Nancy Sleeth is the co-founder and Managing Director of Blessed Earth and in her latest book Almost Amish she combines her years of insight in practical creation care into a must read for anyone who is trying to answer the question, “How can Christians live more faithfully day to day?” So why Almost Amish? As Nancy puts it she was talking about hanging her cloths on the line with the reasons and personal and spiritual benefits of simplicity. When in... Read more
by Dean Ohlman It’s unfortunate that a line from an old church song has created a view that somehow we need to escape the earth: “This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through.” The reality the song was referring to was that we should indeed not feel at home in the godless world system that surrounds us. The material earth, however, is not the problem. One of the thrilling promises given to us by Paul is that... Read more
by Gary Bergel “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart…” —Jeremiah 1:5 “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” —Ephesians 2:10 Andrea Bocelli, one of the best-known operatic singers in the world today, sat down at the piano during a charity performance for Haiti on June 1, 2010 and started telling a “little story.”... Read more
by John Stott The works of the Lord are to be the subject of our witness. Worship and witness belong together. We cannot possibly worship God—that is, acknowledge his infinite worth— without longing to go out into the world to persuade other people to come and worship him. Worship leads inevitably to witness, but witness leads to worship, too. It is a continuous cycle of worship leading to witness leading to worship and so on. The two cannot be separated.... Read more
by John Stott First, the works of the Lord are to be the subjects of our study. Listen to Psalm 111:2 (RSV), to which I will refer again later: “Great are the works of the Lord, studied (NIV says “pondered”) by all who have pleasure in them.” Or Psalm 77:12: “I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds.” I think it was Sir Francis Bacon, the seventeenth-century essayist, who was the first to say that... Read more
by Eugene Peterson Trembling is not, as outsiders so often think, being scared in the presence of God. It is something more like a holy playfulness, like faith frolicking. “Nature” is commonly viewed as a vast mathematical structure of cause and effect, the skies and oceans governed by rod-of-iron rules. Anyone who dares defy them is broken in pieces like a potter’s vessel. According to the iron rod of gravity, for instance, my leg shatters when I fall out of... Read more
“To our most bitter opponents we say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. Throw us in jail and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour to... Read more
by Eugene Peterson The way in which this sacramental sense shapes our relation to our environment is expressed in the middle lines of the prayer. The sea looked and fled, Jordan turned back. The mountains skipped like rams, The hill like lambs. —- vv.3-4 At one level, this is simply a colorful account of the Exodus: “The sea looked and fled.” In the more sober language of prose, this is the story of Israel. Fleeing from the Egyptians and then... Read more
by Eugene Peterson But when we return to such natural settings in order to recover such feelings, what ordinarily happens is that we become more attentive to our feelings than to God. We have crossed a line. We are not praying but “using” nature to produce religious feelings. By engaging in the proper rituals and with a little of bit of luck we can manipulate nature for selfish benefit. This is the origin of the antiprayer called magic. Prayer is... Read more
by Eugene Peterson When Israel went out from Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language, Judah became his sanctuary, Israel his dominion. The sea looked and fled; Jordan turned back. The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs. What ails you, O sea, that you flee? O Jordan, that you turn back? O mountains, that you skip like rams? O hills, like lambs? Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence... Read more
The Earth is the Lord's
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