“When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.”
– Winston Churchill
Communication
We need to be careful of the desire to be clever in our communication. Twitter and Facebook have made this ubiquitous but we should be careful because it often shuts down actual thoughtful communication. A clever response can sometimes be helpful, but also it can shut down the possibility of extended discussion of complex issues.
Matt Redmond
Truth of the Gospel
I’m going to tell you now what I believe may be the deepest, perhaps the hardest (and as a consequence, most neglected) truth of the gospel. We tend to believe our love for others originates from God’s love for us, and it does—just not how we think. Our love for others will never exceed our love for ourselves and our love for ourselves will never exceed our awareness and experience of God’s love for us. No one knew this better than Jesus, who put , this way: “And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matt. 22:39).
J D Walt
Mattering
…we want our lives to be “high stakes.” We want our actions to have weight, import, and significance. But it’s hard to achieve this sense of “mattering” through self-talk. And yet, self-talk is the only tool our therapeutic culture gives us. Just stare into the mirror and try to talk your way into significance. Convince yourself that you matter.
Richard Beck
Lament
He often wrote about how difficult lament was, pointing out that we only learn to lament when the pain allows no other option. “Lament has been a journey for me,” he wrote, “a journey into grace, repentance, and wholeness.” On another occasion, my friend wrote, “If we don’t understand lament, we will never understand celebration.”
Lament without anger isn’t lament; it’s just whining. Honest anger is healthy and healing. Anger is a significant element in lament and one of the reasons for the freedom that follows it.
Steve Brown
https://www.keylife.org/articles/jesus-died-to-make-us-nice-right-a-brief-for-anger/
Implications from Leviticus
God’s Otherness is absolutely necessary for a doctrine of grace. Grace is a gift, a gift that comes to us from the Outside, as a divine interruption. Grace is grace because is crosses over a vast unbridgeable abyss, a chasm so great we cannot cross it from our side. It is the Otherness of God that makes grace an experience of God’s free, unprompted, unilateral movement of love toward us.
Richard Beck
Evil people
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”
Scapegoating
Human nature, when it is seeking power, wants either to play the victim or to create victims of others. In fact, the second follows from the first. Once we start feeling sorry for ourselves, we will soon find someone else to blame, accuse or attack—and with impunity! It settles the dust quickly, and it takes away any immediate shame, guilt, or anxiety. In other words, it works—at least for a while.
Richard Rohr
View from the front porch.
Our neighborhood is very transitional. Numerous rental properties assure ongoing change. New pedestrians show up regularly. We are sad to lose Mary, our long-time friend and neighbor who moved last week. Another neighbor has been placed in a nursing home and his home across the street will be sold soon. We are looking forward to getting to know new neighbors. It is amazing how you can get to know your neighbors by sitting on the front porch.
LISTEN for the WEEK
My introduction to Drew Holcomb. It won’t disappoint.
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