True Fasting

"Shout it aloud, do not hold back.
Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion
and to the house of Jacob their sins.

For day after day they seek me out;
they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions
and seem eager for God to come near them.

'Why have we fasted,' they say,
'and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
and you have not noticed?'
"Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
and exploit all your workers.

Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
and expect your voice to be heard on high.

Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it only for bowing one's head like a reed
and for lying on sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD ?

"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.

Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
"If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,

and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.

The LORD will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.

Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

"If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the LORD's holy day honorable,
and if you honor it by not going your own way
and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,

then you will find your joy in the LORD,
and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob."
The mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Isaiah 58

I will praise God's name in song

1 Save me, O God,
for the waters have come up to my neck.

2 I sink in the miry depths,
where there is no foothold.
I have come into the deep waters;
the floods engulf me.

3 I am worn out calling for help;
my throat is parched.
My eyes fail,
looking for my God.

4 Those who hate me without reason
outnumber the hairs of my head;
many are my enemies without cause,
those who seek to destroy me.
I am forced to restore
what I did not steal.

5 You know my folly, O God;
my guilt is not hidden from you.

6 May those who hope in you
not be disgraced because of me,
O Lord, the LORD Almighty;
may those who seek you
not be put to shame because of me,
O God of Israel.

7 For I endure scorn for your sake,
and shame covers my face.

8 I am a stranger to my brothers,
an alien to my own mother's sons;

9 for zeal for your house consumes me,
and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.

10 When I weep and fast,
I must endure scorn;

11 when I put on sackcloth,
people make sport of me.

12 Those who sit at the gate mock me,
and I am the song of the drunkards.

13 But I pray to you, O LORD,
in the time of your favor;
in your great love, O God,
answer me with your sure salvation.

14 Rescue me from the mire,
do not let me sink;
deliver me from those who hate me,
from the deep waters.

15 Do not let the floodwaters engulf me
or the depths swallow me up
or the pit close its mouth over me.

16 Answer me, O LORD, out of the goodness of your love;
in your great mercy turn to me.

17 Do not hide your face from your servant;
answer me quickly, for I am in trouble.

18 Come near and rescue me;
redeem me because of my foes.

19 You know how I am scorned, disgraced and shamed;
all my enemies are before you.

20 Scorn has broken my heart
and has left me helpless;
I looked for sympathy, but there was none,
for comforters, but I found none.

21 They put gall in my food
and gave me vinegar for my thirst.

22 May the table set before them become a snare;
may it become retribution and [a] a trap.

23 May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see,
and their backs be bent forever.

24 Pour out your wrath on them;
let your fierce anger overtake them.

25 May their place be deserted;
let there be no one to dwell in their tents.

26 For they persecute those you wound
and talk about the pain of those you hurt.

27 Charge them with crime upon crime;
do not let them share in your salvation.

28 May they be blotted out of the book of life
and not be listed with the righteous.

29 I am in pain and distress;
may your salvation, O God, protect me.

30 I will praise God's name in song
and glorify him with thanksgiving.

31 This will please the LORD more than an ox,
more than a bull with its horns and hoofs.

32 The poor will see and be glad—
you who seek God, may your hearts live!

33 The LORD hears the needy
and does not despise his captive people.

34 Let heaven and earth praise him,
the seas and all that move in them,

35 for God will save Zion
and rebuild the cities of Judah.
Then people will settle there and possess it;

36 the children of his servants will inherit it,
and those who love his name will dwell there.

Psalm 69

Christianity is not about...

"Christianity is about something that happened. Something that happened to Jesus of Nazareth. Something that happened through Jesus of Nazareth.

In other words, Christianity is not about a new moral teaching- as though we were morally clueless and in need of some fresh or clearer guidelines. This is not to deny that Jesus, and some of his first followers, gave some wonderfully bracing and intelligent moral teaching. It is merely to insist that we find teaching like that within a larger framework: the story of things that happened through which the world was changed.

Christianity isn't about Jesus offering a wonderful moral example, as though our principal need was to see what a life of utter love and devotion to God and to other people would look like, so that we could try to copy it. If that had been Jesus's main purpose, we could certainly say it had some effect. Some people's lives really have been changed simply by contemplating and imitating the example of Jesus. But observing Jesus's example could equally well simply make a person depressed. Watching Richter play the piano or Tiger Woods hit a golf ball doesn't inspire me to go out and copy them. It makes me realize that I can't come close and never will.

