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August 15 - September 6, 2022
When we are asked to hurry, we should slow ourselves.
forget others’ humanity—especially if we disagree with them—we work to remember it twice as hard.
numb ourselves with mindless entertainment, we seek to cultivate the humble, attentiv...
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In an increasingly divided world, followers of Jesus are to participate in making peace, not in making matters worse.
American preachers have a task more difficult, perhaps, than those faced by us under South Africa’s apartheid, or Christians under Communism. We had obvious evils to engage; you have to unwrap your culture from years of red, white and blue myth…. You have to help good people see how they have let their institutions do their sinning for them.[13]
when Jesus died on the cross, he didn’t die just to forgive us of our sins. He died to destroy the work of Satan and disarm the powers.
trauma as “a wordless story our body tells itself about what is safe and what is a threat.”[5]
We are all called to be wounded healers, but the first part of our healing requires us to be present to the wounds we have carried.
Becoming whole requires a conscious commitment to becoming the healing presence of God in a wounded and wounding world.
The prayer that transforms the world is prayer that transforms us in Christ.
As a culture, “prayer” has become code for a sentimentalism that is mildly sympathetic to tragedy but is helpless or even apathetic to producing real transformation. The list goes on, and I fear it will keep going on.
Contemplative prayer is the unhurried opening of oneself to God through silence, Scripture, and self-examination.
“The Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not exist at all.”[4]
a mystic is someone who has a genuine experience of God.
What is a mystic, then? Simply someone who takes the radically available presence of God seriously.
One of the reasons contemplative prayer is socially subversive is because in this kind of prayer, our personal contradictions are revealed. And when we can reject illusions of ourselves, we can live with greater discernment as we engage the world.
the point of this kind of prayer is not to measure the change we want to see but rather to meet with the God we do not see. It just so happens that meeting with God will bring about great change; we are just unaware of the depth of change within ourselves.
humility is not just doing a lowly task; it’s a life committed to the hard task of lowering one’s defenses.
humility that we desperately need for our fractured world is seeing it as the ability to live freely from protecting the false self—living free from the defensiveness that closes us in on ourselves.
Our fragility is one of the most important signs that the false self is running the show.
The way of humility essentially says, I don’t take myself too seriously; I have no need to project myself as something I’m not; I don’t need to be in control; I’m open to things that are beyond my experience or understanding.
The person being formed in humility is one who receives and even pursues correction.
Cultivating calm presence is about remaining close and present to ourselves. It’s about slowing down to gain clarity on the things that matter within—but not only within.
Cultivating calm presence is about remaining close to not just ourselves but others as well
the person growing in cultivating presence is curious, courageous, and compassionate—three words that God wants to form in us for the healing of the world, and three words that are possible for those rooted in love.
It’s relatively easy to remain close to myself and others in times of low anxiety. The true test comes when anxiety is high.
the mature act of addressing an issue with someone and resisting the temptation to spiritualize it away.
When I read the gospels we see that Jesus confronted all the time
Why does shame imprison us? Thompson noted that one reason is we internalize this script: “I do not have what it takes to tolerate this moment.”[4]
there’s a difference between diffusing anxiety and living maturely.
Listening well is a refusal to allow self-righteousness to distort our interactions.
The table is not a reward for good behavior but a gift for the broken.
To forgive is to cancel the debt owed, to forego retribution, to say no to revenge. It’s the clear recognition of wrongdoing but the refusal to continue the cycle of offense. In
Forgiveness is inner freedom from allowing the wound inflicted from another to be the primary and permanent point of reference from which we relate to the world.
there’s only one place where God doesn’t dwell: unreality. God dwells only in truth.
If the love we claim to have doesn’t lead to a commitment to seeing wholeness and justice, we will have short-circuited God’s love.
Fleming Rutledge noted, justice “doesn’t refer to a threatening abstract quality that God has over against us. It is much more like a verb than a noun, because it refers to the power of God to make right what has been wrong.”[3]
And that means a Christian sense of justice is shaped by love of God and love of others instead of a Western, individualized, and modernist concept of freedom and rights.”[4]
biblical justice is relational but is to be carried out systematically.
To join our lives to the poor is to trust that they often know best what they need and how to climb out of their condition. They need tangible support.
It’s ironic that Christians who believe in salvation by grace and not our merit can be so formed by a social theology of meritocracy.
Justice must move beyond emotional catharsis toward a commitment to action in some capacity. Outrage is a great brand builder but a poor justice maker.
Justice in the way of Jesus takes the time to look at people, dignifying them with our attention.
The church as a whole, and the local church in part, has the holy task of establishing a colony of heaven here on earth.
If we don’t live from the center of God’s love, working for justice can be just another creative way to meet the unrelenting needs of our egos.
A baby in its mother’s womb is in a relationship with her but is unaware of it and does not respond to the mother’s intense love and desire to give herself to the child. The relationship with God on the human side can remain as minimal as that of the baby.[1]
That is why the fundamental task of living in love and pouring it out on others is found in the healing of our image of God—something Jesus came to do.
Brennan Manning said, “My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.”[2]
