I still have this hanging on my office wall and see it everyday.

My Nike+ totals just went over 2200 miles, but I don’t know if any of them will be as important as the first 100.

3 weeks ago on July 8th, 2010 at 10:00 am | Permalink

"Prayer does not stop with “amen.” It rises to its feet and walks off, with our built-up yearning turned into action."

Scot McKnight, The Jesus Creed

3 weeks ago on July 7th, 2010 at 10:00 am | Permalink

People pray all over the world. But what good does it really do?

“If we are truly praying this prayer to God’s honour, we can never simply pray for food for ourselves. We must pray for the needs of the whole world, where millions go hungry and many starve.”

This is part of N.T. Wright’s reflection on the Matthean “Lord’s Prayer.” It is referring, of course, to “give us this day our daily bread.”

It’s an odd observation because a cursory reading of the text doesn’t necessarily lead to you think about praying for the needs of the whole world, right?

But read it in the overall flow of the passage, just after an admonishment to seek the Kingdom of God (the reality of God’s activity that Jesus is constantly proclaiming) and right before drawing a strong correlation between the way we give and get forgiveness.

And when we’re asked to pray ” give us,” who is “us” anyways?

I would say that, as we participate in this practice of prayer, we are seeking to align ourselves with God.

To align ourselves with the Kingdom of God for the world, to align ourselves with forgiveness for the world, and to align ourselves with bread for the world.

Our prayers should be effective. They should be powerful. They should matter.

They should matter because prayer is about us yielding ourselves.

About getting out of the way.

And letting the Kingdom of God burst forth.

Prayer should be the heartbeat of our spiritual formation, as we are being restored from broken-to-Jesus.

The Kingdom of God is breaking forth where broken-but-hopeful humans, once focused on their own gluttony, are being transformed into the New Humanity—bringing peace, forgiveness, and even food to those without.

3 weeks ago on July 6th, 2010 at 12:00 pm | Permalink

"For Christians cannot be distinguished from the rest of the human race by country or language or customs. They do not live in cities of their own; they do not use a peculiar form of speech; they do not follow an eccentric manner of life. This doctrine of theirs has not been discovered by the ingenuity or deep thought of inquisitive men, nor do they put forward a merely human teaching, as some people do.
Yet, although they live in Greek and barbarian cities alike, as each man’s lot has been cast, and follow the customs of the country in clothing and food and other matters of daily living, at the same time they give proof of the remarkable and admittedly extraordinary constitution of their own commonwealth. They live in their own countries, but only as aliens. They have a share in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign land is their fatherland, and yet for them every fatherland is a foreign land. They marry, like everyone else, and they beget children, but they do not cast out their offspring. They share their board with each other, but not their marriage bed.
It is true that they are “in the flesh,” but they do not live “according to the flesh.”
They busy themselves on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They obey the established laws, but in their own lives they go far beyond what the laws require. They love all men, and by all men are persecuted. They are unknown, and still they are condemned; they are put to death, and yet they are brought to life. They are poor, and yet they make many rich; they are completely destitute, and yet they enjoy complete abundance. They are dishonored, and in their very dishonor are glorified; they are defamed, and are vindicated. They are reviled, and yet they bless; when they are affronted, they still pay due respect. When they do good, they are punished as evildoers; undergoing punishment, they rejoice because they are brought to life. They are treated by the Jews as foreigners and enemies, and are hunted down by the Greeks; and all the time those who hate them find it impossible to justify their enmity."

excerpt from The So-Called Letter to Diognetus, 125 A.D.

3 weeks ago on July 5th, 2010 at 10:00 am | Permalink

Happy 4th, love Emery.

3 weeks ago on July 4th, 2010 at 6:32 pm | Permalink

The Birth of Two Kingdoms

A must read for the weekend.

3 weeks ago on July 2nd, 2010 at 10:00 am | Permalink

The Kingdom of God looks like…

Less of sinful humanity, more of the Creator’s generous presence shining in the darkness.

In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, the audience interacts with Jesus’ view of reality. He’s painted a beautiful but haunting description of those who God is near to (the Beatitudes) and interacted with the formative power of the Torah’s commandments and misinterpretations.

He then begins to really take issue with the idolatry that’s present in the lives of the people of God.

Their idolatry was their relationship with God.

Their prayer life. Their giving practices. Their spiritual elitism.

For the people Jesus is addressing, and I’d say that it’s just as true today; we’re often fascinated by what we get in return for religion.

Jesus, somewhat snarky, tells it like is.

You want people to see you giving money to the poor?

Congratulations…they will!

Hah.

It’s a spirituality reality that’s often missed.

You land where you aim.

Jesus will go on to say it another way “where your treasure is, there your heart will also be.”

And it doesn’t matter where you say your heart is, or where you think all of your petty giving and pretentious actions tell others your heart is… because those things are ultimately a load of crap.

But for Jesus it’s not really about giving. Well, it is and it isn’t.

It’s about generosity. It’s about becoming more and more like the God-given image you were created to reflect.

Jesus reveals that our generosity should be replacing more and more of the reliance on stuff and money that’s prevalent in our lives. That generosity defines us in such a way that we don’t even have to think about it (the whole “right hand, left hand” thing).

And that’s the reward.

The reward is that we’ll be more generous people.

And the second reward closely follows—we’ll rely on earthly junk less and less. We’ll need less of it, care less about it, and spend less on it.

We’re talking about freeing your souls from money and junk people.

Your. Souls.

It’s not just about dolla dolla bills anymore.

The Kingdom of God will be found where God is invading human souls and extinguishing the deep reliance on our money.

Humans, broken-yet-finding wholeness, will use their “blessings” less and less to secure a future for themselves and more to fight the living Hell that we’re often oblivious to.

4 weeks ago on July 1st, 2010 at 10:45 am | Permalink

Running away…

1 month ago on June 28th, 2010 at 6:22 pm | Permalink

When you read the Biblical narrative and you begin where it begins, you see that we are created in the Image of God.

Humanity was intended to bear the image of the God of the Universe.

We are little Image-bearers.

Our essential sin is narcissism.

We ~~didn’t~~ don’t trust the Image. We don’t trust the one who’s image we are made in.

We think we can do it better.

We doubt his goodness and choose a different path.

This makes us broken image-bearers.

The rest of the Bible, then, is about restoring the Image.

Along the way we learn lots of things…

that we can’t do it ourselves, because we will continuously choose our image over God’s…

that God is relentless in his pursuit of restoring the image…

that our distortion culminates in a whole lot of distortion and messiness.

In a creation that was intended to reflect the creator, the image-bearers hijacked the plan and now that good Creation is a rather disastrous reflection of the broken image-bearers.

Thankfully, that’s not the end of the story.

Jesus steps in to show that the God-given image will ultimately triumph.

And those of us who seek Jesus seek that triumph. We have agreed that it’s the best possible way to live—to trust Jesus for the restoration of our Image and surrender our control over the broken image we inherited.

That’s the story that I hope informs your story.

May your life and mine reflect that reality.

1 month ago on June 28th, 2010 at 10:22 am | Permalink

shocked disapproval.

1 month ago on June 25th, 2010 at 5:01 pm | Permalink

The Kingdom of God looks like…

Elsewhere:

Following: