Saturday Smile - Valentine Delinquent

Friday Favorites - Bands on the Run

I wish I had a private plane so I could make it to these concerts. It's getting hard to keep up with the kids, but I'm glad for all the great opportunities they're experiencing.
 

My son, Tyler, will be playing along with Matthew Perryman Jones for this unique event with the Nashville Ballet.

...But the flowers have yet to come
February 13-15
Choreography by Gina Patterson
Music written and performed by Matthew Perryman Jones

A revival of Gina Patterson’s wildly popular 2013 creation with Nashville-based singer/songwriter Matthew Perryman Jones. Local artist Emily Leonard lends her talents to this collaboration as she paints a large scale canvas during each performance.

My sons, Page and Jack (The Cactus Blossoms) will be performing at the 2015 Ameripolitan Music Awards next week.

2015 Ameripolitan Music Awards
Tuesday, February 17th 2015
Paramount Theatre, Austin TX
 
We’re not leaving Country Music behind, we’re taking “real” country music with us. Ameripolitan Music LLC and The Ameripolitan Music Awards were created to benefit and acknowledge artists whose work does not readily conform to the tastes of today’s “country” or other music genres and organizations. It also provides fans with a means of finding these artists and their music.

Thursday Thinking - Sacrifice and Atonement

Fuller Magazine has posted a very good essay by theologian/author John Goldingay, "Sacrifice and the Death of Christ." It has some very good insights on the meaning and practice of sacrifice rituals in the Old Testament, addresses some commonly mistaken convolutions regarding sacrifice and God's wrath, and gives some interpretive guidance on Isaiah 53. If you're trying to understand how the death of Christ serves as a sacrifice for sin, I think you'll find this article to be very helpful.

Sacrifice and the Death of Christ
by John Goldingay

When Christians think about sacrifice, they commonly make two assumptions. One is that sacrifice is essentially a way of dealing with the problem of sin. The other is that it deals with sin by causing God to stop being angry with us. Neither Old Testament nor New Testament supports these two assumptions. Sacrifice does sometimes have something to do with sin, but dealing with sin is not its main object. God does get angry, but sacrifice does not relate to God’s anger.

The Meaning of Sacrifice
The New Testament speaks of sacrifice in a number of connections apart from seeing Jesus’ death as a sacrifice that deals with sin. For instance, when we give ourselves to God in response to God’s giving himself to us, it is an act of sacrifice (Romans 12). Paul talks about being poured out as a libation over the sacrifice and the offering of the Philippians’ faith and of the Philippians’ gifts to him as an offering to God (Phil 2:17; 4:18). When we testify to what God has done, it is a sacrifice of praise (Heb 13:15).

The New Testament’s way of thinking coheres with the Old Testament’s way of thinking in this respect...

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

John Goldingay is the David Allan Hubbard Professor of Old Testament in the School of Theology. His most recent publications include the 17-volume Old Testament For Everyone series (WJK/SPCK, 2010–15), which provides clear, concise comment on all the Old Testament Scriptures, and The Theology of the Book of Isaiah (InterVarsity Press, 2014).

Wednesday Words - For Marriage

As spring unfolds the dream of the earth,
May you bring each other’s hearts to birth.

As the ocean finds calm in view of land,
May you love the gaze of each other’s mind.

As the wind arises free and wild,
May nothing negative control your lives.

As kindly as moonlight might search the dark,
So gentle may you be when light grows scarce.

As surprised as the silence that music opens,
May your words for each other be touched with reverence.

As warmly as the air draws in the light,
May you welcome each other’s every gift.

As elegant as dream absorbing the night,
May sleep find you clear of anger and hurt.

As twilight harvests all the day’s color,
May love bring you home to each other.

“For Marriage” by John O’Donohue in To Bless the Space Between Us (Doubleday) © 2008.

Tuesday Tome - The Love that Matters

I first heard of Charles Featherstone's memoir, The Love that Matters, through a post on Rod Dreher's blog at The American Conservative. Dreher had just read the unedited galley of the book on a flight to Boston and was very moved. He wrote:

"It [The Love that Matters] started out good, and it kept getting better, and finally I couldn’t believe how good this thing was. I’m not kidding when I say this: Charles Featherstone has written an American spiritual classic. I have never read a book like this — one that’s so ragged, raw, and real. I couldn’t put it down, except that one time, when the shock of recognition was so great that I had to set the book aside and think deeply about what I had just read. People are going to be talking about this book when it comes out." 

That was enough to make me preorder my copy. It arrived a week or so ago and yesterday I finished reading it for myself. It's an exceptional and ordinary story of a person trying to figure out who he is, what life is about, the discoveries he makes, the joys and traumas he experiences, and the person he becomes through it all.

