Lent

Lent begins today. I suggest using this devotional and calendar until Easter.

Recommendation

Last night, I finished Gilead: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson.  I recommend that you make it the next book that you read.  I cannot praise it highly enough.  Pick up a copy, and give yourself a few days to finish it- I doubt you'll regret the investment of your time.

Driving Lesson

Please pay attention.....

Biblical Illiteracy

Quotes from "The Problem of Evangelical Biblical Illiteracy. A View from the Classroom" by David R. Nienhuis-

The most important shift...was the shift from theology to morality. The nondenominationalist trend among Protestants tended to avoid doctrinal conflicts by search for agreements in the moral realm. 

Christians schooled in this rather anti-intellectual, common-denominator evangelistic approach to faith responded to the later twentieth-centruy decline in church attendance by looking not to more substantial catechesis but to business and consumer models to provide strategies for growth.

Is it any wonder that Christian youth had little option but to default to thin, pop-cultural platitudes in their attempts to make sense of their faith? 

Philosophers like Charles Taylor argue that inarticulacy undermines the possibilities of reality. So, for instance, religious faith, practice, and commitment can be no more vaguely real when people cannot talk about them. Articulacy fosters reality.

Advent Poetry

A Christmas Carol by Christina Georgina Rossetti

In the bleak mid-winter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak mid-winter Long ago. Our God, heaven cannot hold Him, Nor earth sustain; Heaven and earth shall flee away When He comes to reign: In the bleak mid-winter A stable-place sufficed The Lord God Almighty Jesus Christ. Enough for Him whom cherubim Worship night and day, A breastful of milk And a mangerful of hay; Enough for Him whom angels Fall down before, The ox and ass and camel Which adore. Angels and archangels May have gathered there, Cherubim and seraphim Thronged the air, But only His mother In her maiden bliss Worshipped the Beloved With a kiss. What can I give Him, Poor as I am? If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb; If I were a wise man I would do my part, - Yet what I can, I give Him, Give my heart.