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Posts from the ‘Jesus’ Category

Mar 13

7 Comments

“We Are Asking God to be God”

Each week at our Sunday services, before the children are dismissed, we take time to recite the Lord’s Prayer together. As with anything that is done repeatedly over long periods of time, if we are inattentive it can come to seem mechanical and tedious. Rather than being a vehicle for shaping and inspring us as Christ’s followers, it can come to seem like little more than part of the furniture. Frederick Buechner reminds us why we ought not to allow this to happen: Read more

Mar 9

5 Comments

I Will Wait

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent, the day when ashes are placed on foreheads, and the words “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” are proclaimed. For whatever reason, throughout my life, I have rarely needed this reminder. Read more

Mar 5

16 Comments

People of Joy

Around here, the first Sunday of each month is when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. As is always the case, tomorrow’s service will take place in the context of real lives affected by loss, uncertainty, pain, and misfortune. But we will be reminded again tomorrow that the brokenness of our lives and our world is never the whole story. In my preparatory reading this week, I came across this passage from Gordon Smith’s A Holy Meal that reminds us that in the midst, the Eucharist establishes us as people of joy: Read more

Feb 28

26 Comments

Fear Wins?

Today was an odd day in the blogosphere. It seemed like every third post that came through the reader had something to say, or linked to someone else who had something to say, about Rob Bell’s forthcoming book Love Wins, and whether or not Bell has placed himself beyond the pale by declaring himself to be a universalist (you can start here, if you like, and follow the link trails). Like nearly everyone else offering commentary on this book, I have not read it. The main reason for this is because the book hasn’t been released yet, which makes the hysteria around what it might say even more grimly amusing. It’s interesting to observe how threatening some people find even the possibility that Bell might not believe in a very specific conception of hell. Read more

Feb 25

17 Comments

Evil Will Have Nothing to Say

Two of my projects this week have been working on an article on suffering and the sovereignty of God, and preparing a class for this Sunday on the varieties of approaches to the problem of evil. Consequently, I’ve been raiding the bookshelf over the last few weeks in order to reacquaint myself with some of the authors and ideas that I leaned on more heavily during my university and grad school days. Read more

Jan 31

51 Comments

Bonhoeffer: Book Review

Four years ago, as I was nearing the completion of my coursework at Regent College, I somewhat naively signed up for a seminar on the life and thought of German pastor/theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. My only exposure to him to that point had been his famous book The Cost of Discipleship (a book whose title in German, I would soon discover was simply Nachfolge, or Discipleship. The change has been made in Augsburg Fortress’s republishing of the definitive collection of Bonhoeffer’s works). I had read this book in my early twenties, but my recollection of its themes was unimpressive, to put it mildly. Read more

Jan 23

6 Comments

Rich Toward God

Our text for the sermon in church this morning was Luke 12:13-21 (“The Parable of the Rich Fool”). One of the verses in this passage has me thinking this evening. In verse 21, after condemning as folly a life of hoarding possessions, Jesus offers a typically elusive phrase: “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.” So what does it mean to be “rich toward God?” Read more

Jan 18

10 Comments

The God We Have

I am in the midst of a fairly busy stretch of sermon preparation, worship scheduling, article writing, class planning, etc, etc, not to mention the ordinary demands of life with a young family, so apologies for the lack of substantive and/or original posting around here over the last little while. I hope to rectify this deficiency shortly, but in the meantime, here’s another arresting quote from William Willimon’s Why Jesus?: Read more

Jan 14

4 Comments

Why Jesus?

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

15 Comments

A Personal Response

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

Jan 2

6 Comments

A Subtle Mercy

Yesterday was a quiet day at home and my wife was doing some sorting and cleaning around the house.  Around mid-afternoon, she emerged from one room with a large stack of papers and presented them to me with a little smile on her face.  I looked at the first page on the stack and knew why she was smiling.  The pile of paper was a prayer journal that I had kept during my mid twenties.  During this apparently pious (and prolific!) period of my life, I journaled nearly every day, filling a number of thick notebooks with my religious musings, longings, entreaties, and expressions of thanks. Read more

Dec 24

2 Comments

Hope Goes On

I came across this image today and couldn’t resist posting it.

There are probably a number of ways of interpreting it on this Christmas Eve, 2010. Does it portray the decreasing relevance of Christmas in a mostly secular culture? The slow demise of the hope and faith of the season into a sea of nihilistic postmodern despair? The long overdue demise of  the confused mixture of pagan and Christian imagery so prominent in our culture this time of year? Some combination of the above? Read more

Dec 18

38 Comments

Christmas Confusion

I couldn’t help but chuckle at the conclusion of tonight’s edition of Coach’s Corner on CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada. Cherry’s shtick was his usual combination of lightly-informed, opinionated bravado and Canadian hockey machismo, but as is increasingly often the case, it was also the opportunity for him to step up his soap box. Read more

Dec 17

1 Comment

The Risk of Birth

This poem came through the inbox today and I thought it was too good not to share. In a season where the words that fill our days are so often kitschy and sales-pitchy, it is refreshing to come across better ones—words that are simple, beautiful, and true. Read more

Dec 14

17 Comments

Confession

A post by Andrew Stephens-Rennie over at Empire Remixed has got me thinking about confession.  My sense is that confession is seen as something of a dirty word in our culture, conjuring up all kinds of unpleasant images of nosy priests and slavish religious rituals meant to assuage unnecessary guilt.  Confession isn’t a popular concept in a self-obsessed culture suspicious of religious power and those who wield it and where we seem to almost instinctively think of ourselves as victims of the myriad forces that act upon us rather than active and willful contributors to the brokenness of our world. Read more

Dec 9

15 Comments

Pockets

Once a month or so, a few of us head over to the local Presbyterian church to help out with their weekly community lunch. Every week, this church opens its doors to the community for soup, sandwiches, conversation, or just a chance to get out of the rain. The church is located right beside a high school, so they get a lot of high school students, but they also get a small contingent of folks who don’t have a whole lot and could use a hot meal. Read more

Nov 16

12 Comments

Fragile Truth

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

2 Comments

God is a Giver

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

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