Nor is Christianity about Jesus offering, demonstrating, or even accomplishing a new route by which people can "go to heaven when they die." This is a persistent mistake, based on the medieval notion that the point of all religion -the rule of the game, if you like- was to make sure you ended up at the right side of the stage at the end of the mystery play (that is, in heaven rather than in hell), or on the right side of the painting in the Sistine Chapel. Again, that isn't to deny that our present beliefs and actions have lasting consequences. Rather, it's to deny both that Jesus made this the focus of his work and that this is the "point" of Christianity.

Finally, Christianity isn't about giving the world fresh teaching about God himself- though clearly, if the Christian claim is true, we do indeed learn a great deal about who God is by looking at Jesus. The need which the Christian faith answers is not so muchthat we are ignorant and need some better information, but that we are lost and need someone to come and find us, stuck in the quicksand waiting to be rescued, dying and in need of a new life.

So what is Christianity about then?

Christianity is about the belief that the living God, in fulfillment of his promises and as the climax of the story of Israel, has accomplished all this- the finding, the saving, the giving of new life- in Jesus. He has done it. With Jesus, God's rescue operation has been put into effect once and for all. A great door has swung open in the cosmos which can never again be shut. It's the door to the prison where we've been kept chained up. We are offered freedom: freedom to experience God's rescue for ourselves, to go through the open door and explore the new world (Terra Nova) to which we now have access. In particular, we are all invited- summoned, actually- to discover, through following Jesus, that this new world is indeed a place of justice, spirituality, relationship, and beauty, and that we are not only to enjoy it as such but to work at bringing it to earth as in heaven. In listening to Jesus, we discover whose voice it is that has echoed around the hearts and minds of the human race all along."

Excerpt from:
Simply Christian Pgs:91-2
By NT Wright

Radical Excess of Love or Ethical Rulebook?

“…let us reflect on the following teaching of Jesus; ‘If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miiles.’ This teaching refers to a part of Roman law at the time which allowed a Roman soldier to compel a citzen to carry his military pack for one mile. Let us imagine that after Jesus offered this teaching to the Church, the leaders had enshrined this second-mile command into a law which stated that, if anyone was forced to carry a pack one mile, they would carry it for two miles. The let us imagine Jesus returning to this community a few years later. Would he say to them, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servants, for you have faithfully carried out my commandment’, or would he perhaps shake his head and say, ‘Dear friends, your law says carry the pack two miles - I say, carry it three’? If we are more drawn to the first response, then we are affirming that the teachings of Jesus are a type of ethical rulebook that must be followed in their substance; if we are drawn by the second, we are affirming that Jesus came to teach us a way of life that is dictated by the radical excess of love rather than an ethical rulebook.

He we can see the heart of the Christian critique of ethics at work. ‘Ethics’, as we have already mentioned, is used to describe a foundational approach to moral questions which uses a set of principles (derived from reason and/or revelation) in order to work out what to do in a given situation. Far from teaching an ethical system, this was the very approach that Jesus critiqueed when he called the Pharisees whitewashed tombs…for ethical systems allow us to follow the rules whether we love or not. While ethics says, ‘What must I do in order for fulfil my responsibility?’ love says, ‘I will do more than is required.’ ”

How (Not) to Speak of God, p. 64-65. By Peter Rollins

Union with God in Prayer

"The original meaning of the word "theology" was "union with God in prayer." Today theology has become one academic discipline alongside many others, and often theologians are finding it hard to pray. But for the future of Christian leadership it is of vital importance to reclaim the mystical aspect of theology so that every word spoken, every word of advice given, and every strategy developed can come from a heart that knows God intimately. I have the impression that many of the debates within the church around issues such as the papacy, the ordination of women, the marriage of priests, homosexuality, birth control, abortion, and euthanasia take place on a primarily moral level. On that level, different parties battle about right or wrong. But that battle is often removed from the experience of God's first love, which lies at the base of all human relationships.

Words like "right-wing," "reactionary," "conservative," "liberal," and "left-wing" are used to describe people's opinions, and many discussions then seem more like political battles for power than spiritual searches for truth.

Christian leaders cannot simply be persons who have well-informed opinions about the burning issues of our time. Their leadership must be rooted in the permanent, intimate relationship with the incarnate Word, Jesus, and they need to find there the source for their words, advice, and guidance. Through the discipline of contemplative prayer, Christian leaders have to learn to listen again and again to the voice of love and to find there the wisdom and courage to address whatever issue presents itself to them. Dealing with burning issues without being rooted in a deep personal relationship with God easily lends to divisiveness because, before we know it, our sense of self is caught up in our opinion about a given subject. But when we are securely rooted in personal intimacy with the source of life, it will be possible to remain flexible without being relativistic, convinced without being rigid, willing to confront without being offensive, gentle and forgiving without being soft, and true witnesses without being manipulative.

