To listen to the whole unabridged class: The Beautiful Folly
Beyond Sunday School: The Ragamuffin Gospel, chapter 11 and A Word After
We have come to the end of The Ragamuffin Gospel, and chapter 11, “A Touch of Folly,” is the right ending. Because after ten chapters, Brennan Manning wants us to admit what normal people have always known about grace.
It is ridiculous.
To listen to the unabridged message click here: The Second Call
When we begin our faith journeys, it often feels easy. It is as if the world goes from black and white to color. We have this overwhelming sense of God’s goodness and grace, and when we are young in the faith, we can be almost radical about it. “I will do anything for Jesus, the one who saved me. I will go to the ends of the earth.” We are motivated by stories of missionaries, we read through the book of Acts, and we think, “I am going to be a radical. It is going to be great.”
Then we start living our lives. We try to follow Jesus through ordinary days, and life becomes very real. So many of the things we expected to happen do not happen. The simple answers we started with bump up against real life and begin to crash around us. We can end up in a place where we no longer know what to do, where we cannot quite get our hands around our faith anymore.
To listen to the whole unabridged class: Limping into the Second Call
Beyond Sunday School: The Ragamuffin Gospel, chapters 9 and 10
I am the baby in our Beyond Sunday School room. I am 50.
Which is exactly why chapter 9 of The Ragamuffin Gospel, “The Second Call,” landed the way it did around our table. We are all pretty squarely in the second calling season of life. And Manning’s great gift in this chapter is the way he talks about it.
Most of us begin with what theologians call an early naivety. A simple belief. God said it, I believe it, that settles it. And that works, for a while.
Then this thing called life happens.
No, the love of our God isn't dignified at all, and apparently that's the way He expects our love to be. Not only does He require that we accept His inexplicable, embarrassing kind of love, but once we've accepted it, He expects us to behave the same way with others. I suppose I could live, if I had to, with a God whose love for us is embarrassing, but the thought that I've got to act that way with other people-that's a bit too much to swallow.
Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel
”I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a tea cup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God.”
Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel
To listen to unabridged message click here: Grace at the Bottom
There was a great theologian by the name of Karl Barth.
He wrote this huge theological treatise called Church Dogmatics. I do not know how many volumes it is, but it is a lot of pages. Barth was a heavyweight in theological circles. He trained a number of theologians coming out of the twentieth century, and he is kind of a big deal in Reformed circles.
You would think a man like that would have quite the answer to this question: “Dr. Barth, when were you saved?”
To listen to unabridged message click here: With or Without Us
We are beginning a new series, and we’re going to spend the next four weeks looking at the little book of the prophet Jonah.
Now, you’ve probably heard sermons on Jonah before. In our family, the story of Jonah was the foundation of my son Ethan’s VeggieTales trauma.
Finished reading: He Who Fights with Monsters A LitRPG Adventure by Shirtaloon 📚
Definitely not as good as Dungeon Crawler Carl but a nice placeholder until the next DCC book hits my Libby app.
Finished reading: Scion by James Islington 📚
I enjoyed this short read from Islington. It was fast paced and enjoyable. It’s a fun take on a BladeRunner type concept.
To listen to the whole unabridged class: Paste Jewelry and a New Law
Beyond Sunday School: The Ragamuffin Gospel, chapters 7 and 8
Chapter 7 of The Ragamuffin Gospel gave me a picture of cheap grace I had not quite considered before.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave us the phrase “cheap grace.” Brennan Manning gives us paste jewelry and sawdust hot dogs. It is grace that looks like the real thing from a distance. It is faith we can put on for public display. It fills a plate, but it does not nourish anybody.
At the center of the chapter is a sentence that fairly punched me in the face. Manning has just quoted a long passage from the letter of James when he writes:
Listen to the unabridged sermon here: Eyes Forward
We have made it. We are here at the end of John chapter twenty-one — our nineteenth week in the Gospel of John. We’re going to put the final touches on this Gospel.
And the nice thing about a last sermon is that we just get to touch on some really simple, easy things brought to the fore here in these last few verses of John. We’re just going to deal with shame, comparison, and eternity. No big deal. Just small little things.
A beautiful Saturday hike at Matthaei Botanical Gardens today before sitting around and watching college football.
To listen to the whole unabridged class: Wonder and Gratitude
Beyond Sunday School — The Ragamuffin Gospel, chapters 5 and 6
When was the last time something ordinary stopped you right in your tracks?
Not a polite “oh, that’s kind of cool,” but a real wow. You just had to stand there and take it in.
“Christ has no body but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours,Yours are the eyes with which he looks Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours."
- St. Teresa of Avila
Hat tip to Englewood Review of Books
An absolutely stunning boat ride today around Ford Lake in Ypsilanti, MI. I am so grateful for friends who invite me into deep conversation and time well spent.
