Reflections on the loving kindness of the Triune God
Relationships define us. Yet most of us share a common sense assumption that we exist as self-defined and self-directed individuals. This unshakeable premise grows out of a shared human experience: that we live and move on the basis of inward, personal deliberations. Even the quiet and private moment of reading just now can be seen …
Read More BondingThis post has already been published on the Cor Deo website. To see it please click here This weekend I flew up to Glasgow for a reunion with Brian and Scott. I first met Brian almost a decade ago when he was a student at the theological college where I was teaching. He is now …
Read More A Scottish GiftMy post this week was delayed because of a leadership conference in Hungary. Among those present at the “ELF” conference were some of the brilliant and powerful leaders in European and British Christian circles today. I was impressed and sometimes very moved by what was offered. And I felt some grief as well. Let me …
Read More LeadershipThis post has first been published on our Cor Deo site. To visit the us there please click here Predestination is a topic that can end a pleasant conversation among otherwise sociable Christians in a nanosecond. I see it, put wryly, as our Enemy’s favorite antidote to Christ’s love. There are a couple of ways …
Read More Predestination?I’m struck with the lack of overt humor in the Bible, especially given how often we readers tend to treat delight and laughter as one and the same. Yet the Bible avoids linking God to laughter even though it speaks of his delight and joy. So joy, yes, but laughter, no. Irony, yes, laughter, no. …
Read More The Divine Last LaughI want to get the word out on a couple of opportunities you may find useful so please forgive this ‘non-blog’ entry. Some of you may be interested in my newly published book, Richard Sibbes – A Spreading Goodness. It’s a revision of my dissertation, a work that others have read and found useful (Rick …
Read More A couple of items . . .This entry is also posted at the Cor Deo site: Cordeo.org.uk In a talk at Saturday’s Delighted by God conference I mentioned my dismay with the “spiritual disciplines”. Later someone asked about it. It’s worth talking about. In the Gospels—in Christ’s ministry—we just don’t find a promotion of the disciplines. By disciplines I mean a …
Read More Discipline & the DisciplinesYears ago John Stott’s book, Christ the Controversialist, caught my attention. He put into words what I was finding in my regular tours through the Bible: Jesus, though gracious and loving, always produced chaos as he rejected the status quo. He was, for instance, deeply spiritual yet without being either a Stoic or a mystic—both …
Read More Christ the ControversialistThis post has also been published at the Cordeo.org.uk website. In John 17 Jesus prayed for his own—for those the Father had given him. In praying for his own he offered a contrast between them and those who are in the “world”. The distinction can’t be missed as Jesus uses the term “world” seventeen times …
Read More Out of the WorldYesterday I was part of a small group of colleagues on a sightseeing trip in Goa, India. We visited the church where Francis Xavier, the founder of the Jesuits, is interred. Or, to be more accurate, displayed. His body is now partially visible in a windowed box on an elevated platform about fifteen meters beyond …
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