Life instructions

After James 1:19-21 

Simple, really,

these instructions

for life, simple,

that is, to hear

but devilishly

difficult to do.

First, be quick

to hear.

Next, be slow

to speak.

Finally, be slow

to anger.

Your anger is not

God’s anger; it

doesn’t produce

God’s righteousness.

 

Photograph by Javier Allegue Barros via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Vice, Virtue, and Platforms – Elijah Blalock at The London Lyceum.

 

The Canon of the New Testament – Bradley Birzer.

Wages and gifts

After Romans 6:15-23

Slaves of sin

are paid a wage,

a wage whose

end is shame

and death.

Slaves of God

receive a gift,

a gift of life,

of life eternal.

A slave of God

is a slave

of righteousness,

the slavery of life.

The gift is free, 

no strings attached.

The gift is a choice,

freely made.

It is a strange thing

that this slavery 

leads to life. 

Photograph by Ravi Roshan via Unsplash, Used with permission.

The choice of slavery

After Romans 6:15-23

What you follow, who

you follow, becomes

your master, and you

their slave. It is

a choice: you choose

to obey sin, with

its death knell, or

you choose to follow

obedience, with its

sing of life.

You have chosen life,

you are set free from

death, you are now

slaves to life.

Photograph by Zulmaury Saavedra via Unsplash. Used with permission.

What was isn't now

After Romans 6:1-14

The old is gone, not

merely cast aside,

but taken,

a violent act, and

nailed to a tree

of all things, and

there to die

in the only way

it could, With

it gone now, 

the new remains,

a sprouting seed,

set free to grow,

set free from the old,

the old left lifeless,

powerless, forgotten,

absolved.

Photograph by Dietmar Becker via Unsplash, Used with permission.

Contradiction

After Romans 6:1-14

Dead to one thing,

live to its opposite,

how can both happen

simultaneously?

Short answer:

They can’t.

Which suggests

the contradiction

exists in our minds,

in our behaviors,

because we still

confront the one thing

while living the other.

Sin’s a powerful

thing.

Photograph by Pawel Czerwinski via Unsplash, Used with permission.

Life in three steps

After Philippians 2:5-11

What is this life

what is the definition that

cuts away the fluff and

the adverbial adjectives,

that brings the truth

forward into the light? It

begins with equality – 

the idea that equality is

not to be grasped, not

to be sought. That’s step 

one. Step two: empty self 

of self, allow it to drain 

away, self replaced by 

servanthood, service, 

serving others, with serve

being the opposite of self.

Step three: humility, not

without a point or purpose,

but to be obedient, sitting

in the lifelong classroom

called obedience. Like

the author of good news,

we give up the right

to be right.

Photograph by Jake Hills via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads

For many years, Terry Mattingly and the other writers at Get Religion have been writing about how the news media cover religion – the good stories, the bad stories, and the ugly stories. One particularly recent and ugly story has been the Pennsylvania grand jury report on 70 years of sexual abuse of children by priests, covered up and “issue managed” by the church hierarchy. And then came a bigger bombshell – the accusation that Pope Francis knew about the Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s activities – and not only did nothing but actively used the man in ministry. Mattingly notes in two articles that the big story is the one the media are ignoring, and you find it in the words that aren’t being said. The story is posing a major quandary for the mainstream media, because it runs so counter to the accepted media narrative. John Waters, an Irish journalist, challenges his journalistic brethren at First Things Magazine.

Should Protestants care about what’s happening with the Catholic Church? David French at the National Review says yes, and he makes a good case. (And it’s not like Protestants are strangers to the failings of church leaders.)

Michael Kruger, a professor at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, N.C., has been posting a series on “The 10 Commandments of Progressive Christianity.” This week, he took aim at a big one – that Christianity is about being on a spiritual journey. 

Andrew Peterson deletes his Instagram account, Pamela Steiner takes a close (photographic) look at a spider, The Atlantic has a warning about marijuana addiction, and more.

Poetry

Poetry Should Propound – Joe Spring.

Life and Culture

A Blessing and Curse for the Arts – Mark Meynell at The Rabbit Room.

Life Lessons from Paul – Jeffrey Drazen at The New England Journal of Medicine.

America’s Invisible Pot Addicts – Annie Lowrey at The Atlantic.

Wrestling the Giant: Why I Deleted Instagram – Andrew Peterson at The Rabbit Room.

When He Was Still a Long Way Off – Shawn Smucker.

Unpacking Peggy McIntosh’s Knapsack – William Ray at Quillette.

Art and Photography

Barn – Tim Good at Photography by Tiwago.

One of God’s Masterpieces – Pamela Steiner at Closed Doors, Open Windows.

Old North in the Morning Light – Chris Naffziger at St. Louis Patina.

Faith

Pope Francis speaks out on Catholic world's biggest story: No biggie, saith the press and Nuclear war in Rome: Vatican's former U.S. ambassador claims Francis protected 'Uncle Ted' – Terry Mattingly at Get Religion.

Francis and the Journalists - John Waters at First Things Magazine.

Protestants Should Care Deeply about the Catholic Catastrophe – David French at National Review.

Is Christianity Just about Being on a Spiritual “Journey”? – Michael Kruger at Canon Fodder.

The New Thought Roots of the Prosperity Gospel – Thomas Kidd at The Gospel Coalition.

A Story about Love – Eileen Knowles at The Scenic Route.

Writing and Literature

Reading Crime and Mystery Will Change Your Life: 7 Essays about the Transformative Power of Crime Fiction – CrimeReads. 

