Monday, September 26, 2005

Job: Which god is God?

Yesterday I participated in a two man dramatic reading from Job 1. I read excerpts from the scriptural text, while the other actor played the role of internal cynic. The ultimate problem presented was the question of how a god of love could hit Job up with such catastrophe, or even allow it. Interestingly, while that's the problem we moderns tend to see with catastrophe, it was not the problem that Job's friends presented.

Job's friends saw god as the one who blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked. The catastrophe that fell upon Job was not a problem in and of itself. Rather it was just the normal result of wickedness -- the fact that Job gave no appearance whatsoever of having shifted in any of his behaviours or attitudes from righteous to wicked, notwithstanding. If anything, Job's response to the catastrophes gave ample evidence of his continued righteousness -- or it would have to anyone except those whose god was simply about rewarding the good and punishing the bad.

I find it curious that Job, who was able to continue to trust in God throughout catastrophic loss, ends up arguing against the same simple god that his friends present. It is that god that Job challenges to come and explain himself, to give an account of just where it is that Job has so grievously sinned so as to deserve such judgement.

But the friend's god doesn't show up to answer Job's challenge. Instead the true God shows up, and Job's arguments cease. God never gives Job the answers to the challenges he posed to that lesser god. Rather He gives Job a real encounter with the true God, and that is more than enough for Job.

Then Job replied to the LORD: "I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted. You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?' Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. "You said, 'Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.' My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes." After the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, "I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has." Job 42:1-8 NIV

Job's friends accused him of gross sin against a god that was far smaller than the true God who showed up to vindicate Job. Job's compaint against that small god of his friends was valid -- it just wasn't relevant when faced with the true God.

I wonder if today the small god of Job's friends hasn't shifted to an equally simplistic idea of a god who loves everyone and blesses everyone. IF so, it is no wonder the world complains that the catastophes we experience, whether natural like hurricanes Rita and Katrina or the Boxing day tsunami, or manmade like 9/11 or the Rwandan genocide, demand an answer from such a god -- an answer that cannot be given. The ultimate answer lies not in better arguments for or against the existence of such a god. The ultimate answer lies in what Job received: a real encounter with the true God, who is so much greater than any simplistic moralistic god, that the whole issue becomes irrelevant.

I hope that's what people experienced yesterday, to some measure at least. SDG

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Introducing email subscription

Shortly after I started this blog, one of my first readers asked if it were possible to get an email each time I posted. I looked at the tools available within Blogger, but couldn't find anything that really worked. Since then I've been on the lookout for some way to do this, and tried a couple options out, but nothing really delivered what I thought was the right solution.

Now, however, I'm pleased to offer an email subscription service that works the way I'd want to be updated, powered by FeedBlitz. You can choose to get the full post delivered your email inbox, or just a summary version containing the first 600 characters or so -- your choice.

At the top right of my main page you'll see a "Subscriptions" section that looks like this:

  Enter your email address
  
    Full Post Updates
    Summaries Only
  
   Powered by FeedBlitz

Just fill in your email address, choose the type of subscription you want, and press the button. You'll get an email requesting that you validate the subscription request, and providing a randomized password (you can change it later) for your account. Click on the validation link in the email and you're all set.

will send out one email each night advising you of all the new items posted to all the sites you've subscribed to. Depending on the feed provided by the site, most will be fully formatted copies of the original post. You can track updates to any site with an RSS or ATOM feed, whether the site explicitly offers an email subscription service or not. Even if the site has no discoverable feed, you'll still be alerted that something has changed on the site. Just point FeedBlitz to the URL of the site (or the feed, if you know it), and away you go. Each email will give you the option of un-subscribing from each individual site, or from all FeedBlitz subscriptions at once.

Try it out. I'm using it myself to monitor a number of sites I'd usually just browse.

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Sunday, September 25, 2005

Blogging or Tinkering?

It seems as though the last little while I've spent a lot more time tinkering with this blog than actually blogging. The tinkering is good, in at least a couple senses: it makes the blog appearance and behaviour better for both me and you (at least I think so), and I've learned a lot through the tinkering and I love learning. It just seems to take ever so much longer than I think it will.

