“Do gooding” is antithetical to Gospel living. Christians certainly will be those who do good but our good deeds will increasingly flow from love, from right motive, from a transformed heart. We are called to love the Lord with all our heart, mind, & strength and that will lead to lived-out obedience to Him. Yet to do good without it being driven by love is sin and less than the Christian calling. Christians while delighting in doing good, should delight even more in showing mercy & forgiveness (driven by the mercy & forgiveness we have received) and even more our delight should be in loving God through bringing pleasure to Him.
Love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly with Thy God. Micah 6:8
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Quotes from Girl Meets God
Here are some of my favorite quotes from Lauren Winner's fantastic book Girl Meets God:
“the very anonymity that made church-hopping appealing has begun to wear me down. I am tired of looking for a church, tired of having my spiritual community be just a patched-together group of Christian friends scattered across the four corners of the earth, folks I can call at any hour but never pray with face to face or eat cheese straws with during coffee hour. I am tired of being expected anywhere on Sunday morning” (30).
[On Christmas Day] “So much for celebrating Jesus’ birthday. I am more like the child who spends Mother’s Day demanding to know why there is no Children’s Day, not understanding that Children’s Day is every other day of the year” (76).
"Hannah, who's a Baptist, often says that a baby can't promise to do everything one promises in baptism. I have never found this a very persuasive argument. It strikes me as too individualistic. The very point is that no baptismal candidate, even an adult, can promise to do those things all by himself. The community is promising for you, with you, on your behalf. It is for that reason that I love to see a baby baptized. When a baby is baptized, we cannot labor under individuals in Christ can or should go this road alone. When a baby is baptized we are struck unavoidably with the fact that this is a community covenant, a community relationship, that these are communal promises” (80).
“Judaism taught me daily to expect God to resurrect the dead. True enough, over the centuries the rabbis have debated the details of Jewish after-life, but it boils down to what you say every day in prayer. And what you say every day in prayer, in the middle of the Shemoneh Esrei (literally, the ‘eighteen,’ because it comprises eighteen blessings), is that God ‘heals the sick’ and ‘releases the prisoner’ and is ‘faithful to raise the dead.’ Easter, it seems to me, is the most profoundly Jewish of all Christian holidays. For a Jew becoming a Christian, bodily resurrection is no surprise. It is what we had been expecting all along” (193).
Why am I a Christian?
“because this with-God-in-Heaven was this end I was created for. I was, as St. Ignatius of Loyola said, ‘created to praise, revere, and serve Him’; I believe, with Augustine, that people desire to praise God, that God ‘prompts’ that desire in us and that the end toward which we restlessly ever move is rest in Him. Or again, there is what Cyril said, right after he instructed his catechumens to allow themselves to be caught in God’s net: ‘Jesus is fishing for you, not to kill you but to give you life’” (194-195)
While I certainly don't agree with everything Winner has to say, she seems to model what it looks like to have a heart for pursuing authentic Christianity.
“the very anonymity that made church-hopping appealing has begun to wear me down. I am tired of looking for a church, tired of having my spiritual community be just a patched-together group of Christian friends scattered across the four corners of the earth, folks I can call at any hour but never pray with face to face or eat cheese straws with during coffee hour. I am tired of being expected anywhere on Sunday morning” (30).
[On Christmas Day] “So much for celebrating Jesus’ birthday. I am more like the child who spends Mother’s Day demanding to know why there is no Children’s Day, not understanding that Children’s Day is every other day of the year” (76).
"Hannah, who's a Baptist, often says that a baby can't promise to do everything one promises in baptism. I have never found this a very persuasive argument. It strikes me as too individualistic. The very point is that no baptismal candidate, even an adult, can promise to do those things all by himself. The community is promising for you, with you, on your behalf. It is for that reason that I love to see a baby baptized. When a baby is baptized, we cannot labor under individuals in Christ can or should go this road alone. When a baby is baptized we are struck unavoidably with the fact that this is a community covenant, a community relationship, that these are communal promises” (80).
“Judaism taught me daily to expect God to resurrect the dead. True enough, over the centuries the rabbis have debated the details of Jewish after-life, but it boils down to what you say every day in prayer. And what you say every day in prayer, in the middle of the Shemoneh Esrei (literally, the ‘eighteen,’ because it comprises eighteen blessings), is that God ‘heals the sick’ and ‘releases the prisoner’ and is ‘faithful to raise the dead.’ Easter, it seems to me, is the most profoundly Jewish of all Christian holidays. For a Jew becoming a Christian, bodily resurrection is no surprise. It is what we had been expecting all along” (193).
Why am I a Christian?
“because this with-God-in-Heaven was this end I was created for. I was, as St. Ignatius of Loyola said, ‘created to praise, revere, and serve Him’; I believe, with Augustine, that people desire to praise God, that God ‘prompts’ that desire in us and that the end toward which we restlessly ever move is rest in Him. Or again, there is what Cyril said, right after he instructed his catechumens to allow themselves to be caught in God’s net: ‘Jesus is fishing for you, not to kill you but to give you life’” (194-195)
While I certainly don't agree with everything Winner has to say, she seems to model what it looks like to have a heart for pursuing authentic Christianity.
Seeking Happiness in Chrisitianity Could Be Misguided
"If you're seeking happiness, don't choose Christianity; choose port wine." C. S. Lewis
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Welcome to My Weblog
Blogging is a new endeavor for me, so please show me some patience. I hope that this blog will be engaging to all and will move us to engage with God more deeply and to live our lives more wholly for Him.
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
My Story (part 1)
I thought it appropriate to tell a bit about how God has brought me to where I am. This was going to be my first post but I didn't finish my "story" and have dropped off from blog land for a year+. I will post my story in parts.
Part 1:
I grew up in a home with two parents who are believers and who failed to talk about the faith very much with me but did seek to live it out in the whole of life, though with many failures (much as I am struggling to model the whole-love in all-of-life faith to my children). I grew up in the Mississippi Delta, in Indianola, home of BB King, cotton, and catfish. This is an area steeped in tradition, known for its hospitality and hypocrisy. Most people that I knew growing up went to church but very few lived much different than if they would have never stepped in the doors of a church. Most people would avoid the biggie sins, at least in public, or at least outside certain parties, but almost no one lived as if their primary mission was to know God deeply and live for Him wholly. By the time I reached 7th grade, I gladly had become trained as a Pharisaical hypocrite, going to church and doing all the right things when others who would look down on me were watching, but with a hardening heart and one that longed more than anything else to be accepted by my peers and to indulge in anything that would bring me pleasure.
Part 1:
I grew up in a home with two parents who are believers and who failed to talk about the faith very much with me but did seek to live it out in the whole of life, though with many failures (much as I am struggling to model the whole-love in all-of-life faith to my children). I grew up in the Mississippi Delta, in Indianola, home of BB King, cotton, and catfish. This is an area steeped in tradition, known for its hospitality and hypocrisy. Most people that I knew growing up went to church but very few lived much different than if they would have never stepped in the doors of a church. Most people would avoid the biggie sins, at least in public, or at least outside certain parties, but almost no one lived as if their primary mission was to know God deeply and live for Him wholly. By the time I reached 7th grade, I gladly had become trained as a Pharisaical hypocrite, going to church and doing all the right things when others who would look down on me were watching, but with a hardening heart and one that longed more than anything else to be accepted by my peers and to indulge in anything that would bring me pleasure.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
