The lives of those fully engaged in the human struggle will be riddled with bullet holes. Whatever happened in the life of Jesus is in some way going to happen to us. Wounds are necessary. The soul has to be wounded as well as the body. To think that the natural and proper state is to be without wounds is an illusion. Those who wear bulletproof vests protecting themselves from failure, shipwreck, and heartbreak will never know what love is. The unwounded life bears no resemblance to the Rabbi. –Abba’s Child by Brennan Manning, Chapter 9, “The Rabbi’s Heartbeat”
A final highlight from reading Manning’s book. I choose to find it encouraging.
Jesus was barely breathing, it seemed, before someone was coming for him. Until it was finished, he never donned a bulletproof vest. He apparently agreed; wounds were necessary.
As a follower, a disciple, our hope is to resemble. That entails a few necessities about wounds:
Expect them in full engagement.
Taking a soul hit requires healing as much as a body hit; soul hits don’t indefinitely release us from living anymore than a flesh wound does. Respect and treat them the same.
Our wounded Rabbi understands. Our hope rises through his wounds.
Chapter six, “Present Risenness,” in Brennan Manning’s Abba’s Child caught me offguard. The resurrection theme has been on alert to my ears for the last year. Manning’s language both challenges and refreshes. Read these highlights to experience it.
For me, the most radical demand of Christian faith lies in summoning the courage to say yes to the present risenness of Jesus Christ….This yes is an act of faith-a decisive, wholehearted response of my whole being to the risen Jesus present beside me, before me, around me, and within me.
The resurrection of Jesus must be experienced as more than a past historical event…in other words, the resurrection needs to be experienced as present risenness…If our faith is alive and luminous, we will be alert to moments, events, and occasions when the power of resurrection is brought to bear on our lives. Self-absorbed and inattentive, we fail to notice the subtle ways in which Jesus is snagging our attention.
The present risenness of Jesus as “life-giving Spirit” means that I can cope with anything. I am not on my own.
Hope knows that if great trials are avoided, great deeds remain undone, and the possibility of growth into greatness of soul is aborted. Pessimism and defeatism are never the fruit of the life-giving Spirit but rather reveal our unawareness of present risenness.
May your day flow with the life-giving Spirit of present risenness.
I finished reading Brennan Manning’s Abba’s Child for the first time over the weekend. Regardless of your take on his life, there is some good stuff in there.
For me, it started in the foreword by Jon Foreman with these thoughts:
In my songs, I’m always looking for light. I’m looking for a window or a mirror-something to frame my experience here on the planet in a new way that allows me to see the truth. Why am I always looking for these windows and doors? Because my ears become deaf, my eyes become blind. I desperately need new ways of looking at the world and at myself. I have a friend who is a visual artist. He defines “the artist” not as someone who creates beauty but as someone who looks for it. And to that end I would say a good songwriter does the same thing: hoping for more than just a new chorus, longing to be free from the same old patterns, to be transformed by the renewing of the mind moment by moment, day by day.
That definition of an artist struck a chord. For those who believe they missed out by not having creative artistic skills, you are not excluded.
The awe in your eyes when beauty surrounds you is artistic.
Some authors clearly are gifted writers, have a way with words, and express themselves with little effort, so it seems. Tish Harrison Warren impresses me as one.
Having not grown up in liturgical church world, her book title intrigued me. The hope that she’d make connection between what happens on Sunday to living Monday through Saturday seemed promising and refreshing. Hope found.
Our hearts and our loves are shaped by what we do again and again. -Chapter 2, Making the Bed: Liturgy, Ritual, and What Forms a Life
The weekly worship ritual has always challenged me. In comparison to my growing up years in Baptist world, I knew the song title of the next hymn just by the page number. It’s been a while, but I believe “Victory in Jesus” was #296 in our hymnal. After a couple of decades, that familiarity led to dry and rote worship for someone that it’s all they’ve known.
Warren gives purpose behind the repetition. Much like making the bed daily, our minds and spirits are formed by worship’s repetition. Chapter three expands this idea through the ongoing necessity of brushing teeth. A three-year-old doesn’t understand the why that a twenty-three-old can’t imagine questioning or stop practicing.
How should we respond when we find the Word perplexing or dry or bring or unappealing? We keep eating. We receive nourishment. We keep listening and learning and taking our daily bread. We wait on God to give us what we need to sustain us one more day. We acknowledge that there is far more wonder in this life of worship than we yet have eyes to see or stomachs to digest. We receive what has been set before us today as a gift. -Chapter 5, Eating Leftovers: Word, Sacrament, and Overlooked Nourishment
Chapters 6 and 8 held the most meaningful connections for me. Using the everyday examples of a fight with her husband and sitting in traffic, Warren basically said, “Peace, though hard work, is possible; patience, though power-producing, is pretty basic.”
I imagine the final three chapters could hold the most meaning for other readers. She paints the holiness of communion, work, and Sabbath through the strokes of calling a friend, drinking tea, and sleeping. These principles alone are worth the effort to add this book to your “to read” list.
For those who attended a liturgical service today and may have left wondering or wandering, I’d encourage you to take some time with Warren.
For those churchgoers who can’t imagine being impacted by liturgy on Sundays or any other weekday, chances are the lens your using needs adjusting. This book can help.
For those who are curious about practicing sacred living but not sure where to start, give this book a look. It may be found in the liturgy of your existing ordinary.
Within what felt like minutes one morning last week, I thought to myself, “Am I being punked right now?”
