Verse inspired by 'O Oriens'

O Morning Star,
splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:
Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

A poem for Advent.  More specifically, a poem inspired by the "O Antiphon" for 21 December, O Oriens (O Rising Sun, or Morning Star).  The O Antiphons will be familiar to anyone who has heard or sung the well known Advent hymn O Come, O Come Emmanuel, which is a musical setting of the antiphons, to be sung at evening prayer in the final week before Christmas.  The antiphons have a treasured and ancient history in the liturgy of the Church, about which more can be read here. 



I sat waiting in the darkness
For the sun to rise, bringing light
And warmth to cracked and bloody hands,
Grey eyes, and a body listless.
The darkness stretched onward, this night,
The longest, and cold.  Restless bands
Of wand'rers, shuffling in the gloom,
Muffled voices and stamping feet;
We all with frosty, bated breath.

The sun that rose did not rout death;
A winter sun of light, not heat.
I heard one, though, who cried, "Make room!"
A voice that spoke of another
Dawn, this one from on high, to break
Upon us, to scatter and draw;
A God who waits within a womb,
Descends to rise from out the tomb.

Fr. Robert Hendrickson on the Need for Clarity

Lord, mend or rather make us: one creation

     Will not suffice our turn:

Except thou make us daily, we shall spurn

     Our own salvation.

~ George Herbert

In response to Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori's Christmas message, Fr. Robert Hendrickson of the Society of Catholic Priests, who blogs at The Sub-dean's Stall, wrote a post which lamented the lack of clarity in that message.  Specifically, he pointed out the Presiding Bishop's failure to explicitly use the name of Jesus, or even Christ (an observation which, unfortunately, has clear precedent when it comes to Jefferts Schori's Christmas and Easter addresses).  As a follow-up to that post, Fr. Hendrickson has posted a reflection that nearly perfectly expresses my own sentiments and concerns about the lack of clarity, catholicity, and Christological focus which seems to afflict so many of our spiritual leaders in TEC.  Read it all here.

"There is a desperate need for a faith in this country that is clear, welcoming, and theologically orthodox. I use the term orthodox not to create boundaries and limits but to indicate that we can be a Church that welcomes and affirms not because we are avoiding theological truth and spiritual rigor but because of them. I use the term welcoming not to indicate that we fling open the doors and just gather about and do yoga and hold hands – but because we welcome all into the life-giving work and labor of the Christian faith as we come to know Christ at the Altar and are sent out in reckless joy.
Those coming to our churches are not looking for one more place to be affirmed or marketed to – they are looking for a place that will unmake and remake them."               ~Fr. Robert Hendrikson 

Peace of Christ. 

N.T. Wright: Paul's Complex World, "Much Like Ours"

An excerpt from an interview with N.T. Wright, by Jonathan Merritt at Religion News Service, about Wright's new book, Paul and the Faithfulness of God. Though I don't particularly like the adversarial and controversialist tone struck by Merritt in the article's title, Wright has some great things to say, naturally (e.g. "depressingly shallow"; love it!)

JM: Some modern Christians have criticized Paul as “sexist” or even “anti-women.” How does your book inform conversations about gender? 

NTW: This view is depressingly shallow. Paul, like the other early Christians and like Jesus himself, lived in a complex world where, despite what some think, many women were able to live independent lives, run businesses, travel, and so on, while many others were part of traditional structures which still curtailed their options. A world much like ours, in fact! Into that, the main message was what Paul says in Galatians 3.28: in the Messiah, Jesus, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, no “male and female”. We can see this working out when he refers to Junia as an “apostle”, and in the same chapter (Romans 16) mentions several other women who are in positions of leadership in the church–and where, too, he gives Phoebe the task of taking the letter to Rome, which almost certainly meant that she would read it out and explain it to the house-churches. 

At the same time, Paul was a deeply creational theologian, who believed passionately that men and women were created differently and that this God-given difference was not obliterated but had to be navigated appropriately and wisely. As with his political views, so here, he may seem to us to be saying two different things, but this only shows that we are trying to fit him into the Procrustean beds of our late-modern imagination. It’s like criticizing Shakespeare for not writing in 140-character Twitter sound bytes.

