leadership and pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in Menlo Park, California. He writes a monthly column on our sister site www.LeadershipJournal.net.
http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2008/11/john_ortbergs_l.html
John Ortberg's Lessons from the Election
The seven deadly sins of evangelicals in politics.
by John Ortberg
My son has a bumper sticker on his car that reads: “I poke badgers with spoons.” Its significance is not self-evident to everybody who reads it, so let me tell you the story.
It comes from a British stand-up named Eddie Izzard. Eddie grew up in the church, and heard early on about the doctrine of original sin, but was a little fuzzy on the concept. He assumed that it meant that priests get tired of hearing the same old boring confessions time after time—greed, lust, gluttony, and lying to the tax man. Eddie thought the priests wanted to hear some truly original sins.
So he came up with something he figured no one had ever confessed before: “I poke badgers with spoons.” My wife thought it was so funny that she had it printed on a bumper sticker and placed it on my son’s car. Oddly enough, he sometimes fails to appreciate that his parents are two of the funniest people in the world. But he wanted the car. So he gets the sticker that goes with it.
Debates have raged for centuries now over the phrase “original sin,” which of course doesn’t actually show up in the Bible. Augustine argued that there is a fundamental flaw, a bentness, that gets passed on to every human being before they are even born. (He believed it was intrinsic to the sex act, which may be part of why he never had a little Augustine, Jr.--at least not legitimately.) The classic counter-argument was raised by Pelagius, who claimed that each human being was a blank slate, a morally neutral free agent who had a clean shot at maintaining perfect innocence. Pelagius clearly never had children.
The church came down, with a few caveats, on the side of Augustine and not Pelagius. But Eddie Izzard gets a shout out now and then. The Vatican recently published a list of sins (such as environmental transgressions) which, if not completely original, at least give an updated twist to the old seven deadlies.
Which brings me to the election...
I am a political junkie. During a presidential campaign, I will often buy a couple of newspapers a day just to keep up. But it strikes me that presidential campaigns can often bring out the worst as well as the best in us.So I want to propose the “Seven Deadly Sins of Evangelicals and Politics.” You may have a few of your own to add. But the spirit of such lists in the past was not to add to our store of information but to contrition. So feel free to confess while you read.
Messianism. The sin of believing that a merely human person or system can usher in the eschaton. This is often tipped off by phrases like: “The most important election of our lifetime” (which one wasn’t?); or “God’s man for the hour.”
Selective Scripturization. The sin of using Scripture to reinforce whatever attitude toward the president you feel like holding, while shellacking it with a thin spiritual veneer. If the candidate you like holds office, you consistently point people toward Romans 13: “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.” If your candidate lost, you consistently point people to Acts 4:10 where Peter and John say to the Sanhedrin: “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God.” It’s just lucky for us the Bible is such a big book.
Easy Believism. This is the sin of believing the worst about a candidate you disagree with, because when you want them to lose you actually want to believe bad things about them. “Love is patient, love is kind,” Paul said. “Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth.” But in Paul’s day nobody ran for Caesar. There was no talk radio.
Episodism. The sin of being engaged in civic life only on a random basis. The real issues never go away, but we’re tempted to give them our attention only when the news about them is controversial, or simplistic, or emotionally charged. Sustained attention to vital but unsexy issues is not our strong suit.
Alarmism. A friend of mine used to work for an organization that claimed both Christian identity and a particular political orientation. They actually liked it when a president was elected of the opposite persuasion, because it meant they could raise a lot more money. It is in their financial interests to convince their constituents that the president is less sane than Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Alarmists on both sides of the spectrum make it sound like we’re electing a Bogeyman-in-Chief every four years. I sometimes think we should move the election up a few days to October 31.
One Issue-ism. Justifying our intolerance of complexity and nuance by collapsing a decision into a simplistic and superficial framework.
Pride. I couldn’t think of a snappy title for this one. But politics, after all, is largely about power. And power goes to the core of our issues of control and narcissism and need to be right and tendency to divide the human race into "us" vs. "them."
What might happen if the world were to see those of us who claim to be the church vote, and speak, and campaign, and respond to the results in a humble and repentant spirit?
John Ortberg is editor-at-large of Leadership and pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in Menlo Park, California. He writes a monthly column on our sister site www.LeadershipJournal.net.
Who's in charge?
