It is not immediately clear, even for those with the most solid theology of creation, that this world deserves our allegiance. If it is only a clearing in the woods where the most unaccountable and vicious violence can be visited with impunity upon the innocent, then we ought to turn our backs on it, shake [...]
Archive for July, 2010
last resorts: 2 Chronicles 24
Posted in textures, tagged 2 Chronicles, biblical reflection, Chronicles, textures on July 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
faint praise: 2 Chronicles 21
Posted in textures, tagged 2 Chronicles, biblical reflection, Chronicles, textures on July 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The biblical literature laments few losses so frequently as wasted opportunity. A leader emerges with something like a clean slate in his hand. Instead of noble lines, he scrawls the moral equivalent of excrement across the tablet. It would have us develop an instinct for the same. The Bible knows a thousands ways to spell [...]
this old house and the people who come here: Sandro
Posted in this old house on July 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
One never knows the potency of love until one has been brought low. I was reminded of this on Sunday as I sat by the bedside of a life-long friend who had for nine days walked a bumpy road of recovery from cardiac surgery. ‘Forgive me, I’m going to cry a lot today’, my friend [...]
this old house and the people who come here: Lucas
Posted in this old house on July 27, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Lucas is an enigma. A twenty-something business student in Indianapolis, Lucas grew up with my oldest son in Latin America. Yet he is here. I mean right here. In-the-house here. By some generous act of Providence, the apartment Lucas shares with two colleges students and an undisclosed but not absurd number of acts, suffers an [...]
this old house and the people who come here: loss
Posted in this old house on July 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Surely this old house has seen its domestic drama. Its sturdy structure cannot eradicate the drama and pathos that cling to human beings and the dense clusters and knots we call ‘family’. On May 31 of this annus horribilus my beloved departed this old house. I was abroad, through aware of the scenario that unfolded [...]
this old house and the people who come here: when they built it
Posted in my hometown, this old house, tagged Indianapolis, this old house on July 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
They built this house, on what must have been Indianapolis’ far north side, in 1930. Peace in Europe was, fleetingly, twelve years old. Men who had clung to the trenches’ muddy, bloody edge were deciding whether to talk about that to their ten-year-old boys. An economic shattering so profound that it can still be called [...]
opportunity cost: 2 Chronicles 10
Posted in textures, tagged 2 Chronicles, biblical reflection, Chronicles, textures on July 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Israel’s biblical historians are often taciturn in the face of behavior we might have expected them to condemn. It is their way of respecting the reader. Not every moral, not every lesson need be spelled out. The listener is expected to arrive at his or her own conclusions based on instruction that is both prior [...]
eyes attentive: 2 Chronicles 7.14
Posted in textures, tagged 2 Chronicles, biblical reflection, Chronicles, textures on July 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The country of which I am a grateful citizen celebrated its bicentennial during my junior year of high school. Among American Christians, it was common to hear a portion of the long prayer with which the ancient Israelite King dedicated the house that he had constructed for YHWH. Quoted according to the King James Bible [...]
justification’s internal alignment: Romans 6
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Romans, textures on July 20, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The justification of the unrighteous produces passivity only among those who have recklessly misunderstood the thing. The more closely the apostle Paul’s argument approaches the unmerited favor of God to his rebellious children, the more energetic becomes his summons to align our understanding with that which God has pronounced to be true about us. In [...]
naming names: 1 Chronicles
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Chronicles, textures on July 12, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Though we toss off phrases like ‘the sanctity of life’ as though we all knew what we mean by that, the biblical literature traces the shape of such things in more narrative form. Biblical narrative tends to insist on a couple of foundational dynamics that modern life obscures with a vengeance. For one, the narratives [...]
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