The Shaping Quality of Our Every Moment

Meanwhile, we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked.  For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.    ~ II Corinthians 5:2-4

And that long record of our choices -- your
every choice -- is itself the final
body, the eternal dress.
~Scott Cairns, Disciplinary Treatises: 12. The End of Heaven and the End of Hell 


There are those passages of literature or philosophy that have stuck with me, as I make a conscious decision to turn them over in my mind, recognizing their value and wishing to internalize them. One such passage is in Mere Christianity, where C. S. Lewis speaks of our every decision as moving us in one of two directions, shaping us into a creature either more heavenly or more hellish.  It's a passage which first made an impact on me, I suppose, because I took it to express a deep truth that I needed to hear, an articulation of a difficult reality that helped me by encouraging me to face and understand that reality.  It seems I have need to be reminded again.

It is, after all, rather hard to accept; that our every decision is weighed, so to speak.  We are constantly either doing right or wrong, and there is no middle ground, no standing still.  Talk about pressure.  Talk about moralistic legalism.  It reminds me of George Harrison's song "Rising Sun":

On the street of villains taken for a ride
You can have the devil as a guide
Crippled by the boundaries, programmed into guilt
Til your nervous system starts to tilt
In a room of mirrors you can see for miles
But everything that's there is in disguise
Every word you've uttered and every thought you've had
Is all inside your file the good and the bad

But in the rising sun you can feel your life begin...

On the avenue of sinners I have been employed
Working there til I was near destroyed
I was almost a statistic inside a doctor's case
When I heard the messenger from inner space...

Much as I love George (and no matter how good the song), I know I shouldn't be looking to him for theological instruction; other numbers from that same album, his last, Brainwashed, include "Any Road (Will Get You There)" and "P2 Vatican Blues".  The source notwithstanding, isn't it just this kind of slavery that Jesus came to free us from?  To liberate us from the strictures of a moral law that we bent creatures are incapable of keeping?  Thank God for grace, right!  No more pressure, no sweating the small stuff (or any stuff, really), because God has done it all.  We've been justified by faith, and the work is done.  Man, that was, well ... really easy, actually.  (What's that?  Cheap grace?  Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about ...)

The problem is, there's enough truth in that thinking to make it truly dangerous.  Jesus's death and resurrection did indeed free us from the tyrannical impossibility of attempting to justify ourselves before God.  It is through Christ alone that we are justified, restored to right relationship with God.  But grace is not cheap.  The Christian life is not easy.  And with the turning of the soul to God through Christ, the work of sanctification is just begun.  It is the work of being made holy, 'fit for heaven'.  It is a work in which the Holy Spirit leads, but we must choose daily to follow.  It is a work which continues for a lifetime (and I am inclined to believe it may well continue after this mortal life, as well).

It's easy to rationalize away that kind of hard belief when I'm faced with some temptation, some self-serving desire.  After all, I've been forgiven already, right?  It's not like I'm really harming anyone.  Getting so hung up on doing the right or wrong thing -- isn't that like 'works righteousness', or something?

It's interesting how the Holy Spirit draws to our attention those things we need to hear.  I'm a reader, so the Spirit often moves through books to get to me.  It seems I can't pick up a book these days without hearing this theme.  Here's a passage from a sermon by E. B. Pusey:

"Everything may, and does, minister to heaven or hell ... We are, day by day, and hour by hour, influenced by everything around us; rising or falling, sinking or recovering, receiving impressions which are to last forever; taking our colour and mould from everything which passes around us and in us, and not the less unperceived; each touch slight, as impressed by a single spiritual hand, but, in itself, not the less, rather the more lasting, since what we are yielding ourselves to is, in the end, the finger of God or the touch of Satan ... we are receiving moment by moment the hallowed impress of the heavenly hand, conforming our lineaments one by one, each faculty of our spirit, and this poor earthly tenement of our body itself, to the image of God wherein we were re-created, or we are gradually being dried up and withered by the blasting burning torch of the arch-fiend; each touch is of fire,  burning out our proud rebellious flesh, or searing our life; some more miserable falls sink us deeper; some more difficult victories, won by God's help over ourselves, the flesh, the world, and Satan, raise us on the heavenward path; but each sense, at every avenue, each thought, each word, each act, is in its degree doing that endless work; every evil thought, every idle word, and still more, each wilful act, is stamping upon men the mark of the beast; each slightest deed of faith is tracing deeper the seal of God upon their forehead."  