Our job is to provide a safe environment for people to encounter Christ through the Scriptures , community, service and solidarity and to guard from inaccurate teaching but also the lack of teaching the full message of the Gospel so that people in the Church wouldn’t lead others people to self-destruction and selfishness. That doesn’t mean that we can’t lead people to know themselves, achieve self-realization and to become the themselves more and more – the person God created them to be. Instead our tradition and the presiding paradigm teaches that we are to deny self as both our identity and flesh rather than as the just the flesh - the selfish destructive person inside of us who we really aren’t as the Scripture has shown us in Romans 7.
Learning from others is something our tradition does poorly because we are too triumphalistic and think we don’t need to learn from other faiths or traditions because we’re on the right side of it all to begin with. I think this is one of the most arrogant and detrimental attitudes of our tradition and believe it to be very sinful and destructive, un-Biblical and un-Christ like. There are many reasons for that from my understanding. One is that every great religious idea that we found our tradition on especially and the great doctrines of our faith in Scripture – they’ve all been borrowed from other religions and philosophies and re-calibrated for our own use and understanding. We aren’t as original as we think we are.
How does this effect my view of Scripture? For myself Scripture is not truth – God is, Jesus is. Christ said it Himself - way/truth/life is a person, not a book or propostion and Scripture is an accommodation for us to reveal that truth - it is not in and of itself a crystallized truth - it is a truth giver, communicator and norm for truth, but it is not truth. It isn't a necessity for God to reveal Himself to us, it's his choice and He chooses to do so through different means - Scripture, experience, community, nature, sense and conviction, and these are all accommodations not necessities that God provides for us. God doesn’t have to accommodate anyone but He chooses to most of the time because of his love and as a result of the flip side of this conversation, it is possible that many can encounter Christ without Scripture and still know truth, live truth, preach truth, etc… The Bible doesn't have handcuffs on truth, it is just the best way to encounter it in its fullness and freedom but it doesn't at the same time lock all of humanity out from accessing "truth" if they don't have the Bible or have never read it.
Learning from others is something our tradition does poorly because we are too triumphalistic and think we don’t need to learn from other faiths or traditions because we’re on the right side of it all to begin with. I think this is one of the most arrogant and detrimental attitudes of our tradition and believe it to be very sinful and destructive, un-Biblical and un-Christ like. There are many reasons for that from my understanding. One is that every great religious idea that we found our tradition on especially and the great doctrines of our faith in Scripture – they’ve all been borrowed from other religions and philosophies and re-calibrated for our own use and understanding. We aren’t as original as we think we are.
How does this effect my view of Scripture? For myself Scripture is not truth – God is, Jesus is. Christ said it Himself - way/truth/life is a person, not a book or propostion and Scripture is an accommodation for us to reveal that truth - it is not in and of itself a crystallized truth - it is a truth giver, communicator and norm for truth, but it is not truth. It isn't a necessity for God to reveal Himself to us, it's his choice and He chooses to do so through different means - Scripture, experience, community, nature, sense and conviction, and these are all accommodations not necessities that God provides for us. God doesn’t have to accommodate anyone but He chooses to most of the time because of his love and as a result of the flip side of this conversation, it is possible that many can encounter Christ without Scripture and still know truth, live truth, preach truth, etc… The Bible doesn't have handcuffs on truth, it is just the best way to encounter it in its fullness and freedom but it doesn't at the same time lock all of humanity out from accessing "truth" if they don't have the Bible or have never read it.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Anniversary
I just realized that I have been writing on this blog for 3 years this month. The first post was on the 25th of November just 3 days away. I wrote about my brother, Lonnie, he's a hero of mine and he's given me another nephew to love on. A lot has changed since that post. A lot can happen in three years. A lot. Wow! Blessings to all the bloggers.
Gibran, Dylan and Armstrong - Do we really belive this?
I hear babies cry...... I watch them grow
Theyll learn much more.....than Ill never know
And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world
The colors of a rainbow.....so pretty ..in the sky
Are there on the faces.....of people ..going by
I see friends shaking hands.....sayin.. how do you do
Theyre really sayin...*spoken*(I ....love....you).
I hear babies cry...... I watch them grow
*spoken*(you know their gonna learn
A whole lot more than Ill never know)
And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself .......what a wonderful world.
- Louis Armstrong
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.