I'm not sure what audience the book is for, but I am somehow in that audience. It's definitely something I would recommend to pastors, to those trying to make sense of calling, to those who feel marginalized by institutional church, and for those interested in what a spiritual journey looks like for an unchurched person looking for meaning and direction in post-protestant, post-modern, pluralist America.

Here are a few of my favorite passages, which are unsurprisingly toward the end:

"Suffering poses no theological puzzle for me. It challenges no long-held assumptions I have about God. Or the order of the world. It is the way of things. People are, more often than not, inexplicably brutal, cruel, and violent. I believed in God not despite my own suffering, or the suffering of the world, but quite possibly because of it." [p. 204]

"I didn't yet know if any of the people at seminary really cared about me, but they said they did. They spoke a lot about being welcoming and open to strangers, and while I was inclined to view those words as nonsense––lies no one really meant, things said mostly to make people feel good about themseles, designed to be discarded once the strangers proved to be too strange and dealing with them either too difficulte or too uncomfortable––part of me said no, stay, make them prove it." [p. 210]

"I don't know if any of this could have happened without the mess, without the pain, without reliving and going through some of the worst feelings I've ever had about myself and the world. But how true was that for me generally? . . . Anything could have happened. But we don't live in a theoretical world. I met God, learned to love, learned to be loved, in the things that actually took place. In the history that happened." [p. 214]

"Forgiveness is power, the power to say 'you do not get to tell me who I am.'" [p. 218]

"Prostestantism tolerates no ecstatic visions, except those of the social reformer. All others are irrational and unreasonable, to be explained away by a resort to soft science or medicated into oblivion.

"Because in Newton's cosmos, the the Protestant imagination, there is no God in disordered lives. Such people are, at best, the subjects of much sympathy, charity, and even professional management (whether from social workers or prison warders). But if they cannot get their act together, well, that must be proof that God doesn't really bless them. God blesses ordered lives, lives in which people make all the right decisions, plan the right plans, want the right things, save and acquire and achieve.

"Believers earn their blessing through their hard work, their patience, their adherence to expectations and norms. Because that's how God blesses the world.

"There's still a lot of this in Protestantism. Lutherans speak a great deal of God's unearned grace. And we are actually living that out here and there. But for many, our lived confession, how we really treat each other, is actually much harsher: 'If you really, truly need God's grace, you clearly have not earned it.'

"We are not kind, or as kind as we should be, to people whose lives are, for whatever reason, a mess. We don't want to see God––or God's call––in the mess. And we should." [p.227]

Monday Music - Come, Lord, Quickly

Look at the headlines – another shooting downtown today,
Too many absent fathers, too many teenage runaways.
Under the table crooked politics in DC,
Handguns go to High School, sex and murder on TV.

So many homeless, so many starving in foreign lands,
Civil war and ethnic cleansing, abortion on demand.
Porno on the playground, an epidemic of STDs,
Doctor assisted suicide, reckless sexuality.

Caught in the spiral of our downward spin,
The whole world groans for Your returning.
When will your dawning end this night of sin?
My eyes look up and my heart’s filled with yearning, Jesus.

It's on the Nightline – on the cover of a magazine –
Terrorists bomb a shopping mall, blood on the silver screen.
Marital breakdown – another family torn in two;
Cocaine at the corner store, another military coup.

Caught in the spiral of our downward spin,
The whole world groans for Your returning.
When will your dawning end this night of sin?
My eyes look up and my heart is filled with yearning, Jesus.

Amen!  Amen!  Come Lord!
Even so, Lord come quickly!
Amen!  Amen!  Come Lord!
Even so, Lord come quickly!

“My Eyes Look Up” by Dave Burkum, from So Far To Go, © Copyright 1993 by Dave Burkum. LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD

Sunday Supplication - Grace and Truth

O God, you have revealed your grace and truth through Jesus your only-begotten Son. We have seen your glory revealed in his birth, his life, his words, his transfiguration, his death, his resurrection, and his ascension.

Give us the faith to truly see Christ, and by his light, help us to see our own lives and our purpose. Strengthen us to take up our own crosses, to walk in his ways, and to be changed into his likeness from glory to glory.

We are thankful for your forgiveness and we ask that, as you have forgiven us our sins, you would help us to be quick to forgive those who have sinned against us.

We thank you, Father, for the grace and comfort you extend to us. We praise you for being a God of comfort and consolation. Help us to always look to you for the strength and hope needed to face our troubles.

Give us eyes to see the hurts of those around us. Give us hearts of compassion, and make us instruments of your peace.

Through Christ, we pray. Amen.

Saturday Smile - World Peace Strategy

Friday Favorites - Go Set a Watchman

What a wonderful surprise! My favorite news story of the week! Concerns have been raised about whether or not Lee is being used or pressured. I hope that's not the case. It would be sad if this is just a scheme to profit from Lee's legacy while tarnishing it. Time will tell.