It was the last Monday of July. I wondered if there was some secret conspiracy for everybody to go into react mode about anything and let’s include John. Next thought to myself, “What’s the current state of the moon?”
Along comes my worship pastor yesterday to introduce a song he is thinking about adding to our worship library. There is a piano take version he asked me to listen to. When I found it, I learned it’s actually born out of the artist’s completion of a soon-to-be-released book entitled Everyday Hallelujah.
In the recently released EP, there are two tracks about the book-one introducing it; the other a reading of the first chapter. These three sentences from the first chapter took me back to Monday morning and frankly, just about every day of any workweek:
Worship can be simple acts of service like mowing your neighbor’s lawn, working at a soup kitchen, or buying a stranger a cup of coffee. It can also be in the routines of life-like a prayer when you tuck your kids into bed or in the middle of your workday when you realize you are bringing order to chaos, beauty to the mundane. We worship with the lives we live. -Phil Wickham
Chances are, reader, you fall into one of two categories. You either bring order to chaos or you create beauty out of the mundane. And chances are, those in the other category disrupt your worship…more than you want to admit…out loud.
So here’s a mind shift. Rather than wonder if you’re being punked, what if you said, “Looks like I have an opportunity to worship.”
I actually fall a little into both categories, but my strength is bringing order to chaos. So yeah, I can tend to get ruffled with the chaos dwellers, particularly when they all arrive at the same time on a Monday morning as if they saved it all up from the weekend.
Here’s the challenge: View your bringing order and creating beauty as worship. When we do it together everyday, the result is a hallelujah to the one who knows all about bringing order and creating beauty, the King granting us the lives we live.
Recently I listened to C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed, his reflections after the death of his wife.
He doesn’t hold back. I don’t believe he ever did.
He asks all the questions. He ponders both sides.
He doesn’t provide answers. He voices the frustrating silence of the unknown.
I tried to follow his lead. Rather than take notes, grab quotes, pull out highlights, I observed him observing.
However, this simple statement turned my head:
I do all the walking I can, for I’d be a fool to go to bed not tired.
It seemed like an off-the-cuff reference. He wasn’t addressing challenges about sleeping. He wasn’t trying to give a how-to-grieve example. Honestly, I don’t remember the exact context.
What I know is I appreciated the wisdom, for life in general as well as for someone journeying through grief.
Keep living. Keep moving.
It’s possible. It’s good for you.
Walk it out. Tire yourself out for better sleep.
Do all you can. Then go to bed.
Fools are tempted to wait until it’s bedtime to start walking.
Grief is a journey. Take it all the way to the end.
I think those are drawing near to heaven who in this life find that they need men less and love men more. And to like more in being loved without being needed. For where agape is there, in some degree, is heaven.
Natural loves can become eternal only insofar as they’ve allowed themselves to be taken into the eternity of agape, and this always involves a sort of death.
What a find! Audio recordings of C.S. Lewis from 1958 reading his own work.
The quotes above come from the final chapter on charity and agape love.
I find joy in these words. Kinship permeates in hearing another believer express the truth of dying to the desire to being needed resulting in more love.
Heaven draws near the more we love and allow ourselves to be loved.
On my walk to the recycle container in my community, it’s not uncommon to see something eye-catching for the first time. Recently, this was the one.
There are other larger clusters of similar design that I’ve wondered over, so this one hadn’t stood out. Now I cannot not see it between cul-de-sacs C and D.
I’ve also been walking through Romans. Explains the eye-catching.
Chapter 11 has always grabbed my attention. It’s Paul’s graphic image of wild branches (representing Gentiles) being “grafted in” to an olive tree (representing the Jews). His message is layered, but it ultimately describes exactly who God’s mercy is for…Everyone.
Interestingly, the next chapter starts with words that indicate Paul’s not done with this thought. This continuation is a well-known 1+1=2. Except, I’m not sure we always see the equation.
Chapter 12 pleads for believers to worship God for his mercy by offering ourselves as “living and holy sacrifices.” No individual, no one people group is better than all the others. In fact, we are one; we are reliant on each other like parts of a body.
Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other. Romans 12:4-5NLT
Maybe the equation Paul is telling us is more accurate is 1+1=1.
If I knew an dendrologist (confession: I googled that), I’d invite them on a walk to cul-de-sacs C and D. Imagine what other equations there are to be reminded of…or to consider from the Creator’s point of view.
More from Mark Chironna’s “Rising With Hope” devotional
Here are three clips:
Before you pray for God to change your circumstances, ask Him to adjust your way of seeing them. (Day 22, Being and Becoming)
You are not a compartmentalized being, and God has not called you to disregard any part of yourself. (Day 23, Living in Your Body)
When He searches your heart, you can trust His gentleness. He will locate the triggers of your unrest, but His surgery is not only about removing what needs to go. It is also about resuscitating the precious parts of your heart, including the hopeful, creative places that have lain dormant under the weight of oppression and disappointment. He will awaken you to the living soul you were becoming and were created to be–the one who became hidden from sight over the course of time.. (Day 26, God in Your Depths)
More from Mark Chironna’s “Rising With Hope” devotional
Here are three clips:
We live in a culture where everyone wants to win all the time. That is not exactly a Jesus idea. Instead, it makes people who have lost something feel like they don’t belong. (Day 11, Not a Loser)
Anything that is left broken in a family tree will only be passed down to the next generation. (Day 15, A Healing Life)
When what you buried alive rises to the surface of your consciousness, you can move in the direction of healing and greater peace. What looks like the edge of darkness becomes the edge of hope. (Day 21, In the Mercy of God)
John Gregory 