For Christian leadership to be truly fruitful in the future, a movement from the moral to the mystical is required."

In the Name of Jesus, By Henri Nouwen

Scheming Swindlers

"The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament."

Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard

Count the Cost

"Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the
toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace
is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism
without church discipline, Communion without confession...Cheap grace is
grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus
Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man
will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to
buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of
Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to
stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his
nets and follows him...Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again
and again, the gift which must the asked for, the door at which a man must
knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because
it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his
life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is
costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.
Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were
bought at a price", and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above
all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay
for our life, but delivered him up for us...Costly grace is the Incarnation
of God."

from "The Cost of Discipleship" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We believe the Bible...

"For me the dynamic of a commitment to Scripture is not "we believe the Bible, so there is nothing else to be learned," but rather "we believe the Bible, so we had better discover all the things in it to which our traditions, including our 'protestant' or 'evangelical' traditions, which have supposed themselves to be 'biblical' but are sometimes demonstrably not, have made us blind."

N.T Wright
The Challenge of Jesus

Holiness

"One should, and one must, truly live with all people and things, but one most live with all these in holiness, one must hallow all which one does in one´s natural life. No renunciation is commanded. When one eats in holiness, when one tastes the flavor of the food in holiness, then the table becomes an altar. When one works in holiness, he raises up the sparks that hide themselves in all tools. When one walks in holiness across the field, then the soft song of all herbs, which they voice to God, enter into the song of our soul. When one drinks in holiness to each other with one´s companions, it is as if one read together in the Torah. When one dances the roundelay in holiness, brightness shines over the gathering. When a husband is united with his wife in holiness, then Shekinah rests over them."

Martin Buber
The Way of Man: According to the Teaching of Hasidism

Do you follow?

"In terms of his discipleship ethic, [Jesus] called for followers, not just believers. It wasn´t good enough to confess that he was "very God of very God"; he called people to an active trust in his rather dangerous promises (Matt 8:18-22). In fact he sent people away on precisely this basis. He nowhere asks us to commit to a creed but calls on us to trust in God and what he is doing. In his teaching, he used common relational metaphors, for example, Father-Son, to express his relationship with God, and other daily metaphors (sheep, gates, houses, and so on) to express other great truths of faith.He constantly used subversive parablethat reflected ordinary life to confer profound spiritual meaning. His teaching style was definitely nonacedemic: he discipled his followers into a lifestyle (called the Way) rather than send them to an academy to learn about God divorced from the context of life and mission.

His love of life was infectious. His form of holiness was not the alienating form so often associated with religious types. It was thoroughly redemptive. We have often pondered what kind of holiness was present in Jesus that ordinary people- broken, sinful, margenalized people- loved to hang around him. They didn´t feel condemned by Him. Sadly, these same types don´t ordinarily like to hang around church people today. What´s the difference? Jesus was even accused by religious types of being a bit of a drunkard and a glutton and of fraternizing with all the wrong kinds of people. He was certainly not afraid of pleasure but oriented it toward God. He is an all of life religion,with no separation of the private and the public. He should be the church´s hero, the one we all aspire to become like. Instead we have so emphasized his divinity over his humanity that Jesus seems otherworldy, nonhuman, inaccessible."


Excerpt from The Shaping of things to Come
By Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch

Thoughts on Solitude

"What becomes visible here is that solitude mold self-righteous people into gentle, caring, forgiving persons who are so deeply convinced of their own great sinfulness and so fully aware of God´s even greater mercy that their life itself becomes ministry. In such a ministry there is hardly any difference left between doing and being. When we are filled with God´s merciful presence, we can do nothingother than minister because our whole beingwitnesses to the light that has come into the darkness. "

Excerpt from The Way of the Heart
By Henry Nouwen

Prayer Regarding Critics and Enemies by Serbian Orthodox Bishop

By Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic, Serbian bishop who spoke out against Naziism, was arrested, and taken to Dachau.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them. Enemies have driven me into your embrace more than friends have. Friends have bound me to earth; enemies have loosed me from earth and have demolished all my aspirations in the world.

Enemies have made me a stranger in worldly realms and an extraneous inhabitant of the world.

Just as a hunted animal finds safer shelter than an unhunted animal does, so have I, persecuted by enemies, found the safest sanctuary, having ensconced myself beneath Your tabernacle, where neither friends nor enemies can slay my soul.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless and do not curse them.

They, rather than I, have confessed my sins before the world. They have punished me, whenever I have hesitated to punish myself. They have tormented me, whenever I have tried to flee torments. They have scolded me, whenever I have flattered myself. They have spat upon me, whenever I have filled myself with arrogance. Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Whenever I have made myself wise, they have called me foolish. Whenever I have made myself mighty, they have mocked me as though I were a [fly].

