I suppose the best evidence of how I view this album would be to confess that I’ve sat here through the morning with tears on my cheeks as I absorb the potency of its tribute, truly a well-rendered offering.
Third Day, a band of gravelly-voiced, southern-fried rockers in alignment with their Maker offer up a slough of worship songs possessed of an edgy sweetness. Continue Reading »
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South African institutions exert an inordinate influence over the African continent, often for good and occasionally for ill. If this is true in the economic and political arenas, it is doubly the case when one considers Christian theology and the preparation of an emerging generation of African Christian leaders. When it comes to influence, the center of gravity of this enormous continent swings low and slightly to the west. Continue Reading »
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When the Carmelite priest Roland Murphy penned an exquisite commentary on the amorous biblical book called the Song of Songs, it was observed that this might well stand as final evidence that experience is not a prerequisite of true knowledge.
From what this non-professional reviewer has gleaned of Mozart’s life, the colorful composer was unacquainted both with penitence and the spiritual sublimities of which this Requiem sings. Ditto the experience of death, though he (rightly) believed his own was impending. Continue Reading »
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The ire of biblical prophets is not seldom directed at those who are ‘at rest’. What is in play here is not restorative inactivity much less that deep contentment that often passes under the Hebrew descriptor shalom. Continue Reading »
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There seems to be an inverse relationship between the repugance we feel over bloody scenes of vindication, on the one hand, and the weight of evil’s crush that we have known or observed from close corners, on the other. It is easy to become too precious about gore when life has not pressed our noses into the human cost of evil unbound. When oppression is just a notion, the blood of vindication running up to the horse’s bridles seems per se a grotesque and unnecessary image. Continue Reading »
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The funerals of judgmental prophets often attract applause. Their death is good news. Their stillness means we can get back to what we were about. The shadow of doubt regarding their potential credibility is lost in normalcy’s reassuring brightness.
It is this way with prophets. They are mortal. They bother us for a time, then move on. Some become irrelevant, others discredit themselves and their message, still others overreach and become absurd. Some of them we kill. It seems continuity’s only option. Continue Reading »
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What can be expected of small things?
What promise derives from little-ness?
The biblical logic delights in undermining the realistic answers to such questions, forged as they are by the hammer of probability, a tool that knows only how to work its materials with a rhythmic swing that is entirely constrained by extrapolating out into the future what it has known in the past. Probability revels in likelihoods as thought it were quite sophisticated. With supreme self-confidence, it is never surprised. Continue Reading »
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The words bear the weight of scandal:
I will destroy you, O Israel;
who can help you?
Where now is your king, that he may save you?Where in all your cities are your rulers,
of whom you said, ‘Give me a king and rulers’?
I gave you a king in my anger,
and I took him away in my wrath. Continue Reading »
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At the intersection of faith and culture, the greatest miscalculations occur when foolish minds equate prosperity with blessing. Continue Reading »
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It is a good thing to find oneself in the care of a gifted physician. It is an oddly redemptive experience to know him also as one’s assailant.
This is the logic that is brought to bear by the Old Testament prophet Hosea, who finds promise in urging Israel to return to its convenantal Punisher in order to avail itself of his medicinal prowess:
Come, let us return to the LORD;
for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us;
he has struck down, and he will bind us up.
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Canter Bridge 