As I have been going through Romans once again with my Sunday school
class, it has increasingly become evident to me how hard it is – and at
the same time how important it is – to realize that this isn’t a
Christian document.
1. It was an effective campaign. People everywhere noticed the
billboards, the ads, and seemed to be talking about the rapture/end of
the world happening at 6 p.m. yesterday. And I don’t mean just the
talkers on Facebook and Twitter, the ordinaries on the street, like you
and me.
This is the question that comes back to me, pretty often, when I am
talking with people about dreams: for a community that knows how to play
and loves to work together (and vice versa), eats together and feeds
other hungry people, infects with laughter and deals with tears, loves
and is loving, accepts and is accepting. The list goes on, but those are
the basics.
Speaking to a professor at Liberty
University, Frederica Mathewes-Green was surprised to find out that the
professor and some of the young people at Liberty were going to a Celtic
liturgical service at a local Baptist church (link;
relevant conversation starts at the 28:50 mark).
Last year Professor Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina cranked out yet another book, God’s Problem. Dr. Ehrman breathlessly announces that he has discovered that God has a big problem – suffering.
Ehrman dismisses various futile attempts on the part of God to explain
why there is suffering, pain, and disaster in the world – the Book of
Job, Ecclesiastes, and Jesus.
My husband, a musician, likes to talk about different ways people love
music. Most people love music of some sort or another, but they love it
mostly as consumers. In other words, they are listeners. They turn on
a radio, or pop in a CD or love sorting the tunes on their ipods by
genre, or creating a nice "mix" of music to listen to.
It seems as though every time I read a well known piece of scripture, I find something I had never seen before. This week in our Lectionary Group, TKT noted that Cleopas and the other disciple stop walking in order to talk to Jesus.
If there is one thing we natives of rural northeast Missouri know how to
do, we know how to "do funeral." One of the greatest comforts in this
life--but only if we choose to ride with it--is the small town funeral.
I remember during the 14 years I lived in Columbia, going to funerals
and visitations was a somber, sterile activity.
I’m not ashamed to say
that I woke up at 5:15 am on Friday to watch the royal wedding. For
anyone interested in plumbing the socio-political imagination of the
British this was a must see event.