Whenever I have wanted to lead people, they have shoved me into the background.

Whenever I have rushed to enrich myself, they have prevented me with an iron hand.

Whenever I thought that I would sleep peacefully, they have wakened me from sleep.

Whenever I have tried to build a home for a long and tranquil life, they have demolished it and driven me out.

Truly, enemies have cut me loose from the world and have stretched out my hands to the hem of your garment.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Bless them and multiply them; multiply them and make them even more bitterly against me:

So that my fleeing will have no return; So that all my hope in men may be scattered like cobwebs; So that absolute serenity may begin to reign in my soul; So that my heart may become the grave of my two evil twins: arrogance and anger;

So that I might amass all my treasure in heaven; Ah, so that I may for once be freed from self-deception, which has entangled me in the dreadful web of illusory life.

Enemies have taught me to know what hardly anyone knows, that a person has no enemies in the world except himself. One hates his enemies only when he fails to realize that they are not enemies, but cruel friends.

It is truly difficult for me to say who has done me more good and who has done me more evil in the world: friends or enemies. Therefore bless, O Lord, both my friends and my enemies. A slave curses enemies, for he does not understand. But a son blesses them, for he understands.

For a son knows that his enemies cannot touch his life. Therefore he freely steps among them and prays to God for them. Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Merry Christmas!

CHORUS Hallelujah: for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.
The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord,
and of His Christ; and He shall reign for ever and ever.
King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. Hallelujah!

*Part III*

AIR (Soprano) I know that my Redeemer liveth,
and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth;
and though worms destroy this body yet, in my flesh shall
I see God. For now is Christ risen from the dead,
the firs-fruits of them that sleep.

CHORUS Since by man came death,

CHORUS By man came also the resurrection of the dead.

CHORUS For as in Adam all die,

CHORUS Even so in Christ shall all be made alive

RECITATIVE. (Accompanied - Bass) Behold, I tell you a mystery;
We shall not all sleep; but we shall all be changed in a
moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.

AIR. (Bass) The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall
be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and
this mortal must put on immortality.

RECITATIVE (Alto) Then shall be brought to pass the
saying that is written; Beats is swallowed up in victory!

DUET (Alto and Tenor) O death, where is thy sting?
O grave! where is thy victory? The sting
of death is sin and the strength of sin is the law.

CHORUS But thanks be to God, who giveth
us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

AIR (Soprano) If God be for us, who can be against us?
Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?
It is God that justifieth, who is he that condemneth?
It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is
at the right hand of God, who makes intercession for us.

CHORUS Worthy is the Lamb that was slain,
and hath redeemed us to God by His blood,
to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and
strength, and honor, and glory and blessing
. Blessing and honour, glory and power, be unto
Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb,
for ever and ever. Amen.

The Nicene Creed (325 ad)

We believe in one God,
father almighty,
maker of all things,
both visible and invisible.
And in one lord, Jesus Christ,
the son of God,
begotten from the father,
only-begotten,
that is from the being of the father,
God from God,
light from light,
true God from True God,
begotten not made,
one in being with the father,
through whom all things came to be,
both those in heaven and those on the earth,
who because of us human beings and because of our salvation descended,
became enfleshed,
became human,
suffered and rose on the third day,
ascending to the heavens,
coming to judge the living and dead.
And in the Holy Spirit.
The catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes those who say:
there was when he was not;
and before being born he was not;
or that he came to be from things that are not;
or that the Son of God is from a different hypostasis or ousia or mutable or changeable.

Hell is Chrome

When the devil came
He was not red
He was chrome, and he said

Come with me
You must go
So I went
Where everything was clean
So precise and towering

I was welcomed
With open arms
I received so much help in every way
I felt no fear
I felt no fear

The air was crisp
Like sunny late winter days
A springtime yawning high in the haze
And I felt like I belonged
Come with me

Come with me
Come with me
Come with me
Come with me
Come with me
Come with me
Come with me

Lyrics by Wilco

A Distant Country

"Constantly falling back into an old trap, before I am even fully aware of it, I find myself wondering why someone hurt me, rejected me, or didn't pay attention to me. Without realizing it, I find myself brooding about someone else's success, my own lonliness, and the way the world abuses me. Despite my conscious intentions, I often catch myself daydreaming about becoming rich, powerful, and very famous. All of these mental games reveal to me the fragility of my faith that I am the Beloved One on whome God's favor rests. I am so afraid of being disliked, blamed, put aside, passed over, ignored, persecuted, and killed, that I am constantly developing strategies to defend myself and thereby assure myself of the love I think I need and deserve. And in doing so I move far away from my father's home and choose to dwell in a "distant country."

