The More Things Change

Sunday morning at Mars Hill, rocking with the David Crowder Band. I was thinking of all the similarities to the church of my childhood:

1957: Elvis wears a white belt.
2007: Rob Bell wears a white belt.

1957: Neighbor named Jack Daniels has a goat.
2007: David Crowder has a Jack Daniels goatee.

1957: All the boys are wearing Keds.
2007: All the boys in the band are wearing Keds.

1957: One square dude on the platform.
2007: One dude of a square platform.

1957: Singing ". . . like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee" and thinking, "What's a fetter???"
2007: Singing ". . . like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee" and thinking, "What's a fetter???"

1957: Standing room only for all services.
2007: Standing in the room for all of the service.

1957: Greatest desire: to be right.
2007: Greatest desire: to be N.T. Wright.

1957: Don't forget the offering.
2007: Don't forget the "joy boxes."

Truer Words Seldom Spoken

"Well, I'll tell you, Dubin. Why we need God. Why I need God. To forgive us," he said then, and with the words his anger almost instantly subsided to sadness. . . . "Because when this is all over, this war, that's what we'll need, all of us who have done what war requires and, worse, what war permits, that's what we'll need, in order to be able to live the rest of our lives."

General Roland Teedle in Ordinary Heros by Scott Turow

Make Mine with Cream Cheese

"I read such an interesting article on Gnosticism the other day," chips in Mr. Local Parson, . . . It referred to that splendidly readable book by--" He says a name that sounds like Inane Bagels, but I realise it's probably Elanie Bagels--or maybe Elaine Pagels, since the "b" sound was more of a pop than a blast--but Mr. Local Doctor, not listening, says irritably: "I don't understand this Gnostic stuff. What's the core premise?"

From The Heartbreaker by Susan Howatch

New Year's Restitutions

To M and J: sorry for all the craziness in 2006. My new word for 2007: mental health (technically two words). You bring me joy, even when the toast lands honey-side-down in the yard.

To J and R: thanks for blessing us with a part in the process of forming little humans. Sign me up for another "Night with Grandpa" (see new word above).

To D and E: thanks for sharing your first night in your own home with me. Don't know how to make up for that but will try.

To A: wish you were with us more but someone has to do what you do (except Quakers, Mennonites, Amish, and Jehovahs Witnesses). Stay safe.

To family and friends: I can't ever repay your kindness and love this past year. But I'd like to try.

To V: You would be so proud of them all. Thinking of you, this week of our 33rd anniversary.

Truer Words Seldom Spoken II

He stood up suddenly, not waiting for my reply, but instead of moving to the door he walked to the window, drew back one of the curtains and stared out into the dark night. "Yet sometimes it's not so easy to let a spouse go, I realise that," I heard him say. "No matter how much went wrong with the marriage there was still that profound commitment in the beginning, and how sad it is, isn't it, to be forced to witness the painful death of so many cherished hopes and dreams."

Nicholas Darrow to Carter Graham
in The High Flyer by Susan Howatch

Truer Words Seldom Spoken

"But I was now standing in Sophie's shoes and I knew life was neither so simple nor so clear-cut . . . . When you love someone you long to trust them. When you love someone you yearn for the relationship to come right. When you love someone forgiveness is easy, patience is natural and hope becomes a way of life. How easy it is to endure too much suffering and lose sight of the place where the line against abuse has to be drawn!"

Carter Graham in The High Flyer by Susan Howatch

Wright Stuff

There is a fad in some quarters about a "theology of incarnation," meaning that our task is to discern what God is doing in the world and to do it with him. But that is only half the truth, and the wrong half to start with. John's theology of the Incarnation is about God's Word coming as light into darkness, as a hammer that breaks the rock into pieces, as a fresh word of judgment and mercy. You might as well say that an incarnational missiology is about discovering what God is saying no to today and finding out how to say it with him. That was the lesson Barth and Bonhoeffer had to teach in Germany in the 1930s, and it's all too relevant as today's world becomes simultaneously more liberal and more totalitarian. This Christmas, get real, get Johannine, and listen again to the strange words spoken by the Word made flesh.

