Saturday, May 15, 2010

Filled With Love

I have again been reading from Walsh and Keesmaat's excellent book: Colossians Remixed. Here is a quote.
As we sat on a dock with a group of students late one night, the conversation turned to the question of why God made the world. We listened as the students went around and around on this one. Did God need the world? Was God lonely? Was there some preexisting force that God had to tame and direct toward creation? None of these answers were satisfying, until at last one student suggested that God made the world because God is love.

A reverent silence came over the group, and for a few minutes we all lay out on the dock looking at the stars, hearing loons call across the lake and feeling the air chill as we entered deeper into the night. Then someone quoted from Psalm 33: "For the word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord" (vv.4-5). The earth is full of the steadfast love of God! Even in the face of our ecological hate, our contemptuous rape of this creation of delight, the creation in its very being radiates the love of God.*
Weigh these words and see if they ring true. "The whole earth is full of the love of God." "God created this world because He is love." Talk about these things with trusted friends and people with whom you are in community.

*Walsh, Brian J. and Keesmaat, Sylvia C., Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004), p. 196.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Calvin on Prayer

My prayer life on a bad day:

(Click on the image to enlarge.)

Monday, May 10, 2010

Aliens, Strangers, and Mutants

I am a stranger and an alien; I am not of this world. I may try to fit in to this world; but, I am a mutant. My DNA has been changed. I have a new Father and new brothers and sisters. I have a new identity in a new people. The objectives of this people are foreign and alien to this world. I am in this world but no longer of this world.
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. - 1 Peter 2:9-11.

Not of this World
Words and music by Bob Hartman
Based on 2 Peter 2:11, John 15:18-19, John 16:33, Matthew 16:18, John 14:3

We are pilgrims in a strange land
We are so far from our homeland
With each passing day it seems so clear
This world will never want us here
We're not welcome in this world of wrong
We are foreigners who don't belong

We are strangers, we are aliens
We are not of this world

We are envoys, we must tarry
With this message we must carry
There's so much to do before we leave
With so many more who may believe
Our mission here can never fail
And the gates of hell will not prevail

We are strangers, we are aliens
We are not of this world

Jesus told us men would hate us
But we must be of good cheer
He has overcome this world of darkness
And soon we will depart from here

We are strangers, we are aliens
We are not of this world

Petra sings "Not of This World"