Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity” tells a story that shows how hostile the universe is to life, how fragile and rare are the conditions that allow for life on earth or any exoplanet: oxygen, temperatures conducive to survival, also light, water, whole foods, medicinal plants, and so on. When people tell me that the universe loves them, I encourage them to interrogate that thought or feeling. I encourage them to be realists. It might also be worth screening a little Cuarón.

It’s just beyond the scope of yesterday’s reading (2 Kings 5:1-3,7-15c) where we learn that Namaan’s baptism in the Jordan hasn’t just cleansed his body of leprosy but has reoriented his entire self to his creation in divine goodness. He now trusts the God who made him. Namaan wants to carry some of the soil of Israel back to Syria to remind him that there is a good and real Creator. Namaan confesses to Elisha a deep concern that’s confronting his restored conscience.

We can and do ignore small moments in the Scriptures (what many were taught to call “the Old Testament”), tending to focus on the major players and the “action.”

That is a big mistake always but especially in tommorow’s Reading from 2 Kings 5:1-3,7-15c. A short 🧵 Here a trafficked girl, taken away from her family, her people, and her culture has compassion on her oppressor—a man of violence and theft who raids and plunders his neighbors—and tells the wife of her captor how he might be healed of leprosy by the prophet of her people.

Doxology is a gathering for anyone looking to contemplate the beauty, friendship, and faithfulness of God, to turn our attention to the activity of God in humility, with guides like Cherith Nordling, Sam Wells, and Drew Jackson.

petersoncenter.org/doxology

@winncollier This will be the inaugural conference of the new Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination at Western Seminary in Holland, Michigan, where autumn is almost magical, and I can’t wait.

You do not have a “sin nature,” you have a human nature that participates in sin, contrary to your good creation in the divine image. 🧵 Your participations in evil are not who you are but tragic negations of your created human goodness, a deep down formation in and by the love that is God, which all who share human nature have from the beginning.

Tonight, sitting with a human in terrible pain, I saw again the damage the churches did to the minds, hearts and bodies of intelligent, sensitive young people the past three decades (more) teaching “purity,” an angry God, a violent atonement, and ECT, instilling fear and anxiety. Learn to sit with these tender ones who no longer know who or what they trust. In some cases they are sure they no longer trust the church’s story, and that’s not just because of abusive and manipulative leaders. The church has told our core story badly. Remember compassion.

🧵It seems to me—I have not listened yet to The Rise & Fall of Mars Hill—that what follows is a large piece of the puzzle for the American church: We spend a lot of time in the church teaching folks how to live well in this world on *its* terms and by *its* means, when we are supposed to teach folks how to live in this world on the terms and by the means of the world that is in the end coming to this world.

You do not have a “sin nature,” you have a human nature that participates in sin, contrary to your good creation in the divine image. / a thread Your participations in evil are not who you are but are tragic negations of your created human goodness, a deep down creation in and by the love that is God, which all who share human nature have from the beginning. This is the divine image in humanity.

@jwilson1812 @TheMundaneMuse @pgutacker @douglaswils My orientation on the end of the ages is also contra popular expectation: Our faith clings to the vulnerability of God, a revelation in human flesh that God is the servant of his universe; that if we serve the creation with God we volunteer for a hidden insignificance. @jwilson1812 @TheMundaneMuse @pgutacker @douglaswils The human God works as the best servants do, imperceptibly. This seems mysterious to us because the world thinks of power as showy and imposing, but love (what God simply is) abandons arrogance and adorns herself with poverty.

Middle Eastern shepherds in the time of the Bible did not break the legs of sheep and carry them on their shoulders to keep them from running away again, or to “hold them close to their heart” or whatever myth you heard growing up. It’s terribly impractical, for one thing. Sheep can weigh up to 75 pounds. It’s a tremendous hindrance to properly caring for the whole flock. It can also permanently disable a sheep.

Imagine having a number of immobilized or broken sheep in a flock. What a mess that would be.