Henry Nouwen
The Return of the Prodigal Son
Pg 41-2

Religious Games!

" Why this frenzy of sacrifices?"
God's asking.
"Don't you think I've had my fill of burnt sacrifices,
rams and plump grain-fed calves?
Don't you think I've had my fill
of blood from bulls, lambs, and goats?
When you come before me,
who ever gave you the idea of acting like this,
Running here and there, doing this and that-
all this sheer commotion in the place provided for worship?

"Quit your worship charades.
I can't stand you trivial religious games:
Monthly conferences, weekly sabbaths, special meetings-
meetings, meetings, meetings- I can't stand one more!
Meetings for this, meetings for that. I hate them!
You've worn me out!
I'm sick of your religion, religion, religion,
while you go on sinning.
When you put on your next prayer-performance,
I'll be looking the other way.
No matter how long or loud or often you pray,
I'll not be listening.
And do you know why? Because you've been tearing
people to pieces, and your hands are bloody.
Go home and wash up.
Clean up your act
Sweep your lives clean of evildoings
so I Don't have to look at them any longer.
Say no to wrong.
Learn to do good.
Work for justice.
Help the down-and-out.
Stand up for the homeless.
Go to bat for the defenseless.


"Come. Sit down. Let's argue this out."
This is God's message:
"If your sins are blood-red
they'll be snow white.
If they are red like crimson,
they'll be white like wool.
If you willingly obey,
you'll feast like kings.
But if you are willful and stubborn,
you'll die like dogs.
That's right. God says so.

Excerpt from Isaiah 1 as interpreted in
The Message- The Old Testament Prophets

The LAW of LOVE

Free action is a certain form of action of the will, and this is the only strictly free action. Christ has taught us by His own teaching and through His inspired Prophets and Apostles that the moral law requires love, and that this is the sum of its requirements. But what is this love? It cannot be the involuntary love of the sensibility, either in the form of emotion or affection; for these states of the mind, belonging as they do to the category of cause and effect, cannot be the form of love demanded by the law of God.

The moral law is the law of God's activity, the rule in conformity to which He always acts. We are created in God's image. His rule of life is therefore ours. The moral law requires of Him the same kind of love that it does of us. If God had no law or rule of action, He could have no moral character. As our Creator and Lawgiver, He requires of us the same love in kind and the same perfection in degree that He Himself exercises.

"God is love." He loves with all the strength of His infinite nature. He requires us to love with all the strength of our finite nature. This is being perfect as God is perfect. But what is this love of God as a mental exercise? It must be benevolence or good will. God is a moral agent. The good of universal being is infinitely valuable in itself. God must infinitely well appreciate this. He must see and feel the moral propriety of choosing this for its own sake. He has chosen it from eternity. By His executive volitions He is endeavouring to realize it. The law which He has promulgated to govern our activity requires us to sympathize with His choice, His benevolence, to choose the same end that He does, for the same reason--that is, for its own sake. God's infinite choice of the good of universal being is righteousness in Him, because it is the choice of the intrinsically and infinitely valuable for its own sake. It is a choice in conformity with His nature and the relations He has constituted. It must be a choice in conformity with His infinitely clear conscience or moral sense.

Righteousness in God, then, is conformity to the laws of universal love or good will. It must be an ultimate, supreme, immanent, efficient preference or choice of the highest good of universal being, including His own. It must be ultimate, in that this good of being is chosen for its own sake. It must be supreme, because it is preferred to everything else. It must be immanent, because it is innate and at the very foundation of all His moral activity. It must be efficient, because, from its very nature, it must energize to secure that which is thus preferred or chosen with the whole strength of his infinite nature.

This is right choice, right moral action. The moral quality, then, of unselfish benevolence is righteousness or moral rightness. All subordinate choices, volitions and actions, and states of the sensibility which proceed from this immanent, ultimate, supreme preference or choice, have moral character in the sense and only for the reason that they proceed from or are the natural product of unselfish benevolence. This ultimate, immanent, supreme preference is the holy heart of a moral agent. Out of it proceeds, directly or indirectly, the whole moral or spiritual life of the individual.

Charles G. Finney 1792-1875

Why are we here?

"God would be unrighteous (just as we would) if he valued anything more than what is supremely valuable. If he did not take infinite delight in the worth of his own glory he would be unrighteous. For it is right to take delight in a person in proportion to the excellence of that person’s glory." - John Piper (Desiring God P.32)

Q.) What do you think is the primary theological issue of the day?