N. T. Wright, "What Is This Word?"
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/decemberweb-only/151-42.0.html

Newtonisms

As to myself, it is given me to trust in the Lord Jesus for life and salvation – I know he is both willing and able to save. Upon him as an All-sufficient Saviour and upon his Word of promise I build my hope, believing that he will not suffer me to be put to shame.

My exercise of grace is faint, my consolations small, my heart is full of evil, my chief sensible burdens are a wild ungoverned imagination and a strange sinful backwardness to reading the Scriptures and to secret prayer. These have been my complaints for many years, and I have no less cause of complaint than formerly.

But my eye and my heart is to Jesus. His I am, Him I desire to serve, to Him I this day would devote and surrender myself anew.

John Newton, January 1, 1773

Freaky Conjunctions of Randomness?

Earlier in the week: Joanna meets with her posse at Subway in Middleville and is introduced to the new youth director at a nearby church.

Saturday: Joanna and Dennis clean up kitchen. Dennis mentions that the tablecloth he is putting on the table, as well as the dishes and silverware were purchased for a dinner with a former female friend that didn't happen because she got sick. FFF and Dennis subsequently parted.

Saturday night: Matt and Dennis visit a local church to hear Matt's guitar teacher play in the band. The band rocks out the house. On the way to the foyer for Christmas cookies and punch, Dennis sees someone out of the corner of his eye that looks like the FFF.

Moments later: Across the room Dennis sees the husband of the nemesis who spearheaded Peggy's departure from Middleville. Shivers runs up or down Dennis's spine. Oddly, nemesis is nowhere to be seen--could husband be escaping nemesis?

Several moments later: Matt tells Dennis he has a call. It is FFF who WAS at the church and thought she recognized Dennis, her FMF.

Many minutes later: FFF reveals that new youth director at local church is actually her youngest son. Neither realizes that son has already met Joanna. Dennis has never met youngest son.

Some indeterminate minutes later: Dennis accidentally hangs up the call in mid-sentence, which would force FFF to call information once again to get his number and call back. She does.

Many, many minutes later: Dennis and FFF have rehashed past four years of life experiences and agree to meet for coffee at some indefinite date after the holidays.

Question: Freaky, random coincidences or practical Calvinism at work???

Doomed to Repeat

"Considering the size of the problem, the equipment that is involved on the other side, the [Cuban] nationalists fervor which may be engendered, it seems to me we could end up bogged down. I think we should keep constantly in mind the British in the Boer War, the Russians in the last war with the Finnish and our own experience with the North Koreans. . . ."

"An invasion would have been a mistake--a wrong use of our power. But the military are mad. They wanted to do this."

--John F. Kennedy, November 5, 1962

From An Unfinished Life by Robert Dallek

Truer Words Seldom Spoken

Alice: I suppose the conservative ones will say marriage should be for ever.

Nick: I think they'll all say marriage should be for ever as far as a priest is concerned, but I know what I'm going to say to them in reply. . . . I shall say that although I wanted above all else to heal the relationship and keep the marriage alive I had to recognise in the end that no healing--no cure, I should say--was possible; I shall remind them that cures don't always happen, because God doesn't operate by waving a magic wand. But what he does try to do constantly is to redeem what goes wrong, and in redemption is the healing. That's why I've got to accept what happened and learn from it. It's because the learning will in the end become part of the redemption.

Alice Fletcher and Nicholas Darrow in The Wonder Worker by Susan Howatch

If Ted Haggard Read Howatch

"Now let me lay out the unvarnished truth for you, Alice, and this isn't a prediction which may or may not come true. This is fact. . . . When any religious community goes to pieces the collapse almost always begins with a loss of integrity manifested in the form of sexual license. The leader uses and abuses the women around him--and men--and then the whole enterprise, fueled by an atmosphere of jealousy, suspicion and anger, descends rapidly into chaos.

