... because there's always another way to look at it! (And there's no need to fear finding answers when it comes to Truth!)
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
How little we’ve progressed! Listen to this poem recited by Larry Norman in the late 1960s, called “First Day In Church.”
My sermon last Sunday: “Uncommon Community” based on Acts 4:32-5:11, was given at the Armenian Evangelical Church in Mount Prospect, Illinois. (About 32 minutes.)
From the book with beautiful excerpts, “Look Through God-Colored Glasses by John Ortberg” :)
Palestinian children return to school for the first time since Israel’s latest attack on Gaza but not all students made it back. Sarah Al-Dalou had to be excused from class as she — along with 9 other members of her family and 2 neighbors [graphic] — were killed by an Israeli airstrike when F-16 fighter jets reduced their house in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza to rubble.
A sign now occupies her seat instead, calling her a ‘martyr’. She is one of over 30 children killed by the Israeli Army during their week-long assault on the blockaded coastal enclave, with 161 Palestinians dead in total.
(Photo source: @mohammednazmi)
Bottom photo: Palestinian children return to school in January 2009 after Israel’s massacre in Gaza, named ‘Operation Cast Lead’, when over 300 children were killed by the Israeli Army, and 1,400 Palestinians in all.
Signs replaced the once-occupied seats at al-Fakhura School in the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza; names of victims written under the word in red: ‘Martyr’, 24 January, 2009.
(Photo credit: Anja Niedringhaus / AP)
What’s currently called the new anti-Semitism actually incorporates three main components: (1) exaggeration and fabrication, (2) mislabelling legitimate criticism of Israeli policy, (3) the unjustified yet predictable spillover from criticism of Israel to Jews generally.
Norman Finkelstein (son of Jewish Holocaust survivors), Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (via israelfacts)
Rabbis Call for the End the Unconditional Military Aid to Israel
Posted on October 15, 2012 by Rabbi Brant Rosen
The undersigned members of the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council stand with our American Christian colleagues in their recent call to “make U.S. military aid to Israel contingent upon its government’s “compliance with applicable US laws and policies.”
We are as troubled as our Christian colleagues by the human rights violations Israel commits against Palestinian civilians, many of which involve the misuse of US-supplied weapons. It is altogether appropriate – and in fact essential – for Congress to ensure that Israel is not in violation of any US laws or policies that regulate the use of US supplied weapons….
(Click the headline to continue reading.)
What manner of man is the prophet? A student of philosophy who turns from the discourses of the great metaphysicians to the orations of the prophets may feel as if he were going from the realm of the sublime to an area of trivialities. Instead of dealing with the timeless issues of being and becoming, of matter and form, of definitions and demonstrations, he is thrown into orations about widows and orphans, about the corruption of judges and affairs of the market place. Instead of showing us a way through the elegant mansions of the mind, the prophets take us to the slums. The world is a proud place, full of beauty, but the prophets are scandalized, and rave as if the whole world were a slum. They make much ado about paltry things, lavishing excessive language upon trifling subjects. What if somewhere in ancient Palestine poor people have not been treated properly by the rich? So what if some old women found pleasure and edification in worshiping ‘the Queen of Heaven’? Why such immoderate excitement? Why such intense indignation?
The things that horrified the prophets are even now daily occurrences all over the world. There is no society to which [their] words would not apply.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets, p. 3
Called & Chosen: Paradoxic Being (Poem)
I have a divine calling.
That does not make me divine.
I am a man who struggles
with his own humanity,
Freed from sin yet daily a sinner;
a slave sent to help other slaves
escape that which entangles me;
a leper sent to cleanse lepers;
blind man gifted with sight
but pointing the way where there’s yet to be light.
Hungry, I offer my flesh as food
in imitation of he whose body broke for me;
I pour out my blood, a libation
to worship him whose blood flows over me.
In this world we are ever sinners as saints,
for Yahweh calls that which is not
as though it were, and so
into being what it is not.
A garden just sown; seeds in dirt—
To trample is to destroy a harvest
that is yet to be, though called as though it were.
If you are looking for perfection in me as a minister,
you will not find it—and for good cause:
I am no more than you ever can be.
And so my life message must be clear:
By grace alone we stand, by grace alone we serve.
For grace is all he wants to demonstrate
in we who sinned—hoping to be like him!
© 2012 Copyright David R. Leigh. All rights reserved. Used by permission. (And dedicated to my friend Ben.)
Fallen (Poem)
“Devils, and devils only, never rise once they have fallen.”
—Macedonius (Quoted by John Climacus, Ladder of Divine Ascent)
And so, Yahweh, my Creator,
You have designed me to rise.
Though devils pull at my flesh
Seeking to drag my soul with them
Into the irretrievable abyss,
I will burrow deeper into the cleft of my Rock,
That my soul may soar upward in you!
Let my flesh and all this world about me
Tumble like debris into the darkness below me;
I am hidden in your cleft!
I will glide upward toward your light!
Rising like a beach ball
From the ocean depths.
Thank you, Jesus, for your rising
And being for me my ladder
Of divine ascent!
That I might be patterned after you
In all I am and all I do.
© 2006 Copyright David R. Leigh. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Empty Fall (Poem)
The leaves are turning now
without you.
Autumn is almost gone.My heart is turning now
each day without you.
Coming slowly to accept
that you are gone.Autumn will return,
as will Spring.
But will I ever see you again,
my love?
Will I ever hold you
in my arms?Perhaps when winter comes
and storms have passed.I will keep the fire burning.
© 2006 Copyright David R. Leigh. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Rethinking existentialism
If the church is identified with the Establishment in the minds of young people, in the minds of those who will come forth to be men and women in the next 20 years, I believe the church is finished.
Francis Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the 20th Century (1970), p. 82.
Does having two flags in your church mean that Christianity and the American Establishment are equal? If it does, you are really in trouble. These are not two loyalties. The State is also under the norm of the Word of God.
Francis Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the 20th Century (1970), p. 82.
I needed to hear this:
The Christian life was never meant to be void of problems. Yes things will happen that we cannot control. But the difference between the world and the Christian is that our joy should be founded in a consistent Christ. Examine yourself. When something happens in life that doesn’t go your way do…
