verse 23 jumped out at me: 'Love the Lord, all his faithful people! The Lord preserves those who are true to him, but the proud he pays back in full.' my translation says, 'The Lord preserves the faithful...' and i found it an interesting contrast - faithful vs proud - because i don't think we would naturally see them as opposites... yet when i think of being faithful the immediate connection is the idea of [...]
i thought i was finished with this series on people who have lost a child and then i received this email from a friend of mine who lost a baby. i knew this was one more to be shared and i imagine it will impact a lot of people deeply. i want to encourage those of you who read it to refrain from doing what we often do when hearing someone's story - justifying, rationalising, [...]
some more quotes from ‘Prayer: Does it make any difference?’ by Philip Yancey, which you really should read: 'Be still and know that I am God': the Latin imperative for 'be still' is vacate. As Simon Tugwell explains, 'God invites us to take a holiday [vacation], to stop being God for a while, and let Him be God.' Too often we think of prayer as a serious chore, something that must be scheduled around other [...]
there are some lines in this psalm that are not as easy to digest as they used to be and i am not going to focus on that, because i am clearly not exegiting the psalms, but simply pulling out lines and ideas that strike me... and with psalm 20, it is verse 6 and 7: 'Surely You have granted him unending blessings and made him glad with the joy of Your presence.' [verse 6] [...]
there seem to be a lot of 'i' and 'me' psalms leading up to psalm 20 and then some that focus on God but from an 'i' or 'me' perspective... and so this one has a very different feel to it: 'May the LORD answer you when you are in distress; may the name of the God of Jacob protect you. May he send you help from the sanctuary and grant you support from Zion. [...]
psalm 19 is a tough one. because there is just so much in it. it is a beautiful, beautiful psalm. make sure you read the whole thing. It starts so powerfully with a declaration of who God is: 'The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.' [Psalm 19.1] This makes me think of Jesus calming the storm in the boat ['The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Master, [...]
'Why, LORD, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?' [vs.1] that is how this psalm starts and it reminds me of that old - 'if there is a huge distance between you and God, guess who moved?' - which in some dimensions might be a cheesy christian car bumper sticker, but actually there is a lot of truth to it and i am reminded of a couple of [...]
the danger of this, for me, much like for a preacher to be planning a preach, is that the reading becomes preparation for blogging as in reading to find my blog point... and so i am doing my best to ensure that doesn't happen by trying to read the psalm a number of times, where a later one of those will be to draw out the point i am wanting to share, but the first [...]
my brother-in-law keith just introduced me to this new cartoon strip called Prickly City by a guy called Scott Stantis and i took a look at a bunch of them and there's some good stuff - great series on the Occupy phenomenon and some other good ones - here are a quick pick:
i have been busy reading brian mclaren's 'Generous Orthodoxy' and as a previous not-a-big-fan-of-brian-mclaren am absolutely loving it and highly recommend it - breaks open a lot of different boxes and helps clarify a bunch of christian labels in a very helpful way... here is an extract from the latest chapter which i really enjoyed titled, "Why I am Mystical/Poetic." and the context is using metaphors to understand God: 'So we reach for another metaphor [...]