Music

Gather – Christopher Williams at The Rabbit Room.

Death Valley 8K – The Pattiz Brothers

Painting: Blue Girl Reading, oil on canvas by Frederick C. Freiseke (1935). 

The flower passes

After I Peter 1:4-6

From seed a flower grows,

emerging as a bud, first, 

and then a splitting open,

a sudden rupture into beauty.

In an instant, a moment,

it waves its beauty in the wind,

until it lightens, fades, a petal

falls, then two, it browns

and shrivels with the end of life,

dropping its seed below.

It is but for a short time,

its past defined,

its future assured,

the inheritance secured,

the inheritor protected.

Photograph by Michelle Ivani via Unsplash. Used with permission.

"Walking from East to West" by Ravi Zacharias

It was the mid-1990s, and we were on our way back to St. Louis from a family vacation at Gulf Shores, Alabama. Somewhere in rural Mississippi, as my wife was desperately trying to find a radio station, she flipped to one where a man was speaking in a startlingly clear voice and presenting a defense of the Christian faith.

It was our official introduction to Ravi Zacharias.

Zacharias is the founder and chairman of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. He is an author, speaker, Christian apologist, and radio broadcaster. He’s published numerous books, has outreach centers in Atlanta and Oxford University, and publishes a magazine.

In 2006, he published a book that is part memoir and part autobiography, Walking from East to West: God in the Shadows. It’s the story of where he came from (born in Madras, India, now called Chennai, and raised in Delhi), who his family was, how he found faith, and how he became one of the best-known Christian speakers in the world.

It’s a story that leave you shaking your head, amazed at what looks like all the world as a plan that was unfolded.

The book is full of surprises. He had a great-great grandmother who was a Christian and buried in a Christian cemetery in India. His father, a fairly high government official, and mother attended an Anglican church in Delhi. He had a difficult, often tense relationship with his father, and it was his mother who provided encouragement. And he became a Christian after a failed suicide attempt, when a director of Youth for Christ in India visited him in the hospital and left a Bible with a specific verse for him.

Ravi Zacharias

He explains how he came to be a preacher – almost by accident, when a good friend couldn’t participate in a preaching competition and Zacharias substituted for him at the last possible moment. (The competition involved being given a topic and 30 minutes to prepare before speaking.) He won, surprising even himself.

After he and his family moved to Canada, he found himself in increasing demand for speaking, including in Vietnam during the height of the Vietnam War and Cambodia. He’s known friends, good friends, martyred for their faith. He would go on to found his own international ministry. Yes, it sounds like there was a plan here.

Walking from East to West is a story that leaves one struck with wonder.

Related: A Movie and a Talk.

Top photograph: men weaving fishing nets at Chennai (Madras), India, by Sarathy Selvamani via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Sacred Dying Journal” by Megory Anderson

Inevitably for me, holidays like Christmas are accompanied by all those ghosts of Christmas Past, the holiday celebrations I remember as a child (and which seem to grow more vivid with age). For my mother’s family in New Orleans, Christmases inevitably centered on our house, which had the only room large enough to accommodate everyone for Christmas dinner. Aunts, uncles, cousins, friends of relatives, and my grandmother would start arriving about noon, carrying gifts, food, and especially bottles of beer, wine, and whiskey.

The few times we spent Christmas with my father’s family in Shreveport, a similar gathering occurred at the house of one of my aunts. The only difference was the absence of any alchoholic refreshment, which made no difference to me but always disappointed my father.

I look back now, and realize how few of those relatives are left. My grandmothers died long ago. My parents are gone. I have one aunt left on my mother’s side (out of a total of five aunts and uncles) and none on my father’s side.

And yet, the memories, all good ones, remain.

Death is an uncomfortable topic. We don’t like talking about it. We don’t like thinking about it. We see it as an end, unless we are Christians, and then we see it more as a beginning. But death is a reality that we face, for ourselves, our friends, and our loved ones. It is as much a part of life as birth is.

That understanding pervades the Sacred Dying Journal: Reflections on Embracing the End of Life by Megory Anderson, published by Paraclete Press. The book is, she writes in the introduction, “is intended for those who wish to address their spiritual needs, even though the subject might be at times a bit uncomfortable.”

She divides the journal into four sections: caring for the body and soul, sacred dying in time and space, legacies, and honoring the body / commending the soul. This suggests that we look at death, for most of us, as a process that happens over time. To resist preparing for it and even thinking about it is to resist a very integral part of life.

Megory Anderson

Not surprisingly, the Sacred Dying Journal has a considerable amount of unused space following questions. The questions are designed for reflection, and the space is designed to write down those reflections and the answers that may come. What gives you meaning today? What do you hold on to during times of transition? What have been your most cherished joys? What do you want your funeral to be?

Anderson is the founder and director of the Sacred Dying Foundation, based in San Francisco. A research fellow at the University of Winchester in the U.K., she is also associated with the University of San Francisco and University of California, Berkeley. She received a doctorate in theology of death and dying from Canterbury Christ Church in Canterbury, England. She is also the author of Sacred Dying: Creating Rituals for Embracing the End of Life (2003) and Attending the Dying: A Handbook of Practical Guidelines (2005).

The Sacred Dying Journal is more than a way to consider and prepare for one’s death. It is also a resource that will be left as a legacy for your loved ones. And it could very well be a guide and a treasure you leave behind.

Top photograph by Chris B via Unsplash. Used with permission.