Lewis Hall in The Wonder Worker by Susan Howatch

Change the Names, Still the Same

A German professor of European history: "It was this younger generation that brought France into the war--this and Clemenceau, who is still living back in 1870. . . Oh, you simple Americans! You do not seem to realize that such things [British propaganda] are made to be published in the school books of the future, not for actual use, not to be seriously believed by the experienced and the disillusioned. That has been the story of European politics for centuries, since long before you dear naive people came into existence. You are like a new-comer dropping into a poker game that has been going on since long before you learned to distinguish one card from another. You do not guess that the deck is pin-pricked and that every kind of underhanded trick is tacitly allowed, so long as the player can get away with it."

Vagabonding Through Changing Germany by Harry A. Franck, 1920

Olivia's Mom

Olivia's mother passed away Sunday morning in Panama City, Florida. Please read the beautiful reflection by Sara at www.sarahillman.blogspot.com.

Truer Words Seldom Spoken

"What a strange life we all lead in this town," he said, "and all because we think we're doing the right thing for the country."
"If all the people who talk about doing the right thing for the country only did the right thing for the country," Brig said with weary dryness, "what a wonderful country it would be."
"It is a wonderful country," the director of the Post said. "It just gets a little mixed-up sometimes."
Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (1959)

Truer Words Seldom Spoken

"Like a city in dreams, the great white capital stretches along the placid river from Georgetown on the west to Anacostia on the east. It is a city of temporaries, a city of just-arriveds and only-visitings, built on the shifting sands of politics, filled with people passing through. . . . They come, they stay, they make their mark, writing big or little on their times, in the strange, fantastic, fascinating city that mirrors so faithfully their strange, fantastic, fascinating land in which there are few absolute wrongs or absolute rights, few all-blacks or all-whites, few dead-certain positives that won't be changed tomorrow; their wonderful, mixed-up, blundering,stumbling, hopeful land in which evil men do good things and good men do evil in a way of life and govenment so complex and delicately balanced that only Americans can understand it and often they are baffled."
--Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (1959)

Mr. President's Neighborhood

A semi-regular educational program designed to wean viewers from naive optimism and nascent jingoism.

Episode 3: Mr. P Says "Just Say No to the Course"
http://mm.dfilm.com/mm2s/mm_route.php?id=3076336

Episode 4: Mr. P Fiddles with a Riddle.
http://mm.dfilm.com/mm2s/mm_route.php?id=3076353

[Paste the URL in your browser if necessary or just convenient.]

Religious Priorities, Take II

"Do you suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused? Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we then prohibit and abolish women? The sun, the moon, and the stars have been worshipped. Shall we then pluck them out of the sky? ... See how much He has been able to accomplish through me, though I did no more than pray and preach. The Word did it all. Had I wished I might have started a conflagration at Worms. But while I sat still and drank beer with Philip and Amsdorf, God dealt the papacy a mighty blow."

--Martin Luther

Truer Words Seldom Spoken

"We know so little about even those who are closest to us," said Alex. "We're all mysteries to one another--and often we're profound mysteries to ourselves."
. . . He closed his eyes. Then suddenly he said very clearly: "Oh God, how we all lie to one another!"

--Alex Jardine, Ultimate Prizes by Susan Howatch

"Most people have, at some time or another, to stand alone and to suffer, and their final shape is determined by their response to their probation: they emerge either the slaves of circumstances or in some sense captains of their souls."

--Charles E. Raven, A Wanderer's Way
Quoted in Ultimate Prizes by Susan Howatch

Truer Words Seldom Spoken

At the last dinner party I had attended, some inebriated youth had tried to tell me that the Beatles were greater musicians than Beethoven; that was the moment when I knew beyond doubt that the 1960s had parted company with reality.

--Charles Ashworth, Absolute Truths by Susan Howatch