I had a meeting last Friday morning, so all I knew was that a shooting of some sort had taken place at a school in Connecticut. After a staff brunch, I hopped into my car for the commute home. As I often do, I turned on my (trial offer) satellite radio to CNN to catch up on the news. What I heard was disturbing. At that time, the reports stated that 18 young children had been killed (20 when the... Read more
From NBC 10 Philadelphia (Dec 16, 2012): HT: Larrnell Cross Police say three elderly Mennonite women were tied up and attacked with a stun gun, during a violent home invasion near Lancaster. The attack happened Friday morning on the 300 block of Indiantown Road in Clay Township, according to LancasterOnline.com. The victims, who are between 84 and 90 years old, were found several hours later by a relative. They remained hospitalized Sunday…. [The offender] posed as an insurance salesman to gain access into the home on Friday,... Read more
From Common Prayer: Clement, one of Peter’s early successors as bishop of Rome, prayed, “O Lord, who brings to naught the designs of the nations, O Ruler, who raises the lowly and humbles the lofty, have mercy on those who are disheartened! Raise us who have fallen, show thyself to those who entreat thee, and heal those who are sick. Feed the hungry, free our captives, strengthen the weak, encourage those who lose heart! All nations shall know that thou... Read more
The following is from Reknew.org. Greg Boyd is doing a series of video blogs on why we can trust that the Christmas stories, as told in the Gospels, are reliable. Very insightful. This comes as a response to Bart Ehrman’s article: What Do We Really Know About Jesus? I will post the first video here and then link to the others… Part 2 Part 3 Read more
“The history of our world is the history of our suffering together. Every act of evil extracts a tear from God, every plunge into anguish extracts a sob from God. But the history of our world is the history of our deliverance together. God’s work to release himself from his suffering is his work to deliver the world from its agony; our struggle for joy and justice is our struggle to relieve God’s sorrow. When God’s cup of suffering is... Read more
check this out… Read more
Each year Christmas comes along and so do various controversies. The first of these is the sloganeering of it all: do we dare say “happy holidays?” How dare we be the sort of people that love our neighbors by not imposing our Christ-Mass holy day onto their December agenda! Only if one believes that America is a Christian Nation does this sort of war of words make sense. Clearly, this is a pluralistic culture and we need not coerce Jesus... Read more
This morning as I was reading Common Prayer: liturgy for ordinary radicals, a quote stood out to me that I wanted to share on the blog. Paschasius Radbertus, a ninth-century Benedictine, wrote, “The apostles took every care not to be drawn from the right path. They kept watch, observing the universal precepts their master had given to his disciples so as to be ready when he came again. Consequently we must always be on the lookout for Christ’s twofold coming,... Read more
Today, my friend Jamie Arpi-Ricci wrote an excellent reflection on evangelicals and justice. He is positive, as am I, about the current shift towards activism for the “least of these.” He cites human trafficking as a cause worthy of the church’s attention. But: What exactly do we hope will happen to the offenders when they’re finally captured? It seems to me that evangelicals still have a western view of judgment. We see the court system as being retributive, when the... Read more
The Sermon is Jesus’ invitation to know God’s perfect love so well that the impulses of Christ become our own. This is not merely an ethic of obedience, but an invitation into a relationship that transforms our character to match the virtues of Jesus himself. Read more
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