As Pusey describes it, there is a war on for our souls at any given moment, in which we take part, living our lives in such a way as yielding either to "the hallowed impress of the heavenly hand" or else to the "blasting burning torch of the arch-fiend."  No doubt many today (even some in the Church) would find such language dated, superstitious.  But the truth asserted here (and I do believe it so) may be  presented without such stark and colorful religious language.  Thomas Merton said, "A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire."  Where Pusey presents to us the unseen spiritual realities, Merton presents the same principle in a manner more pragmatic and observable.  Even someone who is not religious would, I believe, acknowledge that we are shaped by what we desire, what we live for.

In his book Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief, Rowan Williams uses the articles of the Creed as a framework for exploring the Christian faith.  The final chapter, then, addresses what Christians believe about 'the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come'.  He writes:

"Death is a nakedness to which we must all come, a spiritual stripping, as we are confronted by God.  The identities we have made, that we have pulled around ourselves like a comfortable dressing gown or a smart suit will dissolve, and what is deepest in us, what we most want, what we most care about, will be laid bare.  We are right to feel apprehensive about that, and we are wrong to brush away the sense of proper fear before God's judgment, however much we dislike the extravagant or hysterical expressions of it that have characterized some ages of Christian history.  To the degree to which we don't know ourselves -- a pretty high degree for nearly all of us -- we are bound to think very soberly indeed of this moment of truth."

However, the great and terrible Day of the LORD, "this moment of truth", is not simply a moment at the end of time, however near or distant that may be.  It is every moment of every day that we submit ourselves to the judgment of Christ; and the way I daily choose to live may be an indicator of the extent to which I am aware of this truth.  Williams continues:

"The coming judgment of Christ is something we have to be aware of day by day, not a remote or mythical prospect in the future.  Every day we have to become accustomed to the truth.  And what happens when all our defenses against the truth are finally taken away? When we have to come to terms with God in some unimaginable dimension where our usual strategies of hiding from ourselves and the rest of reality are not available?  How shall we manage being exposed to God and to our own consciousness as we really are?  The New Testament already speaks of this in terms of 'stripping away' -- St Paul can talk of our final destiny both as a frightening levelling of all we thought we had built or achieved (1 Corinthians 3.11-15, 2 Corinthians 5.1-5), and as a being clothed with a new 'covering' which is Christ's life (1 Corinthians 15. 53-4, and the same passage from 2 Corinthians).  Death means that something is removed that stands between us and God.  But the hope is that if we have accustomed ourselves to living with Christ in this life something has been 'constructed' that allows us to survive the terror of meeting the truth face to face: the truth has come to be, in some degree, 'in us', to use the language of St John's first letter.  At one level, we are left naked and undefended, with nothing of our own to appeal to or hide behind; yet we trust that we are gifted with the clothing, the defense we need."