SOURCE:
Harper Lee to publish new novel, 55 years after To Kill a Mockingbird
Go Set a Watchman, completed in the mid-50s but lost for more than half a century, was written before To Kill A Mockingbird and features Scout as an adult

When an author’s debut novel wins the Pulitzer prize and goes on to sell 40 million copies, perennially topping lists of the world’s best-loved books, it’s understandable that they might be apprehensive about the reception of a second.

Harper Lee, who sent the literary universe into a spin on Tuesday after she announced she would be releasing a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird this summer – 55 years after her debut – appears to have no such fears. “It’s a pretty decent effort,” she said of Go Set a Watchman.

News of its publication this summer stunned fans of the 88-year-old author, who have waited for a second novel from Lee since 1960, when she released her debut tale of racism in the American south.
The novel was written by Lee before To Kill a Mockingbird, but is set some 20 years later. It features Lee’s beloved character Scout as an adult, returning to her home town of Maycomb from New York to visit Atticus, her lawyer father, along with many of the characters from Lee’s debut...

Click Here to Read the Complete Article

Thursday Thinking - The Power of Empathy

 

Published on Dec 10, 2013

What is the best way to ease someone's pain and suffering? In this beautifully animated RSA Short, Dr Brené Brown reminds us that we can only create a genuine empathic connection if we are brave enough to really get in touch with our own fragilities.

Voice: Dr Brené Brown
Animation: Katy Davis (AKA Gobblynne) www.gobblynne.com

Watch Dr Brené Brown's full talk:
The Power of Vulnerability.

Dr Brené Brown is a research professor and best-selling author of Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead (Penguin Portfolio, 2013). She has spent the past decade studying vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame.

Find out more about the RSA: 
http://www.thersa.org

Wednesday Words - The Patience of Ordinary Thing

It is a kind of love, is it not?How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

"The Patience of Ordinary Things" by Pat Schneider from Another River: New and Selected Poems. © Amherst Writers and Artists Press, 2005.

Tuesday Tomes - Current Books

These are the books I'm currently reading.
The descriptions are from the publishers.

I'm reading this one over the next few months with my Wednesday Night Pathways Class.

The Story of Stories (Karen Lee-Thorpe)
In Story of Stories readers join Karen Lee-Thorp on a guided tour of Scripture where she retells the Bible's major stories, draws out the significance of overlooked subtleties and shows how individual vignettes contribute to Scripture's overarching story of redemption.

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This is the selection for my current Valley Book Club. ––

Every Good Endeavor (Tim Keller)
With deep conviction and often surprising advice, Keller shows readers that biblical wisdom is immensely relevant to our questions about work today. In fact, the Christian view of work—that we work to serve others, not ourselves—can provide the foundation of a thriving professional and balanced personal life. Keller shows how excellence, integrity, discipline, creativity, and passion in the workplace can help others and even be considered acts of worship—not just of self-interest.

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This one is a personal selection and I should finish it this week.

The Love that Matters (Charles Featherstone)
''I read the unedited galley on the flight to Boston this morning. It started out good, and it kept getting better, and finally I couldn't believe how good this thing was. I'm not kidding when I say this: Charles Featherstone has written an American spiritual classic. I have never read a book like this--one that's so ragged, raw, and real. I couldn't put it down, except that one time, when the shock of recognition was so great that I had to set the book aside and think deeply about what I had just read.''
--Rod Dreher, author of The Little Way of Ruthie Leming --Wipf and Stock Publishers

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This is one I'm reading as a prep resource for my current teaching series at Valley.

Preaching the Parables (Craig Blomberg)
A guide to preaching the parables that shows how to first interpret the parables, then proclaim their significance.

Monday Music - I Press On

I press on to take hold of that
for which Christ took hold of me.
I press on to take hold of that
for which Christ took hold of me.

I press on through the thick and thin,
I press on everyday;
I press on through the lose and win,
For I know he's the way.

I press on to take hold of that
for which Christ took hold of me.

"I Press On" by Dave Burkum from Fireside: Worship and Scripture Songs, © Copyright 2006 by Dave Burkum. 

BUY OR LISTEN

Sunday Supplication - Good Things to Do

O God, you are our strength. We put our trust in you. We come to you in prayer because you are merciful. We come to you in our weakness because you are gracious and faithful and able to help us do what we could never do on our own. Help us to fulfill your purpose for our lives. Help us to walk in your ways. Help us to please you in our attitudes and our actions.

We confess our sins and ask you to forgive us.  We ask that you would change us and strengthen us. Help us overcome temptation and escape the sins that entangle and destroy us. Give us the grace and generosity we need to forgive others, just as you have forgiven us.

O God, you have fearfully and wonderfully made each one of us. You know the purposes you have for us and you have equipped us to accomplish those purposes. Help us, as we seek you with whole hearts, to discover our gifts and to understand how we can use them to serve you. Give us good things to do and willing heart to do them.

Through Christ, we pray. Amen.