My Daughter’s Kind of Thankfulness is a Kind of Pre-Thanking
Another Week Ends: Liam’s Hymn, UnOptimistic Hope, Medical Forgiveness, Neo-Feudalism, Toxic Productivity, Bradbury Imputation, and Bee Gees
1. First up, just in the nick of time, Oasis main-man/’90s troublemaker Liam Gallagher ushers us into the season with a soul-stirring hymn to the “kind of love that’ll be there when the world is at its worst.” The tune is what they call a real belter, potent enough to close out the next season […]
When Hope Turns to Ashes: The Weakness of John the Baptist
“Are You the One Who is to Come, or Should We Expect Someone Else?”
When Christians Sing of Hope: Glenn Packiam’s Worship and the World to Come
It is the Battle Cry of a Battle that has Long Been Won
Please Scream Inside Your Heart
Acknowledging Our Pain and Connecting with Fellow Sufferers, Including Jesus
Blame and Denial from Lisbon to Florida: The Solid Ground of Christian Hope
“The wise deceived me; God alone has reason.”
On the shortness and uncertainty of life
“O God, whose days are without end, and whose mercies cannot be numbered: Make us, we pray, deeply aware of the shortness and uncertainty of human life…” (Book of Common Prayer, pg. 504)
There are no good words for
our collective destination. Apart
from tragic, untimely, too soon.
The wound at the heart of the world.
Another angel added; a road well walked.
Words won’t do now, not for this.
The living bear all the grief of those who
were and are and will one day die.
Our plans, kingdoms, minds fall flat
before the period at the end of each line.
We don’t hold the pen, our days will end.
Where then is mercy? Whither hope?
In the beginning was the Word
and the Word wept
for the world, for you, for untimely,
and too soon. The Word weeps still
with sea-born tears that wash over
again, again with each new sentence end.
The mercy is presence not relief.
Hope is a face, two hands, scarred feet.
A quiet stand at the doorway and entry in
to a place where to end is only to begin.
The Weight of Advent: Speak What You Feel, Not What You Ought to Say
As Black Friday reaches further back in time each year, so as to even colonize the twilight hours of Thanksgiving Day, we in North America are no strangers to the porousness of time. Commercial interests can collapse chronology such that two times can overlap in a way purely linear calendar time can’t countenance; we can […]
Hopelessly Devoted: The Conviction of Things Not Seen (Hebrews Chapter Eleven Verse One)
This morning’s devotion was written by David Zahl for The Mockingbird Devotional. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1, NASB) When you look at your career, your marriage, your health—do you spend more time thinking about what you don’t have than what you do? Even […]
Living in Denial in Victory
If you read enough popular Christian books, listen to enough Christian sermons, radio shows, or podcasts, you could reasonably get the idea that Christians are like the Black Knight in Monty Python and The Holy Grail. With cries of, “I’m invincible!” the Knight continues to fight, even after King Arthur has relieved him of all of […]
