A Witness Or Lawyer?

"Spirituality speaking,

there is a huge difference between being a witness, than a lawyer."

- Ryan Couch -

Paying It All While Exhausting No Resource.

"Thou payest debts,

owing nothing;

remittest debts,

losing nothing."

- Augustine -

"The Confessions of St. Augustine"

I Deny My Inner Suicide Bomber

"To be a saint is to be fuelled by gratitude, nothing less. Christian discipleship is as much about having a mellow and forgiving heart as it is about believing and doing the right things. But this is not an easy thing to accept. Irrespective of our ecclesial or political ideology and Ethos, liberal or conservative, we all tend to write off this demand as a non-negotiable in regards to Christian discipleship. Invariably, we tend to rationalize it away by pointing to the weight and urgency of our causes, be they dogmatic or moral. We see this, in its worst example, in suicide bombers, who are religiously convicted that their cause is so important that they can be martyrs, for God, by destroying dozens or perhaps even thousands of innocent lives. When the case is this extreme, we see more easily what misguided religious fervour looks like and how important religiously it is to have a mellow and forgiving hurt. But we are not as perceptive in seeing the rationalizing suicide bomber inside ourselves when, for the sake of God and Truth, our own religious and political discourse is laced with bitterness, anger, jealousy, demonization, lack of respect, lack of graciousness, and lack of elementary Christian and human charity. We also tend not to recognize in the embittered moralizing that sometimes emanates from our ecclesial communities.  A mellow and gracious heart is not a negotiable Christian virtue. It is an essential demand of Christian discipleship."

- Roland Rolheiser. Sacred Fire 

"I simply began to pray for forgiveness, thinking the cherries might line up and the light atop the machine would flash, spilling shiny tokens of good fate. What I was doing was more in line with superstition than spirituality. But it worked. .... I liked this God very much because you hardly had to talk to it and it never talked back."

- Donald Millar. Blue Like Jazz

Doomed At Age Seven

"I was doomed to go to hell by the time I was 7. I had been told that if you smoke cigarettes and drink beer, you’re going to hell. And by 7, I was gone."

Former Methodist Willie Nelson

No Deal If I Live?

DEAL IS OFF 

Jack and the two Clarkin boys fought all through their lives. Everywhere they went – weddings, funerals, picnics, hockey games, you name it – they fought.

Then a time came when Jack became very sick and the priest decided he should make his peace with the Clarkins before he died. He instructed them to go over to see Jack, where they all shook hands and made-up. 

It was a beautiful thing to see as the priest declared the feud officially over and called down God’s blessing on the three of them.

But wait, the story is not over.

As the Clarkin boys were making their way to the door Jack got up on one elbow, and in a voice shaking with emotion declared, “You realize of course if I get better this is all off.”

Gospel Of The Worst

"What is the good of our gospel if it does not have space for even the worst among us?"

-Tony Kriz. Aloof

I Want To Be With The Rejected Ones

I want to be outside with the misfits, with the rebels, the dreamers, second-chance givers, the radical grace lavishers, the ones with arms wide open, the courageously vulnerable, and among even—or maybe especially—the ones rejected by the Table as not worthy enough or right enough. 

- Sara Bessey

Loving Larger

"Well he’s a human being that continues through a process of change, like the rest of us. Only he welcomes it while I tend to resist it. I have noticed that he loves larger than most, is quick to forgive, and even quicker to ask for forgiveness."

( The Shack. William P. Young)

He Is Especially Fond Of You

"“Willie, he was there! Oh, was he there! Wait till I tell you. You’ll never believe it. Man, I’m not sure I do either.” Mack stopped, lost in his memories for a moment. “Oh, yeah,” he said at last. “He told me to tell you something.”“What? Me?” Mack watched as concern and doubt traded places on Willie’s face. “So, what did he say?” Again he leaned forward. Mack paused, grasping for the words. “He said, ‘Tell Willie that I’m especially fond of him.’“ Mack stopped and watched his friend’s face and jaw tighten and puddles of tears fill his eyes. His lips and chin quivered and Mack knew his friend was fighting hard for control. “I gotta go,” he whispered hoarsely. “You’ll have to tell me all about it later.” And with that Willie simply turned and left the room, leaving Mack to wonder, and remember."

(The Shack. William P. Young)

Grace's Undoing

"Once you have known Grace, your tit-for-tat universe is forever undone..."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now 

The First Dawn of Light Concerning His WIll

Wonderful Prevenient Grace - Arminian Theology explains that it is the kind of Grace that goes before mankind, it does not follow after him.