So somehow things don't quite feel right. I didn't really start blogging in order to learn html, css, javascript, etc. I started because I felt the need to create a place where all those internal reflections about God and God's direction and my responses could be recorded -- for my own benefit in looking back over the way God has dealt with me -- and shared for the benefit of the larger church, or at least those who might take an interest in these rambling thoughts.

The tinkering started off because I needed to allow for longer posts to be handled in a way that didn't clutter up the main page, yet gave those posts as much space as possible on the post page, so they could be read more easily. That took me into places I didn't at first think I'd ever want to go.

Then I spotted someone who had a "subscribe by email" feature and remembered being asked by a reader if that was possible. I tried that service to subscribe to a few blogs and it looked promising. But it failed miserably on my own blog. That led me deeper into the realm of feeds and feed management. After trying out another email subscription service, I discovered feedblitz as a newly promoted feature through feedburner. It's a great service, but that's another post.

Now that the email subscription service is implemented, maybe I can quit tinkering and get back to blogging. Just as soon as I undo those test email subscriptions I no longer need, and clean up that footer on the individual post page. Surely figuring out how to control the placement of images shouldn'take that long, should it? Ahhh well, will life ever work out quite the way we plan??

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Monday, September 19, 2005

Concerning the Breath Prayer

This past Saturday my wife and I spent time with a number of friends on a spiritual formation retreat. The so-called "breath prayer" was one of the exercises, and called for a two hour period of silence, repeating a short prayer continuously. This was, of course, taken from ancient tradition involving the Jesus prayer -- "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner" -- and the use made of this prayer by the anonymous author of The Way of the Pilgrim, among others.

For me, this was a wonderfully refreshing time -- for many others it was simply unrealistic and frustrating. Reflecting on the exercise afterward, I think that the biggest problem was that the people were just thrown into the exercise without being given the resources needed to really enter into it properly. This post is intended to document some of my experience with this sort of prayer, in the hopes that it would be useful to others.

Why this form of prayer?

While this form of prayer does have some places of contact with Brother Lawrence and his Practice of the Presence of God, it is much directly related to an attempt to take Paul's admonition to "pray with ceasing" seriously and literally. In The Way of the Pilgrim, the pilgrim sought instruction on how he could obey this command, and eventually received the suggestion that he pray the Jesus prayer, tying it to the rhythm of his breathing. Over many years, the pilgrim found that this Jesus prayer sank deeper and deeper into his heart and soul, taking on a life of its own. This prayer was there, undergirding everything he did, everything he said, everything he thought, just like his breathing or his heart beat. And God did indeed show mercy to the pilgrim by transforming him much more fully into the image of Jesus Christ, slowly and surely, through the constant presence of that prayer.

In essence then, the practicing object of this form of prayer is not the conscious mind, but the subconscious, the heart, the soul. The conscious mind is just the doorway to the deep places where this prayer really is intended to live.

A More Contemporary Metaphor

The name "breath prayer" refers to the pilgrim's practice of tying the prayer to the rhythm of his breathing. I expect that most contemporary North Americans are like me -- not really aware of our breathing, unless we're short of breath. For us, trying to tie prayer to breathing is made more difficult by first having to become aware of our breathing. And so it becomes more of a breathing exercise than a prayer exercise, or an exercise in long term spiritual formation.

For me, it is more helpful to think of this prayer as being analogous to that song you just can't get out of your head. But instead of trying to stop the song, this time we want to perpetuate a particular song -- the song that represents the deepest prayer of our heart, the song that we hope to pray 24/7/365 for the rest of our lives.

Thoughts on Picking a Prayer Song

Rhythm

It's probably the catchy rhythm that makes songs stick in your head, but too catchy a rhythm is probably also what makes them irritating. We want something that will stick for a lifetime, hold its own when all the other sounds and rhythms of life are all around, be present enough to inform and transform our lives, but not so present as to get in the way of the life we do need and want to live.

For me, this means a rhythm that is a bit slower than breathing, and that also contains a quiet gap between phrases -- a gap where life can go on while I am learning.