- Bob Dylan
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
-Khalil Gibran
Theyll learn much more.....than Ill never know
And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world
The colors of a rainbow.....so pretty ..in the sky
Are there on the faces.....of people ..going by
I see friends shaking hands.....sayin.. how do you do
Theyre really sayin...*spoken*(I ....love....you).
I hear babies cry...... I watch them grow
*spoken*(you know their gonna learn
A whole lot more than Ill never know)
And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself .......what a wonderful world.
- Louis Armstrong
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.
- Bob Dylan
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
-Khalil Gibran
Semper Reformata!
From Holiness to Wholeness
From Righteousness to Nobility
From Obedience to Wisdom
From Confirmation to Affirmation
From Paternally Partonizing to Participatory Partnership
From Aid to Trade
From Systems to Sustainability
From Programs to Projects
From Credentials to Credibility
From Authoritarian Hierarchy to Collaborative Co-Creativity
From Paid Pastors to Shepherd-making Sheep.
From Education to Discovery
From Adventure to Quest
From honorable hi-jacking to Renewal and Redemption
From tuition to intuition
From disciplines to rhythms
From Elitism to Egalitarianism
From Dependence to Independence
From Independence to Interdependence
From conforming to deforming
From deforming to reforming
From One to Oneness
From Catholic to Collaborative
From Me to You
From You to Me
From Us to All
From All to Him
From Him to All
From Him to Us
From Him to You
From Him to Me
From Him to Himself
And For Him
And Because of Him
And In Him
And To Him
And without Him
Emptiness
"He was Supreme in the beginning and - leading the resurrection parade - he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he's there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe - people and things, animals and atoms - get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death,his blood that poured down from the Cross."
- Paul the Apostle to the Colossians
From Righteousness to Nobility
From Obedience to Wisdom
From Confirmation to Affirmation
From Paternally Partonizing to Participatory Partnership
From Aid to Trade
From Systems to Sustainability
From Programs to Projects
From Credentials to Credibility
From Authoritarian Hierarchy to Collaborative Co-Creativity
From Paid Pastors to Shepherd-making Sheep.
From Education to Discovery
From Adventure to Quest
From honorable hi-jacking to Renewal and Redemption
From tuition to intuition
From disciplines to rhythms
From Elitism to Egalitarianism
From Dependence to Independence
From Independence to Interdependence
From conforming to deforming
From deforming to reforming
From One to Oneness
From Catholic to Collaborative
From Me to You
From You to Me
From Us to All
From All to Him
From Him to All
From Him to Us
From Him to You
From Him to Me
From Him to Himself
And For Him
And Because of Him
And In Him
And To Him
And without Him
Emptiness
"He was Supreme in the beginning and - leading the resurrection parade - he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he's there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe - people and things, animals and atoms - get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death,his blood that poured down from the Cross."
- Paul the Apostle to the Colossians
Friday, November 21, 2008
Shalom dilating
"The opposite of sin is not morality, it is grace - not to cancel out or match or even one up, but to overwhelm and absorb incrementally yet not all at once either. If it were all at once, we would be overwhelmed and absorbed to the point of dangerous goodness - the destruction and demise of our own deceit and coping creations - too much, too soon for a broken human spirit that needs kind increments and dignified doses. It only waits for us, within us, around us - that fruitful economy of which our name is attached. It is unfailingly full yet pregnant with indiscovery. Its leaks break into our world, pinning down our atmosphere with dam-breaking potential, longing for the second Flood, not of death, but of life. I drag my soul to its oasis, longing for a refreshing sprinkle from the crack in the desert rock. Laying below, exhausted and saturated by the heat, only able to open and close the cracked lips of my life-leathered face to receive. At times it is sweet, at others, it is bitter. It rushes with force unspeakable and whirlpools of frightening fury, waiting, waiting for it's unleashed lavishing. Each day I lay farther and farther from the spring to comfort in its expansive shelter from the heat, and now, only now I glimpse upward. The sands of time have shifted, it has become a sheer mountain, and the crack is no crack at all. It is now a breach - a breach that longs for its day, water-falling from its overflow, a river running to and fro searching endlessly for the canyon it created to fill, to reverse, to chance its last flow - for Tomorrow the cascading caverns will fill with no one to know - only to become dark chasms deep deep below. And the whipping winds of fear, fury, shame and foe, they will not reach us from under the crushing toe. They will only froth the peaks of the waves of grace that churn and chant over us as we stare past them into space, into the heavens, and into His face. Maranatha! And until then, petition, hospitalize, sustain, create, love, un-burden, hope - and all in the name of Grace!
