Skip to content

Posts from the ‘Forgiveness’ Category

Jun 14

1 Comment

Wednesday Miscellany

Back in May, I went to the opening night of U2’s 30th Anniversary Joshua Tree Tour. I have, consequently, been listening to what I think is one of the greatest albums ever made (although maybe only U2’s second best) off and on ever since. I listen to it in the car on the way to work, in the headphones while I’m writing, and while sitting with friends on the patio on warm late spring evenings. It’s crazy how an album I’ve been listening to off and on for thirty years doesn’t seem to get old.

A few nights ago, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” came through the little Bluetooth speaker on the patio table. As the song approached its lyrical and musical climax, the familiar words soared through the spring air:

I believe in the Kingdom Come

Then all the colours will bleed into one

Read more

May 29

14 Comments

On Admiration

I was in Germany last week visiting friends and celebrating my brother’s completion of his PhD. I consequently spent a lot of time on trains and planes and had ample time for looking out of windows and thinking big thoughts. Among the things that occurred to me as I whizzed through the springtime Bavarian countryside is that you can tell a lot about someone by what or who or how they admire. The shape of our admiration speaks volumes. And of course it (almost) goes without saying that we tend to admire badly. I do, at any rate. Read more

Feb 21

5 Comments

“Christ Did Not Die for the Good and Beautiful”

I finally got a chance to see Silence over the weekend. The film arrived late in our town, and even then only in the second-run theatre (I imagine its themes were probably deemed “too religious,” and therefore not profitable enough for mass consumption). The film is Martin Scorcese’s long-awaited adaptation of Shūsaku Endō’s 1966 novel of the same name, and is set in the context of the 17th century persecution of Japanese Christians by the Inquisitor Inoue. It is a masterfully made film based on a beautifully written novel that asks hard questions about the nature of martyrdom and faith and fidelity and suffering, and, of course, about the silence of God.  Read more

Feb 14

8 Comments

On Sticking to the Script

In order to commemorate Valentines Day—a holiday I hold in only slightly higher esteem than World Turtle Day (May 23, apparently—mark your calendars)—I read a thoroughly depressing article about love and relationships. Naturally. The article was called “Unraveling Love Stories” and it reads as something like an apologia for the mid-life crisis and all the desperate and destructive flailings that it spawns. Read more

Nov 21

3 Comments

They Don’t Know What They Are Doing

I often spend Monday mornings ruminating on the sermon I didn’t preach on Sunday. There are, of course, only so many things that can be said, only so many avenues to explore in a given text or texts in 15-20 minutes. There are usually many ideas and/or questions that never make it past the Saturday evening cutting floor. Sometimes it was because I didn’t have the courage to tackle them in public. Sometimes they weren’t relevant to the point I was trying to make. Sometimes there just wasn’t the time. Sometimes it’s all of the above. Read more

Jun 22

Forgive Us Our Sins

The prayer book I use for Ordinary Time operates on a four-week cycle of prayers, beginning with a daily movement through the sentences of the Lord’s Prayer—the words given by Jesus in response to a request as simple as it was (and is) drenched in desperate need: “Teach us to pray.” This morning’s sentence was a very timely one: Forgive us our sins. Timely because, well, I can’t really think of a time when I don’t need to forgive or to be forgiven.  Read more

Jun 8

30 Comments

Warning Signs

I was warned, this afternoon. Me and a few hundred others who had gathered for a funeral. Me and a few hundred others who sat, silently, grimly, in a cavernous and spare sanctuary while a stern man in a black suit stood in an elevated pulpit and admonished us with grave fingers wagging. I was warned that death was coming for me and unless I renounced the ways of the devil and repented of my worldly pride and attachments, that my fate would be a fiery and tortuous one. I was told that there was nothing good in me and that I could never stand before the righteous judge of the earth. I was told that God has his elect and we must never question God’s ways. I was warned to keep watch for the temptations of Satan because Satan likes to provoke criticisms and doubts during times of death. Read more

Feb 18

1 Comment

On Erring

To err is human, Alexander Pope famously said in his Essay on Criticism. Yes, it certainly is. And the more experience I have with this being human business, the more evidence I am afforded of this unpleasant truth. Read more

Dec 17

4 Comments

Remember Me

Sometimes, when I find it hard to pray, when faith, hope, and love are threatening to dry up, I zero in on a handful of desperate pleas from a handful of desperate people who come across Jesus in the gospels. A hated tax collector in the temple, for example. Have mercy on me, a sinner. A thoroughly befuddled Peter after Jesus had spoken strange words about “eating his flesh” and “drinking his blood.” Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. A leper on a hillside. If you are willing, you can make me clean. A blind beggar on the road to Jericho. I want to see. Read more

Dec 10

2 Comments

Real People Do Really Bad Things

The internet is a very interesting laboratory within which to observe the human animal. This is particularly true when bad things happen in our world. This is particularly true when it comes to really, really bad things—cataclysmic things that shake us to the core.  Like a series of coordinated attacks in the city of Paris on a pleasant fall evening or a murderous rampage at a California Christmas party. When these bad things happen, a familiar move is often made, particularly online. People flood on to social media and make statements like: Real ____ would never do that! Read more

Aug 24

5 Comments

“I Desire Mercy and Not Sacrifice”

Yesterday’s worship service at our church was based on the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery in John 8:2-11.  It’s one of my favourite passages in all of Scripture (I reflected on it recently here). It’s one of those texts where you feel like the main task of preaching is to simply say as little as possible by way of “explanation,” to simply get out of the way and let Mercy do its work.  The story is the sermon.  It is a concrete embodiment of Jesus’ words elsewhere in the gospels (borrowed from the prophet Hosea), “Go and learn what this means.  I desire mercy and not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13).

