This is what Eugene Peterson says about Jack Levison’s new book, 40 Days with the Holy Spirit: Jack Levison studies, meditates, prays, and writes of the place of the Holy Spirit in our lives with more skill and understanding than anyone I know. His latest book, 40 Days with the Holy Spirit, is conspicuous for its lively, down-to-earth conversation in this much neglected and misunderstood aspect of the Christian faith. He insists that this is not a specialist interest, not something... Read more
More than ten years ago I wrote The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others. Then along followed 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed, which extended the Jesus Creed into other portions of the New Testament, then came a DVD and then The Jesus Creed for Students and then Sharing God’s Love. The idea of the Jesus Creed — Jesus joining the daily Shema to the love your neighbor text in Lev 19 — shifted my life from only writing for academic audiences to writing... Read more
Ysenda Maxtone Graham: Excellent read about the struggle to keep rural English churches on their feet. Some of the longest job descriptions belong to rural Church of England clergy. ‘So what do you do?’ ‘I’m the Rector of Aldwincle, Clopton, Pilton, Stoke Doyle, Thorpe Achurch, Titchmarsh and Wadenhoe.’ Every one of these place names evokes an ancient Pevsner-worthy church, smelling of candlewax, damp hymn books and brass polish. Though many villages no longer have a shop or a pub, most... Read more
Roger Olson, at the link here, opens up a good conversation on whether God is himself timeless: In my immediately preceding post I argued that far too much Christian theology includes unwarranted speculation—especially about God. Under pressure from Greek ontology traditional, “classical theism” has generally agreed that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (the Yahweh of the Bible) is somehow (i.e., differently expressed) “outside of time” such that temporal sequence, the passage of past into present into future (or... Read more
The most annoying response I have received from others about my Kingdom Conspiracy book is this one: “I see what you are saying, but I’m Kuyperian or I’m a skinny jeans person or I’m a liberation theologian or I’m Niebuhrian.” OK, each of those is located in the history of interpreting the kingdom but the issue for biblical theologians, and if I may, for the church itself, is not first about one’s interpretive tradition but what the Bible does say. And one can’t read those Old... Read more
Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. BCP Read more
An interview by David G. Moore. I first encountered Zack Eswine’s work while reading his terrific article, “Listening for the Sound of Reality: The Melancholy of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Haddon Spurgeon.“ Years later, I read his wonderful book, Sensing Jesus: Life and Ministry as a Human Being. I don’t like the title much because it doesn’t convey what the book is about, but the subtitle is good. Here are a few lines I wrote in my review of that... Read more
Hani Abdel Messihah: (by Sophia Jones) Hani loved his four children — three girls and a boy, the youngest — more than anything in the world, his family says. He was gentle and kind, always making a joke whenever he could. His wife Magda Aziz, 29, will forever remember his laugh. “I felt like he was an angel,” Magda said of her deeply devout husband. “There was a prayer in anything he said.” Hani desperately wanted to come home after... Read more
Wonder Bread, by John Frye We ended with the Lord’s Table. I was at a pastors’ and spouses’ retreat of our region of the Evangelical Covenant Church this past Fall. One of our sisters in Christ who is an ordained pastor was leading us at the Table. She was commenting on the bread. She said something to this effect, “Jesus took this bread…well, not this bread [she lifted the plate for us to see]…this is just Wonder Bread. So, he... Read more
From Arise, by Mariam Youssef is a community organizer for gender justice in Coptic-American communities. She is currently a doctoral student at Claremont Graduate University in women’s studies in religion. Mariam also serves as the vice president of the Southern California chapter of The Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black, an organization that focuses on social justice and racial reconciliation in Orthodox Christian communities. She hosts a monthly podcast called On Social Justice, engaging biblical and patristic Christian texts and thought in... Read more
Jesus Creed
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