counter-intuitive?

Maybe.  But I think Bob Lupton’s right.

evening scripture

Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God. It cost God plenty to get you out of that dead-end, empty-headed life you grew up in. He paid with Christ’s sacred blood, you know. He died like an unblemished, sacrificial lamb. And this was no afterthought. Even though it has only lately—at the end of the ages—become public knowledge, God always knew he was going to do this for you. It’s because of this sacrificed Messiah, whom God then raised from the dead and glorified, that you trust God, that you know you have a future in God.

Now that you’ve cleaned up your lives by following the truth, love one another as if your lives depended on it. Your new life is not like your old life. Your old birth came from mortal sperm; your new birth comes from God’s living Word.

–Peter, I Peter (The Message)

evening scripture

You never saw him, yet you love him. You still don’t see him, yet you trust him—with laughter and singing. Because you kept on believing, you’ll get what you’re looking forward to: total salvation.

—Peter, I Peter (The Message)

you know that fine line between genius and bizarre?

I’m not sure St. Philip’s does.

storytime with mikaydon and timothy

a great and lasting story

 

 … A great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting—only the deeply personal and familiar.

John Steinbeck, East of Eden

God spoke to Cain: “Why this tantrum? Why the sulking? If you do well, won’t you be accepted? And if you don’t do well, sin is lying in wait for you, ready to pounce; it’s out to get you, you’ve got to master it.”

Cain had words with his brother. They were out in the field; Cain came at Abel his brother and killed him.

God said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?”

He said, “How should I know? Am I his babysitter?”

God said, “What have you done! The voice of your brother’s blood is calling to me from the ground. From now on you’ll get nothing but curses from this ground; you’ll be driven from this ground that has opened its arms to receive the blood of your murdered brother. You’ll farm this ground, but it will no longer give you its best. You’ll be a homeless wanderer on Earth.”

Cain said to God, “My punishment is too much. I can’t take it! You’ve thrown me off the land and I can never again face you. I’m a homeless wanderer on Earth and whoever finds me will kill me.”

God told him, “No. Anyone who kills Cain will pay for it seven times over.” God put a mark on Cain to protect him so that no one who met him would kill him.

Cain left the presence of God and lived in No-Man’s-Land, east of Eden.

Moses (most-likely), Genesis 4 (The Message)

you know that fine line between funny and weird?

I’m not sure Mark Malkoff does.

game of tag and i’m it …

(Though I didn’t start it.) 

One book that changed your life:

One book you read more than once:

 

 

 

 

One book that you would want on a desert island:
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I’m My Mommy; I’m My Daddy

One book that made you laugh:

One book that made you cry:

One (Ash Wednesday meditation from a) book you wish you had written:

One book you are currently reading:

One book you have been meaning to read:

But not for long …

Randal
Mellie
Moe

“good reasons” in kenya?

Cain’s act of murder has been described as “meaningless” (Zenger 1983, 17).  It was not; murders rarely are.  It was governed by a faultless logic, provided Cain’s premises were right.  Premise 1: “If Abel is who God declared him to be [regarded by God], then I am not who I understand myself to be.”  Premise 2:  “I am who I understand myself to be.”  Premise 3: “I cannot change God’s declaration about Abel.”  Conclusion: “Therefore, Abel cannot continue to be.”  Cain’s identity was constructed from the start in relation to Abel; he was great in relation to Abel’s “nothingness.”  When God pronounced Abel “better,” Cain either had to readjust radically his identity, or eliminate Abel.  The act of exclusion has its own “good reasons.” 

The power of sin rests less on the insuppressible urge of an effect than on the persuasiveness of the good reasons, generated by a perverted self in order to maintain its own false identity.  Of course, these reasons are persuasive only to the self.  God would not have been convinced …

–Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace

evening scripture

It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.

This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom.

–Paul, Letter to the Galations (The Message)