If we do not inhabit the gospel story, first in imagination, and then in action, we will be unable to live it.
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Monday, August 30, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
The ZigZag Café
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
Why is the search for a community life so intriguingly popular today, and what do you see as the value and purpose of Christian community?
Special Offer!
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Special OFFER – FOR THE REST OF AUGUST 2010.
For anyone who buys 3 copies of this book off Amazon.com or anywhere else, and sends proof of purchase to greg dot laughery at gmail dot com along with your name, address, and phone number, I will send you a free copy. Or, if you purchase 5 copies you will receive 2 for free. What to do with extra copies? Practice the economy of gift - give them away to family, friends, and church.
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
Today is crystal clear. It appears there is nothing between sun, sky, and us. God is there. Such a lucid glimpse in nature gives hope for a future seeing that will be even more pristine in the new world to come. For the moment though, we know that tomorrow may bring thick and blustery fog, which will block visibility, leaving us longing for a renewing vision, where illumination will again be perceptible to earthly eyes.
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Monday, August 23, 2010
Special Offer!
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Special OFFER – FOR THE REST OF AUGUST 2010.
For anyone who buys 3 copies of this book off Amazon.com or anywhere else, and sends proof of purchase to greg dot laughery at gmail dot com along with your name, address, and phone number, I will send you a free copy. Or, if you purchase 5 copies you will receive 2 for free. What to do with extra copies? Practice the economy of gift - give them away to family, friends, and church.
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Reflection for the Week
There is no worse testimony than when Christians miss defining moments in the history of the Christian faith. Too much gets trashed and the next generation spends most of its time digging its way out of the wreckage. I believe we are now facing a hugely significant issue that will mark the faith for years to come: science and theology. Unless we are willing to engage with new data and seriously consider our interpretations afresh, there is a danger of leaving behind us the powerful shadow of being ignorant and arrogant.
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Friday, August 20, 2010
Living Mark
Continuing in 1:14-45. The first things that happen are connected to the daily activities of walking and fishing. The province of Galilee, in contrast to the small confines of Nazareth, will be the setting of much of the story up to chapter 8. This location is where Jesus was to find a more Jewish audience, which would have some link with this proclamation of the KOG.
Seeing Simon and Andrew fishing, Jesus invites them to come along – to follow behind him to become fishers of men and women. Immediately they follow. Two others, sons of Zebedee this time, are called by Jesus and follow him at once. These first disciples will begin to form a core in a group of people through whom aspects of God’s rule will eventually become manifest. The quick rhythm of these occurrences of discipleship may indicate a previous awareness of, or even encounter with Jesus, but the narrator gives us little to go on, in order perhaps, to highlight the persuasive authority of the coming One.
The scene, with Jesus and the disciples, now shifts to Capernaum, Sabbath, and synagogue. Jesus, likely to have been known by synagogue leaders, which most Jewish first century readers would easily assume, is teaching in the synagogue. As Jesus begins to teach, his words astound the people, who acknowledge his authority over that of their typical theological influences. At this very moment, in the normal part of daily life in a synagogue meeting, a man possessed by an unclean evil spirit yells two questions and makes a statement: “What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy One of God.”
Opposition is announced here straight off – the unclean spirit assumes that Jesus’ presence means he has a mission of destroying such spirits, and acknowledges what readers, but not yet characters in the story already know: Jesus is the Holy One of God.
In an expression of God’s rule that will manifest itself in the story several times from here on out, Jesus exorcises this unclean spirit with a powerful command that both silences the spirit and brings it under control. Jesus’ order to the spirit is obeyed and the spirit is ripped out of the man with shaking and a scream. It appears, at least from the narrator’s point of view, that Jesus’ aim is to silence the unclean spirit, not destroy it. Again, in response to such a manifestation, the people are astonished. Jesus’ power over unclean-evil spirits is remarkable, and as readers we know that this is a demonstration of who Jesus is in the context of the arriving KOG.
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Thursday, August 19, 2010
PRICE REDUCTION FOR THIS NEW BOOK!
SEE SPECIAL OFFER POSTED BELOW
LIVING SPIRITUAL RYHTHMS FOR TODAY
REDUCED ON AMAZON - NOW 32% OFF.
The ZigZag Café
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
What do you find the most mysterious about the Christian life?
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Special Offer!
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Special OFFER – FOR THE REST OF AUGUST 2010.
For anyone who buys 3 copies of this book off Amazon.com or anywhere else, and sends proof of purchase to greg dot laughery at gmail dot com along with your name, address, and phone number, I will send you a free copy. Or, if you purchase 5 copies you will receive 2 for free. What to do with extra copies? Practice the economy of gift - give them away to family, friends, and church.
