It’s dark, in the bible, when Christmas is spoken.Always a bolt from the blue for the broken.It’s the valley of shadow, the land of the dead,It’s, “No place in the inn,” so He stoops to the shed.He’s born to the shameful, bends to the weak,becomes the lowly: the God who can’t speak!And yet, what a […]
In my morning meeting with The Boss He said, “Approve what is excellent, and whatever is excellent, and whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” And then later in the meeting […]
God destroys and thwarts and makes foolish our prized popularity and paragons of wisdom and eloquence. God offers stumbling and folly. God chooses what is foolish, weak, low, and despised. What you GOTTA KNOW [bigtime know! …ONLY know …resolve to know nothing other than this know] [1Cor.2.2]!?!?!? How you gotta be with people… in weakness […]
In early December we are imaginatively immersing ourselves in the story of ACTS during my morning meetings with The Boss. Here are some of the crazy things we are seeing… In chapter 14 The Boss says, “In past generations I allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. Yet I did not leave […]
I’m listening to a book called Low Anthropology (by David Zahl). In the book David talks about the tyranny of positivity. The tyranny of positivity is stuff like, a 15 year old kid gets last place in a tennis tournament, and while driving home the kid’s dad says, “Don’t let this get you down. You’re […]
Think of a leader. Someone you actually know. Like a teacher. A principal. An elder in your church. A police officer. A fireman. A business owner. A mentor. A parent. An upstanding citizen in your neighborhood. Think about their family. Think about their spouse. Now, ask yourself, do they have another spouse ? Do they […]
Yes. It’s an inescapably peculiar reality, but we do indeed encourage everyone (including children) to read the Bible. Which means, sooner or later, they will perhaps read the following… A certain man of the sons of the prophets said to his fellow at the command of the Lord, “Strike me, please.” But the man refused […]
I was recently reading some ancient literature about Jesus of Nazareth, and to be perfectly honest there were some things that made me uncomfortable. For instance, Jesus of Nazareth was from NAZARETH! That place was seedy! It’s hard to imagine anything good ever emerging from Nazareth! And it seems like anyone from Nazareth should probably […]
Yesterday we had a big meeting to imaginatively inhabit some of Isaiah’s prophecy. We envisaged an itsy-bitsy fragile shoot growing out of a rotting stump. We assumed that nothing good could ever come from this stump, and this tiny sign of life did not in the least persuade us that wholesale redemption was going to […]