A Simple Structure

In order for the prayer song to be driven deep into our souls, it needs to have a simple structure. If it is too complicated, we will lose our place, mix up the stanzas, or just give up trying to keep it all straight. However, if it is too simple, or too flat, it will become boring long before we are able to push it down deep. Some of the examples given this weekend were probably not the best in that they were too simple, too flat.

The ideal prayer song probably has a structure involving maybe 3-5 lines, with some noticeable repetition -- either of words, or thoughts, or sounds. Consequently, the prayer:

Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy
on me.

has more staying power for me than the original:

Lord Jesus Christ,
Son of God,
have mercy on me,
the sinner.

Tied to the Heart's Deep Cry

The core idea of the prayer song really has to resonate with the deep cry of the heart, otherwise it won't last. This means that the text will have to be far more individualized in a 21st century North American culture than ever it had to be in the past. However, it dare not be faddish nor tied too closely to one stage of life only. It needs to be a prayer that one will always need to pray, no matter how far along the journey toward holiness one progresses. Thus, we will always need mercy, we will always need our hearts changed more toward the heart of God, we will always the indwelling comfort of the Holy Spirit. These themes are probably good choices, but do not necessarily exhaust the things for which we will always need to pray.

Room to Improvise

This last suggestion may be something that relates more to my particular idiosyncrasies, but I find that anything I am going to repeat over a long time needs some room to improvise, some room in which to express the variations on the theme that strike me now as being particularly relevant, poignant, or needful.

So far, this improvisation has taken two main forms for me: (a) the creation of additional "stanzas" that fit the same rhythmic pattern but vary some of the lines to express a slightly different perspective on the same general prayer, and (b) the insertion of a different prayer song at points, to create a sort of medley. The latter allows one to supplement a contemporary text or rhythm with a more ancient one. Perhaps also in time, the song can evolve in something like the way whale songs evolve, both remaining the same over long periods of time, yet constantly changing to reflect the particular emphasis that seems most needful right now.

How to Start

I really think that assigning two hours as a starting "sink or swim" exercise was not the wisest choice. A better way to start would have been:

  • Make the objective of the exercise clearer. This is a long term practice that will show its fruit over many years. Don't expect it to produce dramatic results at first -- but don't be closed to discovering new things about prayer even in this exercise.
  • Have everyone practice a common example prayer for 2-5 minutes, just to get a feel for how the repetition and rhythm work.
  • Talk about the suggestions I've made above for picking something that will work for you.
  • Give some examples of possible song prayers that might be tried. As I noted before, there were many examples, but they were too similar, too simple, and too flat.
  • Have everyone pick a something they want to try, and practice it in the classroom for about 5 minutes.
  • Let people go off on their own for maybe 30-45 minutes to try this out. This would mean that the entire exercise, including instruction and initial practice would be about one hour.
  • Offer to stay around to provide additional guidance, clarification, assistance to those who need something explained further.

Don't Forget

The object of this sort of prayer is not to replace everything else in your mind. You will have other thoughts come to mind while you are praying this way. Do try to make sure the song prayer continues, but don't try to force out everything else. Rather let those other thoughts form part of the prayer that happens in those quiet spaces you left in the rhythm of your prayer song. The things you see, the things you notice, the thoughts that come to mind might just be part of the way God is beginning to answer your prayer right off the bat.

Eventually, if you decide to pursue this form of prayer as an ongoing discipline, all of life will happen while the prayer continues. So it can't hurt to let some of life join in even as you begin.

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Sunday, September 18, 2005

Invited into Perfect Worship

This morning's service was centered on the idea of worship, which was defined for the message as that which gives God pleasure. Now this is a bit different definition than I'm used to, but I think it works, particularly if we pick up on some of John Piper's ideas. God primarily takes pleasure in His own glory, and "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." John Piper. God takes pleasure in seeing His children delight themselves in that which is the very best, which is, of course, God Himself. When we delight ourselves in something, our very delight ascribes worth to that which we delight in. And ascribing worth to a thing is the original meaning of the English word worship

What was most particularly thought provoking was the text on the closing slide, which indicated that there is only one person who truly pleases God, namely Jesus Christ. It is Jesus Christ alone who truly pleases God, who truly obeys God, who truly in word and deed ascribes to God the true worth of God. In effect, it is Jesus Christ alone who truly worships.

