Jesus the Family Man

The church is that fresh, new family that is composed of those who have heard Jesus' "follow me" and have stepped forward and said "yes." The chief act of Christian worship is not some mysterious, dark, esoteric rite. It is a family meal with everyone around the table, the Sunday dinner we call the Lord's Supper, family as God intended family to be.

What do you have to do to be credibly called a Chrisitan, a contemporary follower of Jesus? You must be willing to be baptized, to be adopted by a new, far-flung, barrier-breaking family, the church. You must be disposed to let go of your innate American rugged individualism and be subsumed in a family bigger and more demanding than the one into which you were born. You must join us at the table, addressing some of the most sinful, often difficult-to-bear rascals as "brother" or "sister," just because Jesus loves them to death.--Will Willimon, Why Jesus

A Reminder I Often Need

"If you who set yourselves to explain the theory of Christianity, had set yourselves instead to do the will of the Master, the one object for which the Gospel was preached to you, how different would now be the condition of that portion of the world with which you come into contact! Had you given yourselves to the understanding of his word that you might do it...in many a heart by this time would the name of the Lord be loved where now it remains unknown."--George Macdonald

Dwelling in Jesus

"Jesus leaves little doubt about the meaning of prayer when he says: 'Apart from me you can do nothing; those who dwell in me as I dwell in them, bear much fruit' (John 15:5). Dwelling in Jesus is what prayer is all about.

Life becomes an unbearable burden whenever we lose touch with the presence of a loving Savior and see only hunger to be alleviated, injustice to be addressed, violence to be overcome, wars to be stopped, and loneliness to be removed. All these are critical issues, and Christians must try to solve them; however, when our concern no longer flows from our personal encounter with the living Christ, we feel oppressive weight.

Most of us try to get out from underneath by saying: 'I have enough problems in keeping my own family and work going. Please do not burden me with the problems of the world. They only make me feel guilty and remind me of my powerlessness.' We no longer participate in the full human reality, choosing instead to isolate ourselves in that corner of the world where we feel relatively safe. We may still say our prayers, but we have forgotten that true prayer embraces the whole world, not just the small part where we live."

--Henri Nouwen, "Prayer Embraces the World" in the anthology, "The Only Necessary Thing," 34-35.

An Introduction to this Blog

Olivia (my wife) says that I'm "practically useless" and she's not exaggerating much. I can't fix things or build things or farm or run a buisness or drive big machinery or perform CPR...the one thing I do decently well is read. It's what I do all the time. If I am not writing about something that I've recently read, I'm probably reading. For a while now I have wanted to collect excerpts from some of the interesting and important material that I read but I never seem to find the time. So this blog is first of all a venue for me to catalogue quotations. But I hope it will be more than that. I hope that these words will point readers to Christ and to a fuller vision of his kingdom just as they have me. That is what my life and my education are all about. And that is all I really know.