“Wait with gracious and modest courtesy for the Lord’s initiative” (Cloud of Unknowing). </p><br /> Read more

Watercolor, 5″x7″, available in my eBay store (button to left). “How odd that it is apparently not God’s purpose to minister day by day to the world by direct revelation. Rather, the surprising fact is that God has chosen to minister to humanity through a scandalously visible community, the church, and to minister to the church through human agency, by calling ordinary, vulnerable, pride-prone persons into the ministry of word and sacrament. However vulnerable it may be to wretched distortions... Read more

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings, and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way”... Read more

I was reading Chambers again today, and I was struck once again by his bluntness: “When the disciples came back from their first mission they were filled with joy because the devils were subject to them, and Jesus said—Don’t rejoice in successful service; the great secret of joy is that you are rightly related to me.” So it immediately got me thinking about just how persistently we disobey even just this one assertion of Jesus. Don’t rejoice in success! But... Read more

“God has yet to bless anyone except where they actually are, and if we faithlessly discard situation after situation, moment after moment, as not being ‘right’, we will simply have no place to receive his kingdom into our life. For those situations and moments ARE our life” (Dallas Willard). </p><br /> Read more

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die” (Bonhoeffer). </p><br /> Read more