One effect of all this is the belief that there is no moment or aspect of human life, no matter how fleeting or small, that is insignificant.  Human life truly matters, every bit of it, all the time.  I think this is an incredibly positive realization, and one that cannot but have a profound impact on the way we live our lives and how we relate to every man, woman, and child.  But I can and may still receive all this as a burden, a suffocating mentality in which I never have a moment's rest.  It need not be so.  To say that every moment of my life is shaping me for eternity in one way or another does not mean that I must be constantly and actively engaged in good works (that would not be possible, after all; and, not incidentally, there is an ancient tradition in the Church that regards Christians as called to lives of action, or contemplation, or both; but it is contemplation that is the higher calling).  The key is that, whether active or at rest, in every moment I am with Christ; I have been clothed with Him, have put my trust in Him.  As Williams says elsewhere, "God is at work in the continuing fellowship of flesh and blood human beings who have received Jesus' breath in themselves -- even at the (frequent) moments when they are not doing anything specifically Christlike..."  This is not 'works righteousness', at least not our works; it is the work of God, molding us when we choose to be with Christ.  Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.  Several translations render this verse 'that you believe in him', which unfortunately can give an impression of intellectual assent (even the devils believe) rather than whole-hearted trusting in God, believing Him to be trustworthy.  And so, at the last, because "we are gifted with the clothing ... we need", even Christ Himself, who has been working in us all our lives through to fit us for heaven, we may approach the throne of grace with confidence.  The One we see at the last Day will be our friend, and not a stranger.

I'll close now where I started. Having already considerably wrestled with the issue, I finally grabbed my copy of Mere Christianity and flipped through it until I found the desired passage. As he often does, the sage Lewis spoke to my heart and put the wrestling to rest; or was that You?

"People often think of Christianity as a kind of bargain in which God says, 'If you keep a lot of rules I'll reward you, and if you don't, I'll do the other thing.'  I do not think that is the best way of looking at it.  I would much rather say that every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what is was before.  And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is at harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself.  To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power.  To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness.  Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other."

O God, the protector of all who put their trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.
~ BCP, Collect for the Season after Pentecost, Proper 12

Williams: The Breath of Jesus and the Sheer Thereness of the Christian Community

From Rowan Williams' Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief :

"According to John's Gospel, (Jesus) 'breathes into' his disciples his 'spirit', the breath of his life, so that they become equipped to do what he does and to speak with his voice to God and to the world.  By breathing into the disciples, he sets up a chain of human contact coming down to our own day, a chain of voices and faces in which Jesus is active.  The personal and direct contact with Jesus that is there before the crucifixion is renewed in the resurrection; and it is then taken to a new level as Jesus equips his friends to take responsibility for him and his Father, to be his body in the world.  It is the great new metaphor of the New Testament.  Contact with human beings who have received the breath of Jesus' life is contact with Jesus, as specific human beings pass on the mystery of God to each other across the ages.  To meet a Christian in whom this spirit is working is to be contemporary with Jesus.

Remember, Christianity is a contact before it is a message.  God is at work, God is communicating himself in flesh and blood, from the first moment Mary embraces her child.  God is at work in this presence even when Jesus is saying nothing in particular and doing nothing in particular.  And now God is at work in the continuing fellowship of flesh and blood human beings who have received Jesus' breath in themselves -- even at the (frequent) moments when they are not doing anything specifically Christlike, there is something to be touched and sensed in the sheer thereness of the Christian community.  If the risen Jesus is not an idea or an image but a living person, we meet him in the persons we have touched, the persons who, whatever their individual failings and fears, have been equipped to take responsibility for his tangible presence in the world."

Quite a daunting task, to "take responsibility for" God in the world; but I do believe that is an accurate description of the work of the Church, and of each individual Christian.  All we do has the potential to draw others closer to God or to push them further away.  This life in Christ is not a thing to be embarked upon lightly; thank God we have the "breath of Jesus" to equip and sustain us, and even to work within us and through us when we "are not doing anything specifically Christlike."

I love Rowan Williams.  I would love his writing in any event, but it's an added bonus that I can't help but read him without hearing his gently eloquent, sonorous voice, like he's sitting in my living room speaking with me.

Peace of Christ.

Devotion and Ritual in an Episcopal Home

Hear, O Israel!  The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!  And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.                                                             ~ Deuteronomy 6:4-7

Does the Episcopal Church actively foster a culture of Christian devotion?  Are Episcopalians expected and encouraged to have meaningful devotional lives?  Do we have recognizable daily rituals that enhance our faith and help us to grow in Christ?  I've been wondering over this for some time.  It was a blog post over at Episcopal Journey of Hope which finally impelled me to get some thoughts written down.  In that post, the author talked about hearing a radio spot sponsored by the Jewish Federation that was encouraging its people to "come back, learn the rituals, and participate in our programs."  This prompted the author of the post to ask "What are our rituals (as Episcopalians)?  How do they identify us?"  These are great questions, and to my mind, important ones.  I think there are faith communities that do effectively model and encourage this idea of "religion in the home", that is to say, faith as integrally woven into the daily life of the believer.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure my Episcopal Church is one of them.    

