Faith in the Shadowlands

Casting Crowns made me cry. It was the song “Somewhere in the Middle” — sometimes called “Caught in the Middle” on the Internet.

I misheard one of the lines too — the phrase is “deepwater faith, in the shallow end.” It was also a little disconcerting to learn that it was written for teenagers. We must learn, surely, to commend their intensity and earnestness, and learn from it.  It could be good, also, calling them to higher commitment early on.

But would such young faith be able to stand it? Would they have the life experience and the vocabulary to make truly intense offerings as central as they must be to “take”  … ??

I was bawling, because recently and often my truth moments are that very question: will I surrender or continue to fear the results of it?

Maybe, as with telling teens something too early, it’s worth the chance.

Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

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And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

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What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

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Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

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Random

One Question, Two Answers

How to be really great Your life will be immeasurably great — incalculably awesome — if you put others in place of … you.  We will be great if we put others before us.  That is, if we put them first. One week at church, a pastor culled some points from a book on Christian

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Everything Works As Well As Well As Everything Else

For The Fat Guy, everything works as well as everything else. He’s tried everything. It all goes to hell. Ergo, everything works as well as everything else. Exercise No exercise High fat, low fat High carb, low carb High protein, low protein Fasting, cycling, three meals, six Also crying in one’s club soda. Works great.

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I Wish I Had Written This Post

If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line — starting, say, in the Dark Wood of Error, and proceeding by logical steps through Hell and Purgatory and into Heaven. Or you could take the King’s Highway past the appropriately named dangers, toils,

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Kim Possible

All the while watching Mad Men seemed to me the question was ‘Would Don Draper be redeemed?’ Breaking Bad was running roughly concurrently and the same question with an otherly alliteration was being posed: ‘Would Walter White be damned?’ The answer to the first was quintessentially postmodern, exquisitely childish, and thereby perfect — neither. Or, as an actual

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Related

Lapsed Pray-er

When I pray in the morning I often lapse into The Jesus Prayer. The link notes the Eastern Orthodox connection and its basic form — Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. — though it seems actually to come in different shapes and colors, some slightly longer and more formal,

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Lookit! Lookit! Lookit!

Don’t see my sin, Lord. Look at Jesus on the cross, Father … then look at me. Look at Jesus Christ risen, Father … then look at me. Look at Jesus ascended, Father … then look at me. Amen.

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Saving Grace

Don’t ask me for grace. Not because I don’t want you to have it, for I certainly do. But I can’t give it to you. Only God can give you grace, of this I’m becoming certain. Grace is God’s action in our lives to accomplish what we could never do on our own. Dallas Willard which

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Christians and Atheists

Christians create atheists when we do evil in God’s name. (props to Dennis Prager, who wrote: “Nothing creates atheism as much as evil done in God’s name.”)

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