Reflections on the GOSPEL. Creation, fall, redemption, restoration /consummation /recreation. Inclusive and exclusive. Tabernacle and presence.
Loved by God.
- UBF Gospel Musings
- Chicago, IL, United States
- * It's good to suffer loss, for it draws me to the Cross where God's loss is more than what anyone ever lost. * We cannot hear what the stories of the Bible are saying until we hear them as stories about ourselves. * Let go of control. * Trust God. Thank God. Think about God. Talk to God. Talk about God.
Friday, December 27, 2019
Love God
Sunday, December 22, 2019
See & Hear in 2019 & 2020
2019: "Once more Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes…and he saw everything clearly" (Mk 8:25).
2020: "The sheep hear his voice … for they know his voice" (Jn 10:3b-4).
A wholesome Christian requires orthodoxy (right beliefs), orthopraxy (right practices) and osteopathy (right emotions / feelings). Since I became a Christian in 1980, I focused exclusively on orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Once I even said to my wife to her chagrin, "Feelings don't matter." It took me 3 decades to realize the error and distastefulness of my insensitive statement. So in my attempts to rectify myself…
Friday, December 20, 2019
Hear & Know God's Voice (John 10:3b-4)
Monday, December 16, 2019
The Good Shepherd
Friday, December 6, 2019
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, 1987
God is not only the God of the sufferers but the God who suffers. The pain and fallenness of humanity have entered into his heart. Through the prism of my tears I have seen a suffering God.
And great mystery: to redeem our brokenness and lovelessness the God who suffers with us did not strike some mighty blow of power but sent his beloved son to suffer like us, through his suffering to redeem us from suffering and evil. Instead of explaining our suffering God shares it.
Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff.
Ken Bailey on The Good Shepherd quoting Nicholas Wolterstorff.
Saturday, October 5, 2019
Knowing that You Know God
David Benner discusses in "Spirituality and the Awakening Self" (2012) a knowledge of God that is "transrational" and "contemplative" in chapter 5: "Learning from the Christian Mystics."
Christian mysticism should . . . not be confused with experience. Instead, it should be understood as participation in the mystery of the transformational journey toward union with God in love. . . . Mystics are . . . much more defined by their longing than by their experience. They long to know God's love and thereby to be filled with the very fullness of God [Eph 3:17-19].
This sort of knowing is beyond reason, but it is not irrational. It is transrational. It is knowing of a different order. It is a form of knowing often described as contemplative. And this is the connection to mysticism. Contemplation is apprehension uncluttered by thought—particularly preconception and analysis. It is based on direct and personal encounter.
When you know something by means of such encounter, you may not be able to express it verbally, at least not in a compelling, coherent, or exhaustive manner. But you do know that you know because your knowing has a depth and immediacy to it that is never present in simply knowing about things—even merely knowing about God. [pp. 75-76]
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
Friday, September 13, 2019
Saturday, September 7, 2019
Monday, September 2, 2019
Thursday, August 22, 2019
Monday, August 5, 2019
A prayer of abandonment
Sunday, August 4, 2019
Christian Life as a Journey and Dialogue
Saturday, August 3, 2019
Sunday, July 21, 2019
Tuesday, July 16, 2019
Saturday, July 13, 2019
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
To Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die
Tuesday, July 9, 2019
Sunday, June 30, 2019
We can't figure out we are sinners
Thursday, June 20, 2019
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Christ is Beautiful - Augustine
Friday, June 7, 2019
I desire to do nothing else other than what I'm delightfully doing
Saturday, June 1, 2019
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
Love is thankfulness for the existence of the beloved
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Legalism is the original sin
"Our first sin is our assumption that we know what sin is." Hauerwas quoting Barth. "Barth's language is an ontological impossibility."
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
Non-Pharisee Repentance
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Discipleship, Jesus rejects using force
Saturday, March 30, 2019
Prayer to Start the Day
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Monday, March 25, 2019
A Community of Character, 1981, Stanley Hauerwas
Monday, March 18, 2019
Saturday, March 16, 2019
Friday, March 15, 2019
Sin, Peace, Truth, Joy, Life, Love
Are you a Christian? "If you are a Christian you should be joyful in a way that people find attractive. It's not like I go around saying, 'Oh, you got to be like me,' but that people should think, 'Gee I wonder what makes them tick.'"
Wednesday, March 6, 2019
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
The "how" of being a Christian
Monday, February 4, 2019
Love, Joy, Sin
"Christians are obligated to love one another...even if they're married. Love does not create marriage, but marriage creates loves." Stanley Hauerwas.
"If you are a Christian you should be joyful in a way that other people find attractive. It should make people wonder, 'Gee, what makes them tick?'" Stanley Hauerwas.
"The idea that you need to be convinced you're a sinner in order to come to salvation is getting it backwards. By being saved in Christ you then are able to have some information as to what it means to be a sinner. That's the school of discipleship. The tents (modern evangelism) made sins too interesting. And it's exactly that Christians are saved from the narcissistic fascination with our sins." Stanley Hauerwas.
Saturday, January 26, 2019
Monday, January 7, 2019
We Have To Follow Our Dreams
"I'm thinking of my mom who really sublimated herself to my father her whole life. And in her 80s she said to me, 'I feel I haven't accomplished anything.' And it was so not right. What I've learned through this whole experience is that women, we're nurturers. That's what's expected of us. We have our children; we have our husbands, if we are lucky enough; and our partners, whoever. But we have to find personal fulfillment. We have to follow our dreams. We have to say 'I can do that, and I should be allowed to do that.'"