I begin with a look at the Jewish tradition. There are two broad aspects of the rituals of the Jewish shabbat that stand out to me.  First, as I understand it, it is traditionally a ritual largely presided over by the wife/mother, and so provides a sort of balance to the male leadership/prominence of the traditional synagogue.  The other is that the ritual is in the home.  So, there is this lived reality that the whole family, men, women, and children, have important roles to play, and that these beliefs are not something simply acted on occasionally in public, but rather form the fabric and rhythm of private and family life.

I think the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics do a pretty good job at this.  Every Orthodox home has (or is expected to have) an icon corner, a carefully prescribed sacred space within the home.  Among Roman Catholics, I have read about and experienced personally the concept of "the Domestic Church" -- the home as a smaller reflection of the community of the Church (e.g. husband/father as 'priest' of his home), and I think one would be hard-pressed to find a Roman Catholic home that didn't have, to a lesser or greater degree, prominent images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, crucifixes, rosaries, etc.  You know when you're in a Roman Catholic home.

Christians of a more evangelical stripe are certainly expected to live out their faith in daily life, and recognize that it's difficult (if not impossible) to do so without a conscious effort to develop their relationship with Jesus.  A defining characteristic of the evangelical culture is the assumption that Christians will be actively seeking to develop their faith outside of Sunday morning, both in small groups (Bible studies, cell groups, etc.) as well as individually.  In order to maintain "a personal relationship with Jesus", you need to "get into the Word" in your "daily devotions" or "quiet times", and so be "equipped to grow spiritually in your Christian walk."  These stock phrases of evangelical pastors may sound cliche to some, but they represent an exhortation to a way of life, not just a Sundays only affair.
 

I think this is all critically important.  No matter how vibrant one's church, I think it is very difficult to grow spiritually or to raise children in the faith without deliberately and sincerely implementing some level of devotion or ritual into one's daily life.  My concern is that perhaps we Episcopalians (as a whole) don't do this very well.  If this is true, it's the more pitiable in that this concern to provide the laity with a simple yet rich pattern for a Christian devotional life was one of the guiding principles in the creation of the Book of Common Prayer.  And, as a resource, our Prayer Book does this beautifully.  In my home, we have an icon prayer corner, where we keep our Bibles, prayer books, and other devotionals.  It's here that I pray the Daily Office (or attempt to with some consistency, at any rate), and where we have thrice-weekly family devotions, using a form of Compline modified for the use of little ones with short attention spans.  These devotions include the ritual of candle lighting and incense burning ('let my prayer be set forth in your sight as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice').  Again, I think such a living into our faith and traditions in a way that daily shapes us and models for our children the integral nature of that faith is vital.  However, it was not primarily from my church family that I received such encouragement and instruction, but rather from my being raised by evangelical Episcopal parents, and from the influence of Orthodox and Roman Catholic friends.

I hope I'm wrong in thinking that we don't do a good job at this; maybe it's just my own limited experience.  As Episcopalians, do we expect our people to have lives of daily devotion and meaningful ritual?  Do we instruct and provide direction to that end?  If you were in the home of a parishioner, would you know, without having to ask, that this is an Anglican (or even merely Christian) home?

May God the Father, who by Baptism adopts us as his children, give us grace. Amen.
May God the Son, who sanctified a home at Nazareth, fill us with love. Amen.
May God the Holy Spirit, who has made the Church one family, keep us in peace. Amen.
                                                                                                                                                                                                ~BCP pg. 445

Priorities for the Next Presiding Bishop?

I just finished filling out the survey recently issued by the Joint Nominating Committee for the Presiding Bishop.  A link to the survey can be found on the Episcopal Church website here.