So, yesterday my words about the passage itself were relatively few.  I did, however, attempt something of a remix of the story as an invitation to the communion table later in the service.  A number of people have since asked about this, so I thought I would throw it up a lightly edited version of it here. Read more

Jun 25

14 Comments

Our Father

I’ve been thinking about fatherhood over the last few days. I suppose Father’s Day last weekend got me started, although the day itself was a fairly muted affair around these parts. Oh, it’s Father’s Day? Um, well, happy one of those, dad… Yawn. Which was mostly fine with me. I’ve never been a terribly enthusiastic participant in the dictates of the Hallmark calendar, anyway. Read more

Jun 16

19 Comments

An Open Pair of Arms

The headline grabbed me right off the bat: Alberta couple blindsided after adopted girls turn out to have fetal alcohol disorder. The story was heartbreaking in the way that only stories about wounds inflicted from close proximity can be. A couple took on two foster kids but one of them quickly proved to be quite a bit more than they could handle, There were repeated assaults of her sister, there were angry words and abuse, there were doors locked from the outside and alarm systems set up, there were desperate calls to social services.  There was the shrapnel of toxic rage flying around shredding everyone in the vicinity. Read more

Apr 10

11 Comments

“Some More Skilled Future Self”

Unlike animals that live in the moment and merely cope with the world (however smoothly), we are… drawn out of our present selves toward some more skilled future self that we emulate…. [W]e are never fully at home in the world. We are always “on our way.” Or perhaps we should say that this state of being on our way to somewhere else is our peculiar human way of being here in the world.

— Matthew Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head

 Most therapists will say that a key to finding any kind of viable and lasting happiness in the world requires coming to peace with who you are. Not some future self that you wish you could be, not the person that you imagine yourself to be in your best moments, not the person that you will undoubtedly be 2, 5, 10 years from now. No, the person staring back at you in the mirror. Unless you can believe that you are enough as you are—that you matter and have value even prior to all of the well-intentioned character modifications that inevitably loom over the next ridge of your life—you will never be at peace. Your striving will always be borne out of restlessness and dissatisfaction, rather than a desire for goodness. Read more

Apr 3

3 Comments

O Lamb of God, Forgive Thy Butchers.

And so, this is the day.

The day when the angry mob baying for blood gets their way, the day when they trade the Messiah sent to them for the Messiah they wanted, welcoming the insurrectionist Barabbas back from the dead, and sending the Lamb of God off to slaughter.   Read more

Mar 5

5 Comments

“A Love That Never Shudders at the State We’re In”

Of all the stories that Jesus tells, there are few that break and remake us, that lay our souls bare, that fire our hearts us with the hope of mercy like the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32).  It is a story for broken sons and weary daughters, for love-sick fathers and grumbling exemplars of grim-faced duty.  It is a story that describes the homecoming we all, I suspect, hunger for, even when we are only dimly aware of it.  It is the story of what God looks like and how God loves, no matter what we look like, no matter how poorly we love. Read more

Feb 27

5 Comments

A Soul and a Bad Bargain

Have you ever had the experience while reading of one sentence almost literally leaping off the page? Amidst all the little black marks on white pages arranged in neat little rows, one collection of markings sets itself apart from the herd, towering above the others, reaching out, grabbing you by the throat, forcing you to reckon with it. Have you ever observed as all the other words on the page, the chapter, the book, recede into the background, as this one sentence burrows into your brain. Have you ever noticed that not all words are created equal. That some matter more, are bigger, deeper, more terrifying than others. That some words drag us into the ring and force us to face foes we would prefer to ignore. That we have even, perhaps, spent long years determinedly ignoring. Read more

Sep 30

20 Comments

Three Girls (And an Orangey-Brown Dress)

Among the gleanings of my morning tour through Facebook land was the discovery that Tuesday, September 30 has been designated “Orange Shirt Day” by the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) here in Canada. Intrigued, I did a bit of snooping around and found the following explanation for the origin of the idea in an article at NationTalk:

Orange Shirt Day is an outcome of the St. Joseph Mission Residential School Commemoration Project and Reunion events that took place in Williams Lake, BC in May 2013.  It stems from a story told by former residential school student, Phyllis Webstad, who had her new orange shirt, bought by her grandmother, taken from her as a six-year old girl.  She spoke powerfully of how it seemed to her that nobody cared and, in this personal way, it speaks to the many harms experienced by children in the residential schools.

I have no orange shirt, alas, but the initiative has me thinking of a few recent experiences, and about three girls. Read more

« Older Entries