W. David O. Taylor Profile picture
Jun 20, 2020 3 tweets 1 min read Read on X
A heartbreaking Father’s Day miscarriage story: “He wanted to fight the doctor. Then he wanted to fight the world. Worst of all he felt powerless to comfort his devastated wife. He was at rock bottom but still somehow dangling over what felt like an abyss.”espn.com/nfl/story/_/id…
“Although one in five pregnancies (nearly a million total) end in miscarriage every year, in our death-denying culture, infant loss is so tragic we are often incapable of even speaking about it.”
“The Goodwins became role models for #BlackLove, a movement celebrating relationships forged by the unique cultural beauty and challenges of black couples. And...they also became a beacon of hope for grieving parents who no longer felt quite so stigmatized or alone.”

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More from @wdavidotaylor

Oct 30
We’re a week away from the election and anxiety is running at an all-time high. And it’s become an addictive pastime to read every shred of news that promises to predict the future. One spiritual discipline that might help us to resist this exhausting reality is the beatitudes. Image
Unlike a prayer that summons our present selves before the God of all grace, a beatitude invites us to imagine our truest selves under the light of God’s grace and, by the Spirit's power, to re-order our desires in order to live into our truest selves.
My hope is that they’ll serve to rescue us from our worst selves—our faithless & fearful selves—and to guide us toward a more charitable and hopeful posture as Christians who retain a God-given responsibility to participate in the civic life of our nation with faith, hope & love.
Read 11 tweets
Apr 22, 2022
Here are questions that I've found useful to ask myself upon turning 50:

Would my wife say, behind closed doors, that I was loving her well?

Do my children feel well-loved in the deepest places of their hearts? Do they feel truly seen by me?
.....

wdavidotaylor.com/blog/on-turnin…
Am I loving my parents and siblings and uncle-with-dementia and nieces & nephews well, as hard as it may, on certain days, to love one’s family members well, truly love them despite all of our irksome personality traits and mystifying habits?
Would my friends say that I was a good friend—if they were required to be 100% honest?

Am I honing the craft of a scholar?

Am I becoming a better teacher, each year a bit better?

Am I leaning in more deeply to my calling as a priest and pastor?
Read 12 tweets
Oct 21, 2021
The deepest, most final desire of embodied humans is to be loved *through* touch by our bodily resurrected Lord. And yet, as Paul Griffiths rightly points out, all too-many Christians feel deeply uncomfortable about this eventual possibility. But they shouldn't.

A thread.
“Most contemporary Christians in Europe and North America...tend to deny that they want to touch Jesus or be touched by him. Isn’t it enough to look and see, they say? Isn’t that what Scripture commends to us—that we’ll see and know the LORD as we are known?"
Why place all this emphasis on touch? Won’t we then be beyond all that? Well, no, we won’t. The characteristic doctrine of Christianity, the assertion that makes it not Platonism and not, really, anything but itself, is that we shall be resurrected in the flesh...
Read 9 tweets
Sep 28, 2020
Pastors have an un-enviable job these days. No matter what they say, no matter how carefully said, no matter what they do, however thoughtful or lovingly done, they will *always* have somebody get mad at them, think ill of them, or judge them hastily. They need our prayers. 1/
Our political atmosphere, like a psychotropic drug gone nightmarishly wrong, makes us mad in the head and wildly reactive. The media, on the left and on the right, winds us up and throws us into an emotional tailspin, even while it keeps us addicted to the "news" of the day. 2/
And pastors face a congregation through digital, non-embodied ways, full of anxious and wearied people who have been jacked up by the events of 2020 and infected with fear by all that could go wrong in their lives, in the lives of those they love, and in this country as well. 3/
Read 13 tweets
Sep 24, 2020
Recent history has exposed a defective doctrine of sanctification in our churches. Sanctification identifies the Spirit's work to mortify sin and to generate new life. Humility is its chief expression. In humility we keep asking ourselves: How have I failed to love my neighbor?
How, O God, have I sinned against my neighbor? How might You enlarge my heart to feel my neighbors' joys and sorrows--with them, for them? Where am I blind to your ways? How am I deaf to your voice? In what ways is my heart hardened to the things that you care about?
Pastors have a crucial role to play here, even if it's far from easy. Whereas a blunt approach may prove ineffectual b/c people will reject any exhortation to change if they feel personally attacked, perhaps pastors can ask the questions that open up hearts to the Spirit's work.
Read 4 tweets
Sep 14, 2020
Via @edstetzer: "most, not all, evangelicals shy away from overly ritualistic or liturgical worship, yet in so doing we turn our services into performances and our time of singing into the latest play list of what’s new." I've got only one point to make... christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2020…
And it's not the same ol' same ol' harangues & requiems & critiques of typically non-denom evangelical worship. I've grown bored of those. Borrrrrrrring. I'm more interested in playing a hopeful, constructive, bridge-building, shrewd role in this work. Hence a book I wrote...
The point that fascinates me is how deeply wired we are as creatures to want & need rituals. That's of course neither novel nor revolutionary. My non-denom evangelical pals love their rituals & rhythms w/ coffee, football, barbecue, marital words of affection and morning devo's.
Read 7 tweets

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