the self-control Éa is demonstrating as she practices her first riff on her new Washburn Maverick electric guitar (“Smoke On The Water,” of course)—let’s hope she has the self-control enough to power through the rut of learning your first riff and never moving past it because it’s the only thing you’ve mastered;
the goodness of setting aside time to walk, read, engage in hobbies, and journal. May my good friend learn it, too;
the faithfulness of Carla, my wife of coming on fifteen years next year. Whoa.
“Not one of those men had ever suggested that a person could be ‘called to anything but ‘full-time Christian service,’ by which they meant either the ministry or the ‘the mission field’” (Jayber Crow, 43).
You can be called to anything in which you can love.
“Once I had the reputation, so long as I continued to talk up to it, I did not have to live up to it” (Jayber Crow, 41). Boy, Jayber, didn’t I know that feeling in high school! I bet it’s common to high schoolers.
Is it scripturally defensible to claim that the Cross handles our sin(s) against God but does not do anything about our sin(s) against other people? And that even God’s forgiveness of our sin against Him does not preclude the possibility of rehabilitative action on His part, even punishment? (Restitution would be impossible, of course.) Is this a good way to avoid the pressure to forgive and forget or forgive quickly or superficially and a good way to keep perpetrators from getting off easily and without restitution and without reconciliation and without humbling?
Perhaps journaling has lost its shine to me because it’s naturally ego-boosting—and by that I mean it enlarges one’s sense of self—and thus, in a time when I have a strong sense of self and am quite happy to boot, it seems superfluous and self-centered. There are times when journaling is good—like through my doubt of God—and times, like now, when it’s not really a must. I could tell you about all the good that’s happening in my life right now. But what good would that do?
Perhaps the joy is lost from listening to and making music largely because it feels desultory: There’s no goal. At least, that’s what it seems like the Spirit may be saying as I possibly discerned on my walk to and from Gary Abdullah’s house to drop off an apology note written by Sullivan for his having tripped over an electrical cord and unplugged Inflatable Christmas Countdown Santa. So, here’s a goal in the absence of a relish for musical theatre, anthem gigs at college basketball games, Puddintown Roots, and the Choral Society: Build your repertoire book.
the joy of hunting suburban deer, which, to be successful (which I was not today), apparently means moving around and using binoculars and stalking, which is fun whether you’re successful or not,
the joy of joining my dad, Lorraine, Jami, and Jordan in Honey Brook this past weekend, and
And yet part of the ambiguity surrounding the human experience of creatures’ diversity is bound up with the fact that the multiplication of creatures is coupled with (and from a purely biological perspective, needed to compensate for) their regular destruction; rather than persisting in the capacious environments that God provides, living creatures, whether considered as individuals or as classes, die, so that, for example, only a small fraction of the terrestrial species that have existed in the half-billion years since the emergence of multicellular life survive today. Yet this fact in itself need not be viewed as inconsistent with creation’s goodness. Although death has most often been viewed in Christian tradition as a punishment for Adam’s transgression, Genesis 3:19, 22 (cf. 6:3) may also be read as teaching that humans (and by extension, other earth creatures) naturally return to the dust from which they were taken unless some other factor intervenes (see Gen. 2:7, 17 Ps....
Ethan told me yesterday morning that a group of African protesters known as NO WHITE SAVIORS has been making waves among Adventures in Missions folks and making many points about short-term mission trips with which Ethan agrees. He indicated he wished to talk about it the next time we chat.
I was at the top of Balmoral Way today, and I asked You about it, and my thoughts poured out naturally: There is no answer to whether “short-term missions” are a good idea generally. There is only the question of whether a a given person being on a short-term mission trip is good, i.e., does his or her presence there produce love, unexploitative joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, or wisdom? If it does, then keep doing it; if it doesn’t, then stop.
I appear to have inadvertently discarded most of my skimpy annotations from Fleming Rutledge’s The Crucifixion under the false understanding that there was no limit to the size of the notes field on Goodreads. Ah, well.
All I’m left with at the moment is the following Barth quotation:
What took place on the Cross of Golgotha is the last word of an old history and the first word of a new (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV).
This dovetails nicely with the idea that has matured in me in recent months and about which I taught at church a few weeks ago: The primary thrust of Jesus’ earthly mission was to fulfill both sides of the Levitical & Deuteronomic covenant with Israel.
Beyond the above quotation, the thing I am most impressed with about Rutledge’s points is her insistence that impunity is a very unjust thing.
Before I enter my brief list of annotations of Fleming Rutledge’s The Crucifixion, I wish to register a comment about my future book selections: If a book is heavy, as The Crucifixion at over six hundred pages was, and it’s a vehicle for an idea—especially if it is a survey of ideas about a single topic, such as the Crucifixion or night as experienced in early modern Europe like At Day’s Close—think twice.
I have asked You, Lord, for answers to the following questions, which are really the same:
Why was it Your plan that Jesus be crucified?
What, objectively, happened at the Crucifixion other than the obvious? Where, other than in the minds of humans, does the Crucifixion accomplish anything?
Tonight, I believe I received two more pieces to the answer in the form of questions put to me:
“What, objectively, happens when you spank a child or put him or her in timeout?” The answer is nothing. What happens is all in minds: the mind of the child, the mind of the parents, and the minds of observers.
“If Carla ignored you for a year, would it be OK to simply forgive her and let bygones be bygones, and pretend nothing happened?” The answer is no—for her sake and for mine, no.
That latter point is related to Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo.
Yesterday on our drive home from Sullivan’s band concert at Park Forest Middle School, Carla asked what our distinguishing traits were within the family. We ended up calling her hilarious, Sullivan inventive, Éa strong, and, after “stinky” was offered, “kind” and “loving.” How about that! My life is complete.
“It is obvious that all marriages are imprudent marriages; just as all births are imprudent births. If prudence is your main concern, or if (in other words) you are a coward, it is certainly better not to be married; and even better not to be born.”