Pixaby at Pixels
Prayer by Henri Nouwen link
Dear God,
Speak gently in my silence.
When the loud outer noises of my surroundings
and the loud inner noises of my fears
keep pulling me away from you,
help me to trust that you are still there
even when I am unable to hear you.
Give me ears to listen to your small, soft voice saying:
“Come to me, you who are overburdened, and I will give you rest . . .
for I am gentle and humble of heart.” Let that loving voice be my guide.
Amen.
Prayer by Henri Nouwen link
Dear Lord,
Help me keep my eyes on you. You are the incarnation of Divine Love,
you are the expression of God’s infinite compassion, you are the visible manifestation of the Father’s holiness.
You are beauty, goodness, gentleness, forgiveness, and mercy. In you all can be found.
Outside of you nothing can be found. Why should I look elsewhere or go elsewhere?
You have the words of eternal life, you are food and drink, you are the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
You are the light that shines in the darkness, the lamp on the lampstand, the house on the hilltop.
You are the perfect Icon of God. In and through you I can see the Heavenly Father, and with you I can find my way to him.
O Holy One, Beautiful One, Glorious One, be my Lord, my Savior, my Redeemer, my Guide, my Consoler,
my Comforter, my Hope, my Joy, and my Peace.
To you I want to give all that I am. Let me be generous, not stingy or hesitant.
Let me give you all—all that I have, think, do, and feel. It is yours, O Lord. Please accept it and make it fully your own.
Amen.
A Prayer by Henir Nouwen link
Dear Lord,
Give me eyes to see and ears to hear. I know there is light in the darkness that makes everything new.
I know there is new life in suffering that opens a new earth for me. I know there is a joy beyond sorrow that rejuvenates my heart.
Yes, Lord, I know that you are, that you act, that you love, that you indeed are Light, Life, and Truth.
People, work, plans, projects, ideas, meetings, buildings, paintings, music, and literature
all can only give me real joy and peace when I can see and hear them as reflections of your presence, your glory, your kingdom.Let me then see and hear. Let me be so taken by what you show me and by what you say to me
that your vision and hearing become my guide in life and impart meaning to all my concerns.Let me see and hear what is really real, and let me have the courage to keep unmasking the endless unrealities,
which disturb my life every day. Now I see only in a mirror, but one day, O Lord, I hope to see you face to face.
Amen.
Benediction link
May the love of the Father,
the tenderness of the Son,
and the presence of the Spirit,
gladden your heart
and bring peace to your soul,
this day and all days,
Amen.
Then why are so many church cultures into Total ockstep Conformity?
Thank you, Dee. I have not yet heard Prof. McKnight’s talk, but will later this week.
I found it intriguing, reading through the Jan 5 Roys Report discussion of Prof. McKnight’s resignation, that his relationship to Northern Seminary appears not to be “tenured professor”, but an employment contract. Perhaps it dates me that I thought that elite schools granted job security to their elite professors. Northern might have been better served to grant this to Prof. McKnight. His departure will be a sore loss.
The thought occurs that as education has become more like business, faculty have lost power vis-a-vis administration. I’m not confident that this is a good thing.
Thank you, Dee.
Finally heard this today.
Granting Prof. McKnight’s argument that (my attempt to put in my own words) ” ‘manifestation of a new kind of human society that, in Christ, transcends the differences that divide the rest of the world’ is central to Paul’s conception of what the churches ought to be”, it is sobering to contemplate 20th Evangelical missiology, which was, as I understand it, strongly influenced by the thinking of Donald McGavran and that, guided by his “homogeneous unit principle”, sought to grow mission churches in ways that — for the sake of faster growth — did not challenge, at the level of individual congregations, the kinds of divisions that Paul sought to transcend in the assemblies he founded.
I wonder whether this may have been part of what Prof. M. meant regarding his reckoning of how Paul would view present-day churches.
We’re 2000 years into the Church Age, and we still haven’t sorted out Ecclesiology.
Perhaps next year in Jerusalem.
Samuel
Yes, next year in Jerusalem! We can always hope.