Speaking in God’s World

“Love is the language they speak in God’s world, and we are summoned to learn it against the day when God’s world and ours will be brought together forever. It is the music they make in God’s courts, and we are invited to learn it and practice it in advance. Love is not a duty, even our highest duty, it is our destiny.” – N.T. Wright, After You Believe, pg. 188

Grace, Amazing

“If God did not choose to work in ways that confound us, grace would not be amazing. It would not be grace.” – Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith

St. Thom on Watching the Kingdom Come

I sometimes wonder if we shouldn’t pray for better eyes. Eyes that catch a vision of what God’s Kingdom is and how it is already present. From one of his poems, Thomas Merton reminds us that we are in a position to see the Kingdom come if we only pay attention.

“We are exiles in the far end of solitude, living as listeners,
With hearts attending to the skies we cannot understand:
Waiting upon the first far drums of Christ the Conqueror,
Planted like sentinels upon the world’s frontier.” – Thomas Merton

“Grace digs sin up…”

“Grace digs sin up by the roots” – Karl Barth in The Epistle to the Romans

This week we discussed some light fare in our Saturday night teaching time. Things like God’s wrath, the holiness of God, how sin impacts our lives and our desperate need for transformation. Spiritual transformation, according to Jesus and through his Spirit, must never be confused with behavior modification. We can train ourselves to do this and not to do that, at least for a time. But that’s not deep change. Improved morality is good but it should not be equated with spiritual growth. Instead, transformation involves us accepting God’s acceptance and his love for us thus allowing the Spirit to do the work from the inside out.

Motivation that comes from being loved and accepted works from within. Transformation changes motivation and behavior.

“Advent Calendar” by Rowan Williams

He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.

† Cecil Beaver: 12.17.1928-10.18.2009 †

For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet ye have not many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel. – I Corinthians 4:15

James Bryan Smith on the Good and Beautiful God

This Saturday night my church, The Wheatland Mission, will be hosting James Bryan (Jim) Smith as he shares about his latest book The Good and Beautiful God. You won’t want to miss this special time as Jim shares about coming to know, love and follow the God that Jesus knows.

Good and Beautiful #4

Our most recent chapter in The Good and Beautiful God by Jim Smith includes the soul training exercise of “margin”. This is the process of building open space into our life. This allows more time for relaxation, sabbath, prayer and allows us to be more available to one another and to needs around us. So, the question is:

Have you been able to cram some margin into your life this week?

One of these…

… was eating from our Sunflowers. It is an American Goldfinch, Carduelis tristis.

Good and Beautiful #2

In chapter 3 Jim Smith reminds us that God can be trusted. Some of us simply need to be reminded of this and others of us need to hear it for the first time. Unfortunately, many of us read a portion of the Bible (free from the overall story or its specific context) combine it with some bad experiences in our lives and craft a theology around that story and those bad experiences. When we do this we don’t come away with a healthy, life giving or true theology. Instead we create superstitions that leave us pulling God’s strings instead of asking of him. We want to pull the strings and move the levers just right so that the god we have created (the one that isn’t loving, good or reliable) will act in a way beneficial to us.

To use Smith’s words, “the God Jesus knows” isn’t like that. He isn’t manipulated by superstitious behavior but he is moved by love. God doesn’t change. Instead of reducing this truth into an esoteric, technical theological point let’s reclaim this as an affirmation of God’s character toward us.

“I am the Lord, and I do not change. That is why you descendants of Jacob are not already destroyed.” – Malachi 3:6

This verse says that God is reliable. This verse reminds us that God doesn’t lose control or go crazy with a drive toward punishment. Instead, his “unchangingness” is a sign of his love. The love that parents have for children…multiplied by a factor of infinity.

This week’s “soul training” exercise is to count your blessings. Write down all the things that you can think of that you consider to be blessings from God and thank God for those specific things. Of course we will all put our loved ones, spouses and children, at the top of the list as we should. But let’s not forget the little blessings that are easily overlooked like the foods you enjoy, that new mower that you can’t wait to use, your flatscreen TV, et.

If you feel God has blessed you with it don’t dare leave it out. Feel free to share some of your blessings below. (1554? Starbucks? Wilco?) Nothing blessing is too small. No blessing is small at all.