Hey France!

I cannot pray in the name of Jesus to have my own will; the name of Jesus is not a signature of no importance, but the decisive factor. The fact that the name of Jesus comes at the beginning does not make it a prayer in the name of Jesus; but this means to pray in such a manner that I dare name Jesus in it, that is to say, dare to think of Him, think His holy will together with whatever I am praying for.

To the Christian, love is the works of love. To say that love is a feeling or anything of the kind is really an un-Christian conception of love. That is the aesthetic definition and therefore fits the erotic and everything of that nature. But to the Christian, love is the works of love. Christ’s love was not an inner feeling, a full heart and what-not: it was the work of love which was his life.

Go Soren!!!

As we tell the Jesus story, we draw people to him as a person worthy of allegiance rather than as a proposition to be evaluated.

This is from an article that I was looking at about Leslie Newbigin here:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/january/1.44.html?start=2

Renew in my heart, O God, the gift of your Holy Spirit, so that I may love you fully in all that I do and love all others as Christ loves me. May all that I do proclaim the good news that you are God with us. Amen.

“If you love life, don’t waste time—for time is what life is made of.” Bruce Lee

It is said that Louis the 14th King of France expressed his admiration for the Duchess of Orleans, by doing her the honor of breaking wind in her presence.  – ah, to live in France!  :-)

Headline: GIRL SCALPED BY BERSERK TORTILLA-MAKING MACHINE

“the double wrestle of the church with its Lord and with the cultural society with which it lives in symbiosis.” H. Richard Niebuhr on the topic of his book Christ and Culture.

Karl Barth was no less refreshing yesterday as he deftly described the total receptivity and objectivity of the artist he loves, to whose music he listens daily. He rejoiced that in Mozart’s music “the sun shines, but without burning or weighing upon the earth” and “the earth also stays in its place, remains itself, without feeling that it must therefore rise in titanic revolt against the heavens.” He bowed before an art in which “the laugh is never without tears, tears are never unrelieved by laughter.”  the words in which Barth summed up the grandeur of the Austrian composer: “Mozart teaches us the sovereignty of the true servant.”

The spiritually alive person enjoys the ordinary things in life in a most extraordinary manner.  -Tony Campolo

True and yet challenging-ouch!

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

There are some that only employ words for the purpose of disguising their thoughts.

^{Psalm 73:21} When I became embittered
and my innermost being ^[g] was wounded, ^(V)

²² I was a fool and didn’t understand;
I was an unthinking animal toward You. ^(W)

²³ Yet I am always with You;
You hold my right hand. ^(X)

²⁴ You guide me with Your counsel,
and afterwards You will take me up in glory. ^{(Y) [h]}

²⁵ Whom do I have in heaven but You?
And I desire nothing on earth but You. ^(Z)

²⁶ My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength ^[i] of my heart,
my portion forever.  HCSB