A.) The majesty and glory of God. Nothing is more important in shaping your ministry and mission than the centrality of God in the universe. It will determine the way you think about human events, the way you think about church, human culture, nations, institutions, government, business, family, health, sex, money; food. The question, Why does the universe exist?" is the most important question to get settled in the ministry. Why does the world exist? Why does human history exist? Why does America exist? Why do I exist? Why does my church exist? Why does my marriage exist? Why is all of this here? And until that question is answered with crystal clear clarity, your ministry will wobble all over the place. - John Piper

Bring Me To Life

How can you see into my eyes like open doors
Leading you down into my core
Where I’ve become so numb without a soul my spirit sleeping somewhere cold
Until you find it there and lead it back home

(Wake me up) Wake me up inside
(I can’t wake up) Wake me up inside
(Save me) Call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up) Bid my blood to run
(I can’t wake up) Before I come undone
(Save me) Save me from the nothing I’ve become

Now that I know what I’m without
You can't just leave me
Breathe into me and make me real
Bring me to life

(Wake me up) Wake me up inside
(I can’t wake up) Wake me up inside
(Save me) Call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up) Bid my blood to run
(I can’t wake up) Before I come undone
(Save me) Save me from the nothing I’ve become

Bring me to life
(I've been living a lie, there's nothing inside)
Bring me to life

Frozen inside without your touch
Without your love darling only you are the life among the dead
All this time I can't believe I couldn't see
Kept in the dark but you were there in front of me
I’ve been sleeping a thousand years it seems
Got to open my eyes to everything
Without a thought without a voice without a soul
Don't let me die here there must be something more
Bring me to life

(Wake me up) Wake me up inside
(I can’t wake up) Wake me up inside
(Save me) Call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up) Bid my blood to run
(I can’t wake up) Before I come undone
(Save me) Save me from the nothing I’ve become

(Bring me to life)
I’ve been living a lie, there’s nothing inside
(Bring me to life)

EVANESCENCE LYRICS
"Bring Me To Life"
(By Paul McCoy)

Oración do Noso Pai

Noso Pai que estás no ceo:
Santificado sexa o teu nome,
Veña o teu reino e fágase a túa vontade
Aquí na terra coma no ceo.
Dános hoxe o noso pan de cada día;
Perdoa as nosas ofensas,
Como tamén perdoamos nós a quen nos ten ofendido;
E non nos deixes caer na tentación, mais líbranos do mal.
Pois teus son o reino, o poder e maila gloria
Por sempre eternamente.

I recently went to an ecumentical mass in Santiago where we prayed the "Lord's Prayer" in Gallego. For those of you who know Castillian Spanish you notice the similarities and differences.

A Godly Meditation ~Thomas Moore

Give me thy grace, good Lord,
To set the world at nought,
To set my mind fast upon thee.
And not to hang upon the blast of men’s mouths.
To be content to be solitary,
Not to long for worldly company,
Little and little utterly to cast off the world,
And rid my mind of all the business thereof.
Not to long to hear of any worldly things,
But that the hearing of worldly phantasies may be to me displeasant.
Gladly to be thinking of God,
Piteously to call for his help,
To lean upon the comfort of God,
Busily to labour to love him.
To know mine own vilety and wretchedness,
To humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of God,
To bewail my sins passed,
For the purging of them, patiently to suffer adversity.
Gladly to bear my purgatory here,
To be joyful of tribulations,
To walk the narrow way that leadeth to life.
To bear the cross with Christ,
To have the last thing in remembrance,
To have ever afore mine eye my death that is ever at hand,
To make death no stranger to me,
To foresee and consider the everlasting fire of hell,
To pray for pardon before the judge come.
To have continually in mind the passion that
Christ suffered for me,
For his benefits uncessantly to give him thanks.
To buy the time again that I before have lost.
To abstain from vain confabulations,
To eschew light foolish mirth and gladness,
Recreations not necessary to cut off.
Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all,
to set the loss at right nought, for the winning of Christ.
To think my most enemies my friends,
For the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their
love and favour as they did him with their malice and hatred.
These minds are more to be desired of every man, than all the treasure of all
the princes and kings, Christian and heathen, were it gathered and
laid together all upon one heap.

A Journey into Profound Silence

"Now to tread the spiritual path we must learn to be silent. What is required of us is a journey into profound silence. Part of the problem of the weakening of religion in our times is that religion uses words for its prayers and rituals, but those words have to be charged with meaning and they must be charged with significant meaning to move our hearts, to set us out in new directions and to change our lives. They can only be charged with this degree of meaning if they spring from the spirit, and the spirit requires silence. We all need to use words, but to use them with power we all need to be silent."
John Main 1926-1982

Watch Yourself!