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
Searching for better interpretations of God, Scripture, the world, and ourselves is a life long task and joy. This doesn’t mean that in and through our probing investigations, we stand or kneel nowhere. That is simply not a credible possibility. Taking a view as a conscious choice is both valid and instructive when based on interpretative sufficiency, though this is to be done with a tensional configuration of confidence and humility in dialogue.
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Monday, August 16, 2010
Reflection for the Week
Charity and hospitality are fading attributes. Restoring these two features of a Christian confession should be a goal that persistently dominates our sacred calling as those who follow in the footsteps of the crucified and risen One.
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Friday, August 13, 2010
Living Mark
As the story proper begins (1 :14-45), the narrator will shed greater light on Jesus’ mission and identity. Concerned to bring the reader into story time, there is no development of John’s arrest at this point, simply because he is no longer in the picture. Forging ahead quickly, the narrator highlights that Jesus takes on the role as the central character and that this will underscore both a contrast and continuity with the Baptist.
In contrast to John, remember he was outside daily life and everyday matters, Jesus will associate with others in their day by day affairs. Reversing the flow, he will go to the people in towns, villages, and cities proclaiming the good news about God, which he himself is bringing, and is.
In continuity with John, Jesus is both proclaiming and calling people to repent. For the first time in the story he now speaks- Jesus suggests, in a narrative liaison with the prologue, that the fulfillment of prophetic pronouncements have reached their goal -the time has come - something new in the light of the old has arrived. Jesus’ way of saying this is, the KOG has come near. The coming near is an indication of timing. That is, the KOG has now entered the scene of humanity in a new way.
The subject of the KOG has been much discussed in books and commentaries. Let’s just think of the phrase as God’s rule and all that this can imply. To do so is to make room for the polyphonic character of the term, rather than reducing it to a single referent or meaning. Jesus’ statement is saturated with the notion that God is fulfilling the promise that his long awaited rule is now present, yet still awaits completion. Another helpful way to envision the KOG is as a symbol in tension – past, present, future – already and not yet – arrived and not complete. It aims to evoke a whole constellation of thoughts, feelings, observations, and imaginary processes associated with God ruling in word, deed, and action. A fair bit of the story we’re hearing in Mark’s gospel is an expression of this symbol in tension, as it cuts a pathway through a thicket of conflicts, reversals, and antagonisms connected to Jesus’ actions and his teaching.
The following words of Jesus – repent and believe the good news emphasize two things: first the need to change our ways – reverse our direction, and second, to trust in and be committed to the good news, as it will now unfold in the story from here on out. While readers may be expecting some cataclysmic event, as the KOG has come near, the story of Jesus in Galilee, takes a surprising turn. God’s rule is going to manifest itself in some unexpected ways that may surprise us.
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Thursday, August 12, 2010
The ZigZag Café
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
When and in what circumstances would you ever consider a lack of knowledge as advantageous?
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
Sometimes we become so overwhelmed with the state of the world that we lose hope that anything can really change, but change can and does come. Surely, there is much that has to be addressed on the global and local stage; economic blackmail, social chaos, and political subterfuge to mention just a few. Standing for justice and the gift mark us out as those who believe in a God of hope who reveals that it should be different, but the cost is high in that we cannot accept the status quo. Battered around by the current flow of disillusion has the tendency to strip from us a vision of a better future, yet this very emotion is a confirmation that we refuse to accept the present, and in so doing, we make an alliance with the crucified and risen One who led the way.
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Monday, August 9, 2010
Reflection for the Week
Being and knowledge given. What a sensible perspective. The given precedes being and knowledge, as the One who gives stands apart from and is prior to all else. This theological consideration has strong implications for philosophy and the whole of life. That is, ontology and epistemology cannot go it alone, as both are preceded by a life of giveness, which has to begin to be recognized for what it is.
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Thursday, August 5, 2010
The ZigZag Café
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
I think it's harder and harder today to hold to any measure of exclusivity. Yet, if this is the essence of plurality, as I would argue, is it indispensable for Christians to maintain?
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
The Genesis creation drama is transhistorical in that it has the capacity to break out of its immediate cultural context, without denying or effacing it, and to continue to show itself as a story that carries a temporal mark that is fitting for any time. The founding narrative in Genesis—this story of beginnings, sets out a theological, historical, and literary redescription of the world which stands in stark polemical contrast to other ancient Near Eastern portrayals of creation, as well as to contemporary forms of naturalism. Spirituality, as far as Christianity is concerned, begins with creation and therefore must find its place within it.
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Monday, August 2, 2010
Reflection for the Week
Freed for life in a new community with the one who was, is, and will always be, is a startling experience. Broken and enslaved to dying, moment by moment, brings sadness and lament. Renewal shatters the well worn grooves of non-existence, overcoming the threat of terror that so quietly, yet powerfully aims at the grave.
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