But what is amazing is that God imputes to us the right-ness of Jesus Christ. Meaning that we are invited into the true and perfect worship of God, so that God delights in us because of our incorporation into Jesus Christ. Just as we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Holy Spirit Himself prays on our behalf, so too we do not know how to worship as we ought, but the Son Himself worships on our behalf. In this way God receives the proper ascription of worth that He deserves and in which He delights, regardless of how inept we are at worship.

And in the end, we are swept up into the eternal perfect community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit -- into the perfect heavenly worship and the perfect heavenly delight!!

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Friday, September 16, 2005

Does the World Know Jesus Better Than The Church Does?

Once again, Ryan Bolger's musings bite. What if the way the church lives is the biggest obstacle to our world's embracing Jesus Christ?

Click on the title to read Ryan's post

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A Brief Snapshot of the Emerging Church

Now here is something to think about. Ryan Bolger's brief snapshot of what characterizes an Emerging Church made me stop and ask: Do I believe that?

Much of what he says, I would affirm without question. But there is one area in particular where I wonder: do I believe in a "secular realm" distinct from the "spiritual" or "sacred" realm, or not? If so, does God's Kingdom embrace them both, or just the latter? Or does God's Kingdom overthrow the secular realm, so that if I am part of God's Kingdom then nothing remains secular? How would the way I live be different if I really believed that?

That's probably going to keep me wondering for some time.

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Wednesday, September 14, 2005

church planting in a chaordic age

Wow! Does God only build the church in solid, permanent structures, like trees, or does He maybe build the church sometimes more like mushrooms? Especially in this turbulent, transitional period between the former modern age and whatever will take its place. Or maybe like the turbulent, transitional age of the first couple centuries of the Church's existence? Click on the title to read the article from the Resonate blog that spurred these comments.

This is God reminding me again that the church is not just the institutional group He's placed me in, it's also a much more mysterious, transitory yet enduring, invisible network that pops up on His request to meet the needs of the moment. Sort of like mushrooms popping up to clean up a mess and provide some sort of nourishment to someone, before disappearing again. Like the way people who don't know me at all keep popping into my life at opportune moments to lift my faith when it flags.

If I can remember that, maybe the struggles with the fixed, instutitional manifestations of church will be easier to walk through.

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Impractical Christianity

Pragmatism runs rampant in American Christianity. If faith does not "work," it lacks value. We expect prompt and measurable results from knowing Christ. Concrete, visible changes in our lives show that the gospel is relevant and its transforming power is for real: bad habits broken, strained relationships restored, church attendance figures on the rise, giving that's ahead of last year's. If you can't graph positive results, what is the point?

So begins this refreshing article from Christianity Today. The subtitle gives a major sense of the tone of the article: Faith really begins to make a difference when it stops 'working.' (Click on the title for the full article.)

Today I began the day feeling extremely tired. Tired in part because of a sleep deficit, but also tired of struggling against the very philosophy described in that opening paragraph I quoted. Tired of having to be measured in every aspect of my life against goals and standards that I more and more believe have little to do with true humanness. Tired particularly of this measuring against de-humanizing goals and standards being such an integral part of the life of the church. Wanting to cry out with the psalmist "How long, o LORD, how long?"

In reading this article I could feel God pouring Himself into me once again through the faithful words of his people. "You are not alone", He says, "for I have hundreds of servants who have not bowed the knee to Baal". And more than that: "I am with you. When you walk through the fire you shall not be burned. When you walk through the flood waters, they shall not overcome you."

Truly You are a God who hears our cries and heals our diseases. And even though you will indeed measure us all against Your own Holiness, with You there is mercy and compassion, that You may be feared. Amen

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Saturday, September 10, 2005

Stewardship of Your Effluence

The last two Sundays, the messages have followed a theme of stewardship or management. The first was Stewardship of Your Influence and the second was Stewardship of Your Affluence. I laughingly thought that the third message in the series, were there to have been one, should be about the Stewardship of Your Effluence.