"The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. "Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them 'Rabbi.' "But you are not to be called 'Rabbi,' for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth 'father,' for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called 'teacher,' for you have one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.

"Woe to you, blind guides! You say, 'If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.' You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred? You also say, 'If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gift on it, he is bound by his oath.' You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred? Therefore, he who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. And he who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it. And he who swears by heaven swears by God's throne and by the one who sits on it.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices--mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law--justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers! "You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.' "

Jesus of Nazareth
Holy Bible, Matthew Chapter 23

Good Infection

There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made. Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must go into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if he chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?

Excerpt from Mere Christianity
By C.S. Lewis

Thousand Faces of Worship

The thousand faces of worship contain both deadened and lively countenances. They are the lost and the found, all of whom are continuous worshipers, for... nobody does not worship. We begin at one fundamental fact about worship: at this very moment, and for as long as this world endures, everybody inhabiting it is bowing down and serving something or someone- an artifact, a person, an institution, an idea, a spirit, or God through Christ. Everyone is being shaped thereby and is growing up toward some measure of fullness, whether of righteousness or of evil. No one is exempt and no one can wish to be. We are every one of us unceasing worshipers and we will remain so forever, for eternity is an infinite extrapolation of one or two conditions: a surrender to the sinfulness of sin unto infinite loss or to the commitment of personal righteousness unto infinite gain. This is the central fact of our existence, and it drives every other fact. Within it lies the story of creation, fall, redemption and new creation or final loss.

By Dr. Harold Best
Excerpt from: Unceasing Worship

Dream-Watchers

In learning to meditate, one good place to begin is with our dreams, since it involves little more than paying attention to something we are already doing. For fifteen centuries Christians overwhelmingly considered dreams as a natural way in which the spiritual world broke into our lives. Kelsey, who has authored the book Dreams: The Dark Speech of the Spirit, notes, “…every major Father of the early Church, from Justin Martyr to Irenaeus, from Clement and Tertullian to Origen and Cyprian, believed that dreams were a means of revelation.”

With the rationalism of the Renaissance came a certain skepticism about dreams. Then in the formative days of the development of psychology, Freud stressed mainly the negative side of dreams, since he worked almost entirely with mental illness. Hence, modern men and women have tended either to ignore dreams altogether, or to fear that an interest in them will lead to neurosis. It does not need to be so; and in fact, if we will listen, dreams can help us find increased maturity and health.

If we are convinced that dreams can be a key to unlocking the door to the inner world, we can do three practical things. First, we can specifically pray, inviting God to inform us through our dreams. We should tell him of our willingness to allow Him to speak to us in this way. At the same time, it is wise to pray a prayer of protection, since to open ourselves up to spiritual influence can be dangerous as well as profitable. We simply ask God to surround us with the light of His protection as he ministers to our spirit.

Second we should begin to record our dreams. People do not remember their dreams, because they do not pay attention to them. Keeping a journal of our dreams is a way of taking them seriously. It is, of course, foolish to view every dream as deeply significant or as some revelation from God. The only thing more foolish is to view all dreams as only chaotic and irrational. In the recording of dreams, certain patterns begin to emerge and insights come. It is not long before it is easy to distinguish between significant dreams and those that are the result of having seen the late show the night before.

That leads to the third consideration- how to interpret dreams. The best way to discover the meaning of dreams is to ask. “You do not have, because you do not ask” (Jas 4:2). We can trust God to bring discernment if and when it is needed. Sometimes it is helpful to seek out those who are especially skilled in these matters. Benedict Pererius, a sixteenth-century Jesuit, suggested that the best interpreter of dreams is the “…person with plenty of experience in the world and the affairs of humanity, with a wide interest in everything human, and who is open to the voice of God.”

Excerpt from:
Celebration of Discipline
By Richard J. Foster

Songs and Hymns of the Earliest Greek

Synesius.
IX. (95-107).

O blessèd Father, Friend,
My soul do Thou defend.
From soul-devouring dogs; defend my prayer,
Defend my deeds, my life,
From their destructive strife
And charge Thy holy angels, that they bear
To Thee this offering of my mind:
For hymns they carry that with Thee acceptance find.


Transcriber: Stephen Hutcheson

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Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for the gracious and compassionate and righteous man. 

To Love and Be Loved was Sweet to Me...

Confessions
By Saint Augustine
BOOK THREE, CHAPTER I

I came to Carthage, where a caldron of unholy loves was seething and bubbling all around me. I was not in love as yet, but I was in love with love; and, from a hidden hunger, I hated myself for not feeling more intensely a sense of hunger. I was looking for something to love, for I was in love with loving, and I hated security and a smooth way, free from snares. Within me I had a dearth of that inner food which is thyself, my God--although that dearth caused me no hunger. And I remained without any appetite for incorruptible food--not because I was already filled with it, but because the emptier I became the more I loathed it. Because of this my soul was unhealthy; and, full of sores, it exuded itself forth, itching to be scratched by scraping on the things of the senses. Yet, had these things no soul, they would certainly not inspire our love.

