A La Carte (May 11)

The God of love and peace be with you today.

(Yesterday on the blog: We Have the Light So We Can Be the Light)

Nearly There

This is moving. “Two decades later and my son is gone. No gravestone marks his death, or memorial service to recall in our grief. Instead, my son lives apart from us. His path, he said, forked away from faith, and as he walked that wide way, it lead him away from us. Mother’s Day was filled with a filtered light, light and shadow held an uneasy truce, joy and sorrow held hands long into the evening. The boy I watched struggle into this world is now struggling with the world.”

Congregations of Bruised Reeds

“There are so many ways to become bruised. A few people in my church grew up with belligerent fathers. Now, every time a man raises his voice, they become disproportionally afraid. Others in my church have lost loved ones to suicide. I officiated the funeral of my grandfather who took his life. A dozen people in my church suffer from chronic illness. And to one degree or another, all of us struggled over the last year with aspects related to Covid. There are just so many ways to become bruised.”

The Shared Priority of American Evangelicalism and the Medieval Papacy

Keith Mathison is beginning a short series that looks plenty interesting. “I want to spend a couple of days thinking about three of the ways American evangelicalism is attempting to kill itself: first, by following in the footsteps of medieval Roman Catholicism in one particularly dangerous way, second, by following in the footsteps of modernist religious liberalism in one particularly dangerous way, and third, by adopting the theologically and ethically suicidal attitude of radical anti-intellectualism.”

Health Wealth and Heterosexuality

In this one, Stephen McAlpine makes an interesting connection between the prosperity gospel and new legislation against conversion therapy. “It seems clear that orthodox evangelicals are going to be swept up by the culture for our historic inability to shut down, and repudiate, the over-realised eschatology found within many influential Pentecostal groups.”

Context Matters: God’s Mercies Are New Every Morning

I appreciate these “Context Matters” articles from Knowable Word. In this one Ryan Higginbottom looks at the well-known words, “God’s mercies are new every morning.” “When we learn to read the Bible as an actual book and not as a professionally-bound collection of pull-quotes, we’ll find that some of our favorite passages take on deeper and more sobering meanings.”

The Lord Has Become Like an Enemy

And then, a second article on Lamentations. “Most Christians don’t have a problem seeing God’s hand in the blessings of life. Give us a new job, a narrowly-avoided accident, or an energizing time with a friend and we’re eager to point to God as the giver. It’s harder for us to see God bringing difficulty our way. How can we attribute bad circumstances to a good God? The author of Lamentations did not have this modern problem.”

Flashback: The One Sure Mark of Christian Maturity

The Bible has the power to mature us, and as we commit ourselves to reading, understanding, and obeying it, we necessarily grow up in the faith. That maturity is displayed in the good works we do more than in the knowledge we recite.