While this was originally a bit of a joke in my mind, it later struck me that it was indeed appropriate. It was Jesus himself who said:

Listen and understand. What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean', but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean'.    Matthew 15:11 NIV

I happen to believe that the language we use and immerse ourselves in has a powerful effect in shaping who we really are. It powerfully shapes the way we think, and the way we see the world. And through those aspects, it shapes the way we live and behave. Consequently, Christian discipleship must involve the management of our language -- the Stewardship of our Effluence as much as it involves the stewardship of our influence and our affluence.

Regrettably, the North American evangelical Christian sub-culture has a poor record in the management of its language forms. To be sure, it is very concerned about avoiding the language of the gutter -- that is those coarse words pertaining to bodily sexual and excretory functions and activities. But it easily takes up many other genteel language forms that really are bad news for a Christian perspective. This post discusses just a few of those forms.

The Language of the Market Place

The closer I look, the more obvious it becomes to me that the language of the market place pervades the Christian sub-culture. We've all heard people talking about going church shopping when they've moved into a new city or neighbourhood, or worse, when they've simply decided they need a new church. This should hardly be surprising when consumer spending is the engine that drives our North American economy, and the shopping malls are this centuries great temples.

The great Worship Wars that rage through so many churches are precisely an example of consumerist language shaping consumerist attitudes among Christians. We are used to having the market place provide us with a wealth of variety of products, so that we can purchase that specific item that is so uniquely us. So, of course we bring those attitudes with us into the church. It's no so much that we consciously buy into the idea that worship is about us rather than God, it's just that we are so surrounded by the language of the market place that we just assume that its messages are true wherever we go. So why shouldn't the church cater to my tastes and preferences just as the market place does? After all, isn't worship all about my feeling warm and intimate toward God?

But it is not just the consumer that brings market place language into the church and into the Christian sub-culture. All around us in the church and the sub-culture we hear the language of those who would provide us with all sorts of spiritual goods and services -- language we are intimately familiar with from the market place. Just look at the way many churches advertise in their communities. Look at the way "Christian" music and books and other paraphernalia is promoted in the Christian bookstores.

Perhaps the worst example of this market place language came into our home from an organization that specialized in providing materials devoted to the development of "Christian" leadership. The language used to describe this book or that program was really over the top. No superlative was spared in describing the wonderful effects that reading this book, or implementing that program, would have on your life or the life of your leadership team or your church -- even all of the above. Really, it made the sort of claims made in secular television commercials and print advertising seem downright subtle and understated. After browsing through the mailer, I often felt dirtied by the extreme, perhaps even obscene, language used in this "Christian" propaganda.

It's only recently that I began to understand exactly what about that over the top promotional material made me feel so tainted. The superlative worth that was so lavished on these books, tapes and programs was far beyond what any man-made item could ever deliver. That sort of ascription of worth was something that really belonged to God alone. "Ascription of worth" is the root underlying concept behind the English word worship. In effect, this supposedly Christian organization was using the language of worship, not in respect of the living God of all creation, but in respect of objects made by human hands.

The ancient Israelites thought that by keeping the form of their worship of God in His temple, that they could engage freely in the other cultic practices of the world around them even though they had been repeatedly and pointedly warned by God not to do so. In the end it took them into exile.

The Language of the Prayer Circle

From time to time one can read some fairly witty satire on the language used by many in the North American evangelical Christian sub-culture when addressing God in prayer.

Oh Father, we thank you, Father, for everything you have blessed us with, Father. And we remember, Father, how you suffered and died, Father, on the cross, Father, for our sins, Father. So we just want to praise you, Father, for saving us, Father, and making us your children, Father. And we just ask, Father, that you would continue, Father, to warm our hearts, Father, with your love, Father, and just bless us Father, as we worship you, Father, in your house, Father.

You can substitute the appelations Lord, Jesus, God or others for Father in the above, and get the same effect. The satire is witty because it is familiar. We've all heard prayers like this many times from many well meaning and well intentioned Christians who would never think of speaking in that horrid gutter talk. Why, that would be taking God's name in vain, and we would never do that. But really "vain" in that context just means "empty" or "meaningless". Can you think of anything that is more empty than a comma?

Why do we pray like this? Well, one reason is that that's the way we've learned to pray by listening to those who pray in public. We copy the language we here others use in our sub-culture. It sounds pious, so we copy it, uncritically.