A friend shared a story of how things seem to fall in place after a huge move across the hemisphere, with no jobs secured before  they departed. Things keep falling into place for them.  It made me think of Prevenient Grace, and I shared that with him. (Not to suggest that all things become rosy all the time, because we all know this is not true, nor is it the point.).

However, Grace is moving and working out front, not reacting from behind. Grace is out working in front of humanity to being them to the Light of Jesus's Will, presence, truth, and love. I loved this idea ever sense I first encountered the theological concept of  Prevenient Grace. It is beautiful, and seems to resonate with the beating heart of the scriptures very well, indeed, in my estimation. 

Let me put it this way; Grace, is "Proactive" in every way, not "Reactionary".  

We often view Grace as that "stuff", that "thing",  God sends along AFTER all the messes, tragedies, brokenness, and failures we have created in life. It's a mess cleaner upper.

God's Grace is certainly all of that, but maybe much more as well. Prevenient Grace  suggests that God goes ahead of us, giving us markers, light, indicators, promptings, possibilities.

Very much in tune with the ministry of the Spirit in John 16:8,  "And when he comes, he will convict the world of its sin, and of God's righteousness, and of the coming judgment."


What if Grace is "Pre" and "Post".  Both before us and after us.

Now the clincher. What if the penchant  of Grace is before, is much more before than after?
What if Grace were a noun and a verb?

What if,

Grace is God- and is God at work,

Grace is Jesus- and is Jesus at work,

Grace is the Holy Spirit - and is the Holy Spirit at work.

What if Grace is not a "THING" at all.

?

What if Grace is found looking more ahead, than behind?

"In John Wesley's sermon "On Working Out Our Own Salvation" (sermon #85), Wesley stated that prevenient grace elicits, "...the first wish to please God, the first dawn of light concerning His will, and the first slight transient conviction of having sinned against Him" (Wikipedia)

A Better Life For You and Me

" You realize that it's a mistake to aim for a better life, if it comes at the cost of worsening someone else's. So, you get creative. You decide to play a more difficult game. You decide that you want a better life, in a manner that will also make the life of your family better. Or the life of your family, and your friends. Or the life of your family, and your friends, and the strangers who surround them. What about your enemies? Do you want to include them, too? You bloody well don't know how to manage that. But you've read some history. You know how Amity compounds. So, you start to wish even your enemies well, at least in principle, although you are by no means yet a master such sentiments."

- Jordan Peterson: 12 Rules For Life 

What Forgiveness Can't Be

"Forgiveness can never be indifference."
- George MacDonald 

God Forgives A Thousand

"God passes by all he can. He passes by and forgets a thousand sins, yay, tens of thousands, forgiving them all....."
- George MacDonald. From Christ in Creation

Long Memories

"I sloughed off a lot of my past. In a small town, everyone knows who you are. You drag your years behind you like a running dog with tin cans tied to its tail. You can't escape who you have been. Everything wasn't online then, and thank God for that, but it was stored equally indelibly in everyone's spoken and unspoken expectations and memory."

- Jordan Peterson. 12 Rules for Life 

Understanding Meaning Of The Cross In Each Generation

"But when belief is challenged either by Skeptics or by Voices within ourselves, we need to look hard not simply at relevant biblical texts, but also at are traditional formulations of what precisely we mean by saying that Jesus "died for us." Each generation of Christians and each Church in its own way needs to do this. The task is difficult.

~ N.T. Wright. The Day The Revolution Began 

Ten Thousand Surrenders to Mercy

"The mystery of forgiveness is God’s ultimate entry into powerlessness. Withholding forgiveness is a form of power over another person, a way to manipulate, shame, control, and diminish another. God in Jesus refuses all such power....

We do not attain anything by our own holiness but by ten thousand surrenders to mercy. A lifetime of received forgiveness allows us to become mercy....."

Richard Rohr

Trustin That God Always Acts Redemptively

We are saying that he is the changeless one. His love never fluctuates,; his Mercy is inexhaustible; his wisdom cherishes all that is truly good; his power can always be trusted to act  redemptively....

So we need not speculate what will be his response whenever we turn to him, whether it be from an hour of victory or from a night of defeat; from an act of which we are proud, or from one of which we are heartily ashamed.. ..
It matters not who we are or where we are, a holy God is our God in whom there is nothing to adulterate or diminish or alter the transcendent qualities which our weakness or our sinful is need. He is always God. Nothing is ever missing from him...."

(Albert Edward Day. The Captivating Presence)

Preach Everything But The Gospel

"In New York they preach about virtually everything; only one thing is not addressed, or is addressed so rarely that I have as yet been unable to hear it, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life."

—DIETRICH BONHOEFFER