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August 28 - September 14, 2020
And though it is true that the church must always dissociate itself from sin, it can never have any excuse for keeping any sinners at a distance.
You never keep me at a distance. Or anyone. What is in your heart? The ever longing desire to be close to every single one of your children. You are never annoyed, scandalized by them. You never get sick of us or sickened by our wretchedness. At the most you get sad when one will not repent or stays turned away from your love.
A friend of mine once told me years ago that the one thing that made her uneasy about heaven is that she won’t get to choose her table companions at the Messianic banquet.
As long as our desire is still to avoid certain people, something is wrong. We haven't got the Gospel yet. If we still feel disgust. Is there someone I can't love?
“That is his call to us—simply to be people who are content to live close to him and to renew the kind of life in which the closeness is felt and experienced.”
Wow! This is beautiful
When we accept ourselves for what we are, we decrease our hunger for power or the acceptance of others because our self-intimacy reinforces our inner sense of security. We are no longer preoccupied with being powerful or popular. We no longer fear criticism because we accept the reality of our human limitations. Once integrated, we are less often plagued with the desire to please others because simply being true to ourselves brings lasting peace.
One of the mysteries of the gospel tradition is this strange attraction of Jesus for the unattractive, this strange desire for the undesirable, this strange love for the unlovely.
Needy, broken, and poor. When we reach that point, we have the Kingdom closer to us than ever. Jesus' strange desire to be with those of us who are like that, is very powerful.
The danger with our good works, spiritual investments, and all the rest of it is that we can construct a picture of ourselves in which we situate our self-worth. Complacency then replaces sheer delight in God’s unconditional love. Our doing becomes the very undoing of the ragamuffin gospel.
The temptation of the age is to look good without being good.
He who is alone with his sins is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final breakthrough to fellowship does not occur because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everyone must conceal his sin from himself and from their fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a
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Something about this quote struck me as very true and meaningful to us.
How long will it be before we discover we cannot dazzle God with our accomplishments?
