Category: Reflect Actively (Page 7 of 8)

The hate-filled words expressed over the months of this campaign season lead many friends, staff, and students today to fear for their safety in the United States. Here is one friend, Jonathan Walton (staff director in NYC), expressing where he is at.

I was challenged by Martin Luther King Jr. in Strength to Love this morning that “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars…Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” (p47)

As we reject and speak out against hateful and unjust rhetoric, practice, and systems, Jesus calls us to do it with the love of God, the only thing that drives out fear.

One step of love this morning is to call friends for whom this election causes fear to listen and share as we seek to apply God’s invitation to love in this season.

“Love is the most durable power in the world. This creative force, so beautifully exemplified in the life of our Christ, is the most potent instrument available in mankind’s quest for peace and security.” (King, p51)

For more on how InterVarsity is engaging please read Tom Lin’s charge to us found here.

I am just over 30 days from ending my sabbatical and going back to my role in the Central Region. One thing I will miss is  Continue reading

What is gained from reflecting?

Continue reading

Of all the things I have waited for in my life, bread was never one until Continue reading

In my sabbatical research on improving my decision making, I found a simple technique to make better decisions – Continue reading

I am glad for the work God is doing in me but there is even better news.  Continue reading

This week as I engaged in lament I was surprised by the help of an old Bible memory verse standby, Continue reading

What are we to do when we hear about the killing of another Black man or woman during a traffic stop? A stop that I, as a White male, would make it home from to see my family. Many of us are uncertain.

Soong-Chan Rah in Prophetic Lament says our lack of fruitful engagement comes from our loss of the practice of lament to the “triumphant and success oriented narrative” (Rah p.72) in American evangelicalism.

The worship life of Israel took seriously the role of lament. In contrast, the worship life of American evangelical Christianity is often devoid of lament. We ignore a key expression of worship and prayer and the opportunity to speak to God out of the midst of suffering. (Rah p.177)

Without re-engaging this discipline we will continue to be stuck in uncertainty. Like any new thing we need teachers, we will stumble, but with God’s help we will begin to meet God and be led by him in the midst of the brokenness surrounding us.

It is easy as we read the Bible to resonate with the disciples and others who follow God in scripture. What could be wrong with this?

As a White American Christian I (we) am so used to centering myself (and being centered by others) in the story of God that I’ve forgotten a crucial element brought up by Willie James Jennings in The Christian Imagination. “Someone allowed us [Gentiles] to draw close enough to hear that there was a conversation going on between God and a people in the first place.” (Jennings, 252)

His challenge to me (and us) is to rediscover the position of reading scripture as an outsider brought in on an ongoing conversation in which we are not at the center.

My first two months of sabbatical were full of reading, reflecting, retreating, working on my office and engaging with family. Often, I’ve thought, “I should do this more when I am not on sabbatical”. As I continue to engage in this time would you pray for clarity on how to include these life-giving practices regularly in my work?