Another reason is that when we pray in public we are self-conscious, and insert non-words like "um" (or "Father"?) because we're trying to figure out what to say next. That's natural. Many people are self-conscious when speaking in public. Unfortunately, what we need are examples of people who are less self-conscious and more God-conscious in their public prayer. Instead of holding up extemporaneous prayer as the quintessential mark of a God centered life, perhaps we would have been better to give greater honour to the thoughtfully planned set prayers that our more liturgical brethen utilize.

The Language of Business

The business world has done a good job of incorporating ideas, concepts and language that was once the domain of the church, adapting them to its own purposes, and deploying them promiscuously. Most notable is the ubiquitous use of terms like vision and mission that were once uniquely churchly terms. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and so it is indeed a compliment to the church that the world of business has found things of the church to be of benefit in its own pursuits. Ironically, the church has now returned the compliment, by re-importing the business world's use of these concepts, but without the critical analysis by which the business world transformed them.

It ought to go without saying that a "for-profit" business corporation exists for the single purpose of making profit for its shareholders. It employs all sorts of means and resources toward that end, often behaving in ways that may appear on the surface to be altruistic. But if a business corporation is well run, everything it does is, by definition, in pursuit of profit.

In the pursuit of profit, a business corporation uses people as resources, commodities, things. Even those corporations that boast that "People are our most important asset" still regard people as just that: assets.

God, on the other hand, regards people as persons having unique and inestimable value in their own right, and not simply by virtue of their usefulness in achieving some other end. Further, He expects -- nay, He commands -- that His church have the same regard for people as He does Himself. "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." And again: "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, that you love one another."

There is no great value in ignoring the organizational strengths that business management techniques can bring to an organization simply because they are from the world of business. However, when we incorporate the language and methods of the business world uncritically, we expose ourselves to language and methods that fundamentally view people as things to be used, rather than as persons to be loved. It is inevitable that we will be shaped by such language in a direction contrary to that of God's design for His church.

Our treatment of people ultimately reflects our treatment of God. Human beings are, after all, created to be the image of God. How we treat the image of a king or president is ultimately how we treat that king or president himself. If we make a practice of viewing people as resources to be used, then we will inevitably also view God as a resource to be used.

So what about me?

No doubt you will have detected a certain degree of irritation or antipathy toward the use of these forms of language within the Christian sub-culture. To be brutally honest, I often find that the place where I am most annoyed with others is precisely the place where I am most frustrated at my own inability to be the kind of person I would wish to be and believe that I ought to be.

So too it is here. I myself habitually use language in ways that profane the sacred and sacralize the profane. Desperately I need the support of a community that recognizes the struggle to be faithful in our common struggle together to be good stewards of the language forms that we use and which in turn shape us, for good or for ill. I recognize this need most in the realization of how incredibly easy it is for me to view people I encounter as means to an end or as barriers to my progress, and how hard it is to really enter into their joys and sorrows as persons valuable in their own right and for their own sakes -- as persons who are, truly, the image of God.

God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.

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Friday, September 02, 2005

Colouring our Worship

e~mergent kiwi has a couple posts on the use of colour as a way of expressing the emotional state congregants bring to worship. Click on the title for the post that got my attention, or here for another.

I particularly appreciated the prayer acknowledging that we come into worship with our current reality, the good and the bad, the busy and the slow, the major and the minor. It is just so much more authentic than the oft heard leave your life at the door, aren't we all just happy to be here stuff.

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Thursday, September 01, 2005

Forty Years in a Narrow Space

The newly created Resonate Journal includes this very thoughtful article in its premiere issue, dedicated to all things liminal.
Click on the title for the article.

In many ways, the last few years for me have been lived out in this confusing, narrow space between worlds -- finding the old familiar things strangely uncomfortable and foreign, while finding myself feeling "at home" among many formerly strange and foreign things. In effect, feeling like I've left home behind and am travelling to a new home, which I haven't arrived at yet, but which I seems to encounter small snatches of in the oddest places.

It is oddly comforting to know that this experience is not unique to me, but that others are / have been experiencing something similiar (even if totally different).

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