The survey ends with two questions for respondents to answer by typing in a text box.  Those questions, and my responses, are below.


What are the three most important issues for the next Presiding Bishop during the term of office?


1. Providing leadership that is authentically Christian, that affirms and guards the Christian faith as a precious gift, and that is unashamed to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ as the hope and salvation of the world.  I believe this is needed at this time in the history of TEC, when there are increasing numbers who wonder (not without justification) whether we will continue to view ourselves as members of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, or whether we will move into a vague, unrooted spiritualism, devoid of recognizably Christian doctrine.  Our identity is in Christ, or it is in nothing.

2. Vision for the future of the church, as regards its institutional shape.  This work (such as that being studied by the Task Force for Church Structural Reform) must be a priority.  In light of the massive cultural shift of the last several decades (post-Christendom, here we are!), we must seek to reshape our common life in ways that are pragmatic and viable, wisely discerning the difference between those things which can and should be changed, and those things which are essential to the health and integrity of our faith.

3. Serving as an example to help begin a healing time.  The bitterness attending the recent divisions in our church (and with much of the Anglican Communion) is a tragedy and a scandal.  This does not mean we need to go back and rescind decisions we have made, or to abruptly "change course".  It does mean that we should be moving always with humility and grace, not self-congratulatory triumphalism.  It means sincerely acknowledging the pain that has been caused to so many faithful Christians of goodwill, and seeking their forgiveness, while nevertheless continuing to walk the path to which we feel called.  It means NO MORE LITIGATION, but rather a radical, boundless charity, such as we are called to in our Lord Jesus.  It may take a while, but we should be laying this groundwork now.  Reconciliation (sooner or later, to a fuller or lesser extent) must occur.



What are three ways the Episcopal Church could improve?


1. Be honest and unashamed of our identity in Christ.  We are Christian people, who should affirm and be able to articulate what we believe about God, as well as about ourselves and the world.  I do not think our church is helped by a constant, public questioning of those beliefs which constitute the core of our faith (e.g. the articles of the Creed).  

2. Cut the 'relevant' crap.  Yes, the Church should be culturally conscious, and use that consciousness to bring the love of Christ to people.  But the Church should not seek to pander to the prevailing culture (that is a hopeless task anyway; before we've even got it figured out, it's on to the next thing); the Church is called to transform the prevailing culture by offering to it a way of life that is radically different: the way of Christ.  I think we Episcopalians have a way of being the Church that is distinctively beautiful, generous, and faithful, if we will but have the wisdom to know and live into our Anglican tradition.  (Btw, I'm 28 years old).

3. Provide more focused direction to Episcopal Church resources that exist for individual and family spiritual development.  In my home, we often turn to the educational and spiritual resources of other traditions (e.g. Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox), simply because TEC seems to lack the depth and coherence of message that can be found there.


Thoughts?


Gracious Father, we pray for thy holy Catholic Church.  Fill it with all truth, in all truth with all peace.  Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in anything it is amiss, reform it.  Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Savior.  Amen.
~ A Prayer for the Church, BCP pg. 816

To Be Shining Stars in the World

"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Do all things without murmuring and arguing, so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine like stars in the world. It is by your holding fast to the word of life that I can boast on the day of Christ that I did not run in vain or labor in vain."
~Philippians 2:12b-16


Shining like stars in the midst of a broken, tarnished world. Unfortunately, I do not think that is an accurate description of many Christians in America today. It certainly is not true as regards the popular image of Christians in society. We seem rather to be viewed as judgmental, superior, lacking compassion, self-interested, and small-minded. In one way, this is a very unfair characterization, as I know so many faithful Christians who do not in any way match such a description. But there are enough who do fit the description (and not surprisingly, they are often quite vocal) to compel me to feel that the stereotype is justified. So, how do we change this, and become those who shine like stars in the world?

The answer, I believe, lies in the same passage above. It is not found in wielding the sword of righteousness and club of truth as a bold culture warrior. It is found in great humility, great dependence upon God, great charity, generosity of spirit, and above all else, holding fast to the word of life.


Peace of Christ.