To love and to be loved was sweet to me, and all the more when I gained the enjoyment of the body of the person I loved. Thus I polluted the spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscence and I dimmed its luster with the slime of lust. Yet, foul and unclean as I was, I still craved, in excessive vanity, to be thought elegant and urbane. And I did fall precipitately into the love I was longing for. My God, my mercy, with how much bitterness didst thou, out of thy infinite goodness, flavor that sweetness for me! For I was not only beloved but also I secretly reached the climax of enjoyment; and yet I was joyfully bound with troublesome tics, so that I could be scourged with the burning iron rods of jealousy, suspicion, fear, anger, and strife.


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About the Author

Saint Augustine of Hippo was born November 13, 354, in Tagaste, Numidia, and died August 28, 430, in Hippo Regius. He was bishop of Hippo in Roman Africa from 396 to 430 and may have been the most important theologian of the early Christian church during the last days of the western Roman Empire. His best known works are the Confessions and the City of God. The first is an autobiographical account of Augustine's intellectual and spiritual journey toward Christianity, recounting the sins of his flesh and the errors of his thoughts from his earliest days to the temptations of the present. Although his mother, Monica, was a devout Christian, Augustine was not baptized in infancy. His father, Patricius, was a pagan, at least until very late in his life, but Augustine always retained the fondness for Christianity imparted to him by his mother. At the age of nineteen, having shown promise during his earlier studies at home, he was sent to Carthage to study. His family's resources were modest, but Augustine put them to good use. The works of Cicero sparked an interest in philosophy that led him eventually to an interest in religion. At first Augustine became involved in Manichaeanism and with the ideas of the material duality of good and evil, but by the age of twenty-eight he had grown disillusioned. Because of his relationship with a woman of low birth, with whom he had a son, Augustine was allowed only into the lower ranks of the Manichaeans. He was, however, permitted to ask questions of his "more enlightened" celibate superiors. They proved unable to answer his many questions about the divine, and after nine years he left his concubine and son to pursue further studies in Rome. It was there that he came across the Neoplatonists, in whose ideas he found solutions to some of his most fundamental questions about the being of God and the nature and origin of evil. Augustine's most important intellectual moment occurred while he was listening to a sermon by Ambrose and suddenly came to appreciate the insights of Christian theology. In 386 he openly converted, and in the following year he was baptized by Ambrose.

He returned to Africa in 391 and was ordained a priest. Five years later he was made bishop of Hippo, and he served in various capacities as teacher, judge, and pastor. He wrote extensively, applying his critical pen against such heretical groups as the Manichaeans, the Donatists, and the Pelagians. In his master work, The City of God, Augustine took up the questions pursued by earlier scholars such as Origen. Unlike Origen, however, Augustine eschewed the temptation to ascribe much importance to human powers of free will. Instead, he favored a mystical view of the relationship between an omniscient God, for whom all things are known and without whom nothing is possible, and the salvation of the sinner, who bears full responsibility for his actions. This relationship could be encompassed only by an expression of divine grace. Augustine thus marked out a distinct position apart from the Pelagians (among whom Origen is sometimes classed as a sympathetic, intellectual forebear) and set in motion forces that would continue shaping church doctrine until the Reformation. The City of God was in his mind before 410, when Rome was sacked by the Visigoths (one of many Germanic tribes descending from north-central Europe), and took the form of a Christian apologetic against pagan claims that the decline of the empire was a result of apostasy from its ancestral gods. On the day of his death, in 430, the Vandals were besieging Hippo.

A Glimpse at an Ancient Book 

"6"

My sleep was shatterd by blinding light
High and lifted up upon His throne
Was the great I AM and me alone

Jehova´s glory was all about
All heaven shook with the angel shout:
"Three times holy is this God of might"

Here am I - send me
Here am I - take me
Here am I - use me
Here am I - spend me
Send me, take me, use me, spend me,
I am not my own

His righteousness screams that I have sinned
Holy conviction rips me apart
A coal from the fire burns through to my heart

Clean was I by the holy King´s choice
Then all was still except for his voice
"Who will go for us? Whom shall i send"

Here am I - send me
Here am I - take me
Here am I - use me
Here am I - spend me
Send me, take me, use me, spend me,
I am not my own

HERE AM I!

(poetic interpretation of Isaiah 6, by One Bad Pig)