Jesus Creed
Some, maybe more, of us wonder about the prayer lives of the Beatles, or have wondered or have not wondered, but at least in this one they are watching me do my morning prayers during Advent in my North Park office. A great reading chair. Read more
Some, maybe more, of us wonder about the prayer lives of the Beatles, or have wondered or have not wondered, but at least in this one they are watching me do my morning prayers during Advent in my North Park office. A great reading chair. Read more
One day, a student of mine, Eric Landin, did the Napoleon Dynamite dance in class. It was a hit with everyone. To support him, I wore the “Vote for Pedro” hat to class on the last day. It was much less of a hit, perhaps little more than a tap. Read more
My brother-in-law, Pete Norman, is the athletic director and basketball coach at Highland Community College, in Freeport, Illinois. He has simply amassed one of the best coaching records in the nation for Junior College (JC) basketball, and this year he’s coaching a juggernaut. The Highland Cougars won the William Bear tournament last night, 101-69, beating teams from Columbus, OH, earlier in the day (by 40 points) — the game Kris and I saw — and taking the championship game from... Read more
Sorry, nothing to stir the pot today. I don’t know if you buy used books, but, like a microbrew, it’s a good habit to acquire. When I was a seminary student, my professor, Murray Harris, gave us all a list of exegetical commentaries and I began looking for them. Every fall a few of us drove up to Grand Rapids to spend the entire day shopping for books for which we didn’t have the money. |inline Read more
Rusty Peterman’s link to Ten Paradigm Shifts for impacting your community is my top blog discovery of the week. A .pdf link is provided. Or is it Stephen Shields‘ wise post about interfaith dialogue? Or is it Kerry Doyal’s story about justice turned into mercy? Thanks to each of you. |inline Read more
For Anna, Christmas meant a moment to prophesy liberation/redemption for God’s people (2:36-38). There was a Mary and Joseph, an Elizabeth and Zechariah, and now an Anna and Simeon. Anna was a widow. Widows — they are more prominent in the NT than most realize. Widows are as easy for us to overlook in the text as they were at the time of Jesus in reality. Mary was a widow, Jesus ministered to widows all the time, and the early... Read more
Do you ever make the sign of the Cross on yourself? I do. Roman Catholics have always done this, and so also have the Orthodox. But, (esp. evangelical) Protestants have not done this almost entirely because it would be an act that would put them in liminality — a state of in-between: if they did that they’d not be Protestant or they’d be what were not (Catholic or Orthodox). In addition, many think such an act is borderline magic. |inline Read more
Friendship: what are the purposes and duration of friendships? In light of what I described yesterday, we can now ask this question: if Aristotle was accurate in describing the three kinds of friendships (utility, pleasure, and virtue), what are their purposes and how long do they endure? And, as we are asking this in the context of debate and conversation, and sometimes with intense disagreement, we need to ask what the conversation is doing to our friendships. If we look,... Read more
Christmas, for Simeon, meant the beginning of the Cross (2:33-35). I continue to marvel at the infancy narratives and the way the Christmas characters are depicted. Joseph bore the cross by adopting Jesus and marrying Mary (a woman with a stained reputation); Mary bore the cross by accepting the work of God and the status it would bring her in her culture. Elisabeth knows her son is nothing compared to Mary’s, and it de-elevates her. Simeon, too, knows that this... Read more
Why do we read the Bible? I’ll venture to guess here. Our tendency is to go to the Bible for something new, to read it in the hope and expectation of a fresh discovery of something we did not know or had not heard or had completely forgotten. As a professor who teaches the Bible, I know the experience – it happens to me weekly, sometimes daily. |inline Read more
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