Today is Europe Day. It’s a real thing, I checked Wikipedia for us so that proves it. John Kerry says so too. So its real. Here’s my test for a holiday though: Is anybody off work? If you are off why not post a comment to that effect? Happy Europe Day!!!
Category Archives: culture
Dallas Willard Dies at 77
From CT website: Editor’s note, added May 8, 2013: Dallas Willard died today at age 77, days after being diagnosed with cancer.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/september/27.45.html
There will be lots of tributes to Willard.
But the best tribute of all is when you read his work that can help you be and make disciples to obey his Lord.
look at the whole board
A master chess player once told his student “look at the whole board.” Taking in the big picture before making strategic decisions is the lesson from chess. This is true in life but nowhere is this more important than foreign policy.
Many people today have no recollection of Henry Kissinger other than, perhaps a historical figure from the late 20th century. I am old enough to remember Kissinger’s work in the late 60s and 70s. I paid close attention as a teenager. I remember watching the draft lottery on TV and wondering if the war would last until I was 18. It ended in my senior year, I was 18.
Years later as part of my introduction to the Balkans, I discovered the work of Robert Kaplan. He is still a source for me as he writes about foreign affairs for The Atlantic.
Today I discovered Kaplan’s new article on Kissinger. Whether it be a history lesson or a review, I think you will profit from considering the big picture or, if you will, the whole board of a great chess game: Kissinger, the Cold War and foreign policy.
Click here to read the article in this month’s The Atlantic.
Filed under culture, seeking understanding
May Day
Laborers Unite!!! This was once the cry that was the labor movement. Years ago, in the communist world this was a very big holiday. Communism was billed as a worker’s movement. It wasn’t, but that’s another post, not this one. But I do want to think about labor on this day which, in many places, is still a holiday.
But I want to think about the way many Christians few the Christian life as a set of tasks, a list of jobs… of, as I Tweeted recently, a kind of punching a clock for an unseen boss. This is not a biblical view of the movement that Jesus leads.
I heard from a friend lately who came to realize that he was so busy that he was running in circles of activity… circles. Where do circles get us? Well, these circles of activity are tantamount to what some call a dead end job. They are not going anywhere and there is little meaning in them other than just in their doing.
Meaning.
We are daughters and sons of the King who are called precious by Him. We are adopted into his family and are co-heirs with Christ and given the privilege of being a part of the extending of His Kingdom. This is what Paul meant:
Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. (Colossians 1:28-29 ESV)
HIS energy.
HIS fruit.
Because He works in and through us, His joyful children.
What did He tell us to do?
Go and make disciples.
Let us stop filling our hours with circular labor trying to keep dead programs alive on live support. Let us, instead, draw close to Him through abiding in Him who is the true source of energy. Then may our toil be in bringing and reminding others about Him through caring relationships which draw them into the presence of Jesus so that they too may find God’s power and the fruit of His Spirit in us.
On this May Day let us celebrate God’s labor in and through us.
Making resolutions?
Like every new year, we’ve heard a lot about resolutions as we begin the new year. People think about their need to change. A great deal is written about how to keep resolutions and even the psychology of not keeping them. I would suggest that perhaps the best use of resolutions is the same as the Law, we can’t keep them and that shows us that we need the Gospel. Real change in me is the fruit of God working in and through me.
“All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, ‘You must do this. I can’t.'” C. S. Lewis, (_Mere Christianity_)
Filed under culture, seeking understanding, the self, Uncategorized
a Christmas wish
May you know Christmas joy and may that joy permeate your home and your life through the twelve days of Christmas and on through 2013.
Filed under culture, experience, seeking understanding, Uncategorized
kingdom travelin' 