Father's Good Pleasure to Give

Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

-- Luke 12:32

A question might be, what is the kingdom?  ...that He wants to give versus the one that we would like to have.

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Scientific Revolutions

The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.

-- Stephen Jay Gould

Christmas Prayer

Almighty God, who came to us long ago in the birth of Jesus, come again.
Be born in us anew, O Savior and Light of the World. By the power of your Holy Spirit, break through the darkness of our worlds, the darkness of our own hearts, to frighten and free us.

Rouse us. Stir up our hearts this Christmas season. Let heaven intrude
upon our earthly affairs to rip our attention from the darkness of this world
to your Light of Life. Amen.

-- Various sources

Becoming

God became what we are so that we could become what He is.

-- Scot McKnight

How We See Things

We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are.

-- Anais Nin

Humility of Life

Among other things, life is designed to humble us.  It repeatedly offers us this opportunity.  It seems to be more of a matter of how long we choose to resist these opportunities.  But God is patient and seems willing to let life do this work in us.  And, many times it does its work…it humbles us, sooner or later.  Of course, we can choose to fight these things (Him) all the way to the end, whether we know it is Him we are resisting or not. 

I am grateful for news of someone that appears to have yielded to this reality by letting go of her stubbornness and choosing to release some of her pain and to stop using life to make a point about how she has been wronged.  In her mid-50s, the opportunity for humility seems to have prevailed and, at least in part, it appears she has chosen it.  God is not worried about time, about how long such choices seem to take, and perhaps we should be less so as well…in others lives and in our own.

God simply offers us life, each day.  And, each day, we have the opportunity to simply choose Him, to not resist Him, to turn to Him with all that we know and with all that we don’t know.  It seems this is true in almost every area of our lives; we have the opportunity each day to simply choose to start, repentantly, to begin again.  Whether this be with our relationships, our job, our family, our choices in eating, exercise, leisure, worship, etc. we simply have the opportunity to choose each day…to carry all of our reasons not to do something, not to trust, to hold grudges, to complain to justify, or to choose to submit, to be humble, to let go, to turn to God, to repent of what we need to, to ask for help and wait for his provision.  It takes us a while to see how really simple this is, but when we do…we are profoundly relieved and free…to love the way we want to, in the way God wants us to.

Perhaps this is why Jesus instructed us to simply pray each day, that God would provide us what we need to live.  Perhaps this is why it is repeated throughout the scriptures that we always have TODAY…to not harden our hearts and turn to the God, who loves us.   Perhaps it is in this simple, daily, humble living through which God is making all things new.http://familywilliamson.blogspot.com/2010/01/love-ispatient.html

Light

...because light always follows it...and overwhelms it.

Darkness

Learn to not fear darkness.

Extremism

A few nights ago, twelve friends and I attended the lighting of the Portland Christmas tree in Pioneer Square. My friends had all flown in for Thanksgiving, and we decided to join ten-thousand others who walked from all over downtown for the event. What we didn’t know is the spot where we squeezed into the crowd was 25 feet from a van filled with what a young man believed were six, fifty-gallon barrels of explosive material.  Read on...

Christian extremism is willing to die for people, not demonize them to validate their belittlement and oppression.

-- Donald Miller


This Miller post caught my eye.  I think Miller's discussion is helpful and worth considering, especially in light of the media-soup we swim in these days.

I find myself wondering, though, about the 'enemy' as he describes it. I wonder if extremism is still a front for something else, something closer to the real enemy. What do you think the enemy is?

I suspect it is something inside of us (inside me), rather than something out there. ...something like a worship of self, an indulgence of self, a protection of self, a determined defense of our comfort, of our egos, a carelessness about our relationships with others...often reflected in how we think (talk?) about 'others'. In other words, something is fuel for extremism.  What do you think the enemy is?

Unexpected Friendliness

An unexpected friendliness, creates space for wonder. Like the wonder of 'has something changed for that person?' or 'have I missed something somewhere along the way?'

Funny how 'wondering' can often lead to a kind of joy, if we let it do its work.

First December Snow

I felt the sound of jingle today, as our first December snow glinted across my face. It warmed me from the inside, even as my chilled skin stiffened its resistance.