Jan 14
Yesterday was one of those happy days when a little brown box full of books shows up on my doorstep, and I had just enough time to grab one of them as I ran out the door with my daughter to swimming lessons. Twenty minutes later, after collapsing poolside nearing the end of what felt like a long day, I read these words that open William Willimon’s Why Jesus?: Read more
Jan 5
While I’m still in the reflection mode occasioned by a new year and a trip through my journals, I’ve been thumbing through a few of the books that I was reading and reflecting upon in my younger years. Lesslie Newbigin was a writer and a thinker that was immensely helpful to me as I was beginning to negotiate such themes as the uniqueness of Christianity, the nature and limits of reason and faith, and the shape of discipleship. Newbigin’s books were a gift then, and they remain so today. Read more
So Advent has come and gone and with it, the liturgical theme of “waiting” for God. Every year, we rehearse the story, we light the candles, we read the Scriptures, and we wait for the Christ child. Every year, we are told, Jesus comes to us anew. Every year, our waiting ends on Christmas day only to begin again next year. Waiting, it sometimes seems, is endless. Read more
On my walk home from work yesterday, I listened to part of a lecture on the nature of science. The speaker was very matter-of-factly talking about matters of cosmology, describing the forces that contribute to the ongoing operations of the cosmos, the relationship between the sun and the moon and the earth, and the general picture of how life is produced and sustained on this big chunk of rock rotating “as on a spit” around a fiery ball. Throughout the portion I listened to on my walk, the speaker’s voice barely changed in its tone. You could never have guessed that he was speaking about some of the most profound mysteries the human mind has ever approached. He could have been reading the instruction manual on how to clean my barbecue, for all his voice gave away. Read more
This week I have the happy task of preparing a sermon on the very seasonally appropriate theme of hope. “Hope” is one of those words that is overused, abused, and reduced to marketing slogans or political campaigning, but which is nonetheless a vitally important word to retain. In my reading, I continue to make my through Miroslav Volf’s Against the Tide and was intrigued to come across his distinction between optimism and hope. Optimism, according to Volf, is based on “extrapolative cause and effect thinking” whereby we “draw conclusions about the future on the basis of experience with the past and the present.” Hope, on the other hand, is based not on situation-dependent possibilities or predictive accuracy, but on the character and trustworthiness of God. Read more
I spent a chunk of my day off yesterday in a dingy little tire shop waiting for winter tires with hordes of other Vancouver Islanders caught unprepared for our recent blast of winter. I passed the time, in part, by finishing off Douglas Coupland’s Player One: What is to Become of Us, a novel/lecture series characterized by Coupland’s customary mixture of bleakness, humour, and though-provoking storytelling around questions about the meaning of life and what it means to be human. Read more
Nov 19
Last Sunday, there was a natural gas explosion which killed 7 people at a resort a few kilometres from the one we were staying at in Mexico. Two of the victims were from Mexico, five were from Canada. Among the dead was a nine year-old boy and two people who had been married to their spouses for only a matter of days. In the midst of the manufactured paradises of Mexico, the tragedy, chaos, and pain of life rears its ugly and terribly familiar head. Once again, the illusion of a morally-ordered universe is laid bare. While my friends and I were thanking God for the gifts of friendship, leisure, and natural beauty, lives were being ripped apart just down the beach. Read more
Nov 16
Well, I just returned from a wonderful week away and am spending a good chunk of today slowly wading through a very clogged in-box! One of the more humourous discoveries I have made thus far in my wading is this cartoon sent by a friend last week.
As is so often the case, it is funny because it is true… Read more
Nov 3
This morning our provincial conference of MB churches has gathered in Surrey, BC to engage in conversation about how we understand the doctrine of the atonement. I’m unable to be there in person, but I’ve got one eye on the life feed of the presentations this morning. My other eye is on Miroslav Volf’s Against the Tide—in particular, an essay called “You Can’t Deal With God.” After telling the familiar story (told in the play/film Amadeus) of Antonio Salieri’s attempt to bargain fame out of God, Volf concludes with this affirmation of the character and work of God: Read more
Oct 29
The only thing better than coming home from a brief out of town conference to the hugs and giggles of children and the embrace of my wife, is to also have a little brown cardboard package full of new books to leaf through! Miroslav Volf is a theologian I have long admired, and based on the cursory glance I have given it tonight, his collection of essays called Against the Tide promises to be a wonderful read. Here’s an arresting paragraph from the introduction: Read more
Perhaps it’s some kind of strange back-to-school induced nostalgia, but today I’m thinking about parenthood and family and just how it is that my little twins have somehow become these big grade four creatures that no longer need (or want, sometimes) their hands held, or to be walked to school, or shepherded to their various activities, or any of the other things that have just been a part of life for what seems like forever. They’re growing up, I suppose, as kids are prone to do. It’s an interesting journey, this business of raising children. Read more
I haven’t read the book or seen the movie (and plan on neither), but I’ve heard enough about both to be cynical. And to find this article by the Vancouver Sun‘s Pete McMartin, recounting his trip to see Eat Pray Love, absolutely hilarious in a depressing, if-only-this-wasn’t-so-true sort of way. I just about sprayed coffee all over my computer screen after reading the title alone (“Bleat, Flay, Loathe … One Man’s Search for God on a Cineplex Screen”). Read more
Some more wonderfully insightful stuff from Marilyn Chandler McEntyre’s Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies. This passage concludes a discussion of the highly politicized history of translating the Bible into English: Read more
I just finished reading Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre’s delightful plea for us to renew our commitment to steward the gift of language as the treasure it is. She is not the first to lament the decline of those who truly understand and appreciate the importance of words (a problem compounded in our text-crazy, Facebooked, Twittered world), but her book communicates these points with the grace and beauty you would expect from someone attempting to lure readers back into the simple truth of how words can move us. Read more
Well, I’ve spent the last three or so days driving to Alberta and back and consequently have had little time for blogging. I have, however, managed to squeeze a bit of reading in here and there on my travels, and as always the odd quote seems to leap off the page and lodge itself in my brain. Here’s an intriguing one from Samir Selmanovic’s confused, confusing, and mostly forgettable foray into religious pluralism but not really religious pluralism called It’s Really All About God:
Faith is an exercise in having high expectations of God.
Thoughts?
I am in the middle of preparing a sermon on Psalm 125 for this Sunday. Psalm 125 is part of the Psalms of Ascent, songs that the Israelites would sing on their yearly pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the holy festivals. It is a psalm that celebrates the God who “surrounds” his people, the God in whom security and goodness are found. Just as the mountains wrap around the city of Jerusalem, giving it security and strength, so the Lord is all around his people. It is a Psalm of confidence, security, and hope. Read more
Last night at our young adults group we talked about, among other things, the frequently encountered view that Christianity is a strange relic of the past, that has nothing useful to say to us in the present, no normative force or existential/moral relevance in a world that has “grown up.” It is a well-rehearsed and often repeated story: once upon a time, primitive people thought there was objective meaning in the cosmos, we now know this to be false, and our only course of action is to salvage what personal meaning we can from the scrap heap of a random and chaotic universe. Read more
Jun 11
I’ve spent a bit of time ferrying back and forth to the mainland this week which has given me the chance to finally dive into Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies. This is my first exposure to Lamott, but those who have read her will know that she comes up with some fairly memorable (and sometimes deliciously irreverent!) lines. I came across this one sometime around 1:00 am on the ferry last night:
Grace… is unearned love—the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It’s the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you. Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.
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Rumblings 