-Nathan (kind of)
-Nathan (kind of)
The Lost Message of Jesus
"What is God's Kingdom like? What story can I use to explain it?...It's like a seed sown, shooting up and growing quietly" (Mark 4:30). Jesus constantly undermined the nationalistic fervour and demand for open revolt, warfare or revolution that so many Jews hankered after. There would be no violent upheavals. The Kingdom is about a quiet, social and spiritual revolution, not a bloody and political one.
But more than that it is to be a place of flourishing for the oppressed and marginalized rather than the realm of continual self-interest for the already privileged. It was ordinary, poverty-stricken (shalom denied) and oppressed Jewish people that desperately needed God to do something for them, and to do it now!
So, it is that Jesus begins his three years of teaching with the explicit declaration that the Kingdom, the inbreaking shalom of God, had finally arrived. Some might not recognize it, for its shape was different to everybody's expectations. It was different, however, not because it promised less, but rather because it delivered far more.
-Steve Chalke (pages 38-39)
"We live with the idea that the gospel's chief aim is to make us fit for heaven, when in reality Jesus' message is focused on making citizens and recipients of the Kingdom of God today...As the Victorian preacher Charles Spurgeon put it, 'A little faith will take you to heaven, but I pray for the kind of faith that will bring heaven to earth.' Authentic Christian faith isn't so much about ordering your private world as ordering the whole world...'The truth is,' he said (an African preacher who has a twist on prosperity preaching), 'the Bible doesn't preach prosperity in our narrow twenty-first century understanding of the word. But what it does teach is the shalom of God. Something that is far richer, deeper and broader than the temporary and shallow happiness that economic prosperity gives people'...Shalom, a word that appears over two hundred and fifty times in the Hebrew Scriptures, is a kaleidoscopic vision of what life is like when lived in line with God's agenda. It incorporates contentment, health, justice, liberation, fulfillment, freedom and hope...shalom is the equipping of a person so they can cope with life's suffering and sorrows while basking in the beauty and joys it brings. Shalom is about comprehensive well-being and flourishing at every level of life - socially, economically, spiritually and politically."
- Steve Chalke (Page 36-37)
Friday, November 14, 2008
A Heretic's Guide to Eternity
In this Spencer Burke's book he writes, " Art Kleiner said a 'heretic is someone who sees a truth that contradicts the conventional wisdom of the institution and remains loyal to both entities.'"
Spence himself writes on page 21, "I believe that the message of Jesus, once loosed from its religious confines, has the potential to contribute to the global yearning for the sacred and the divine. I believe that there is hope for the heretic, for God's grace is a much bigger gift than we've ever imagined."
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Magic and Sunshine
With your magic
My adventure recoils
only to unfold a quest
Create, I cannot for you
Nothing speaks truth
Clear enough to you
Only satiate me
with your voice
Carry me
with your voice
It's filled
with a century's wisdom
With the tenderness
Of a newborn's coo
I would rather write
These words with my tongue
My eyes forming the lines
My hands the good inkwell
Your magic is deep
it centers me
Fear of idols
that don't understand me
And tears
that don't trust
But it's magic
because it reaches further
And I've found that
when it truly divides me
It's only returning home.
Why do I send it away?
If it's magic, it's free
And when it's free - you are home.
My adventure recoils
only to unfold a quest
Create, I cannot for you
Nothing speaks truth
Clear enough to you
Only satiate me
with your voice
Carry me
with your voice
It's filled
with a century's wisdom
With the tenderness
Of a newborn's coo
I would rather write
These words with my tongue
My eyes forming the lines
My hands the good inkwell
Your magic is deep
it centers me
Fear of idols
that don't understand me
And tears
that don't trust
But it's magic
because it reaches further
And I've found that
when it truly divides me
It's only returning home.
Why do I send it away?
If it's magic, it's free
And when it's free - you are home.
seasons of plee and glee
Down to the water
I brought my name
Up to the mountain
I carried my shame
But in this moment
The leaves have fallen from my tree
The fruit trodden under a season of glee.
I brought my name
Up to the mountain
I carried my shame
But in this moment
The leaves have fallen from my tree
The fruit trodden under a season of glee.
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