Some sentences:

God in love makes humanity in his image and God becomes what he loves.

Of all the things in all creation God can become God becomes human. Considering what we have made of our animate freedom since Cain, God yet becomes one of us and stands with all humans as one of us.

God becomes what we—not God—despise.

We mar the image of God with wounds because we hate our fellow image bearers.

You’ve been fully vaccinated for 20 days and you get out of the car to go into the store—the only place you go inside anymore—and you get halfway across the parking lot, and you see someone with a mask and realize you don’t have yours on. And you’re bone-tired of wearing one. You head back to the car and get your mask because you don’t have a pin or hat or flashing sign that reads “fully vaccinated,” and you want to do the ‘right thing,’ and not be a jerk, but you are starting to ask yourself: Why do I need to do this anymore?

If you find yourself in hell, a victim of natural disaster, drowned by your own ruined heart and participations in evil, do not be afraid or lose hope; a preacher is going to come, and the preacher is the crucified and risen creator, who is patient and who loves the world. This preacher remembers his covenant with every living thing on earth; he remembers mercy, not our sins.

Time for some honesty. For five years now the President has said things and done things that I felt we should not tolerate in a leader of the nation. I used to be quite vocal about it but there was always a pattern in response: that’s not what he said (though I heard him say it). That’s not what he meant (when his meaning was unambiguous). That’s not what he did (but I’m watching the video and, well, that’s what he did). At some point I brought these things up less because the price for bringing them up was too high in relationships with people I love.

Remember the words of the human God and of all the angels: “Do not be afraid.”

That’s not a command. That’s a promise: I (we) are here and our presence means nothing can harm you or separate you from us, not now, not ever. I think a misreading of these “Do not fear” texts is to assume that the obligation is now on us to never fear what we face or what we are going through, when it’s far closer to: “I’ve got you” and “I’ve got this.”

When God created the visible (and invisible) universe he spoke words—"let there be light"—and things that were not in one moment began to exist in the next. Stars. Planets. Oceans. Mountains. Trees. Animals. Flowers. All things were breathed into existence by God. Our wisdom says it was the Son by whom the Father spoke all things into being; Christ spoke the things that were not as though they were and they were so. Orchid. Zebra. Maple. Everest. Atlantic. Jupiter. Andromeda. And so on.

The church marks time by the life of Jesus. Our year began back on Nov 27, as we slowed to wait for the coming of God in the manger and at the end, tuning our hearts to the reality that God is always coming into the world in every moment from the beginning to the end of time. We are the ones who by frenzy and rush become unaware of his myriad arrivals: in the poor, in the immigrant, in the prisoner, in the sick, in our friends and neighbors, in our chosen family, and in bread and wine on all the tables of the world where sinners gather.

BENEDICTION FOR AN ELECTION
A thread of prayers.

May you remember that all politics and all platforms and all legalities and all borders and all leaders are temporary. May you recall that political movements and boundaries and personalities and programs are here one day and gone the next. All of these are passing away.

According to the Larger Westminster Confession, the second commandment rules out even the creation of mental images of God. What does this mean for children’s Bible storybooks, a television series like “The Chosen,” the sixth century Sinai Pantocrator, or Grünewald’s tortuous Isenheim Altarpiece, all of which present our eyes and imaginations with images of Jesus.

You either believe that the end is the arrival of power, or you believe that the end is the arrival of nothing, or you believe that the end is the arrival of love. A lot of people believe we are waiting for the arrival of nothing. At the end of their physical life the person they were is gone forever, disappearing as quickly as the brain cells die, never to return.

The law could never make us moral people. It could only interact with fallen human nature, revealing the places in us where we were no longer participating in love. /a sermon in miniature, a thread Like a crimson dye that saturates the parts of us participating in death, the murderous parts, the law can only expose the cancers of hate, envy, pride & greed that motivate us, make plain our addiction to bearing false witness, perhaps the besetting sin of present-day Americans.