Across Church Street
As
The Lord's prayer and our participation require child-like faith.
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. — Matthew 6:10
If it's what we pray for, it's what we should want and work for. So, how is it in heaven? We need imagination for that, something God gave us the capacity for. Most of us were best at it when we were children. Dependency, trust, and imagination: is this what it means to have child-like faith?
Spaces of Change
In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. ⏤ Philippians 1:4-6
I can remember seasons of big shifts in my spiritual understanding: the mid-1970s, the mid-1980s, the 2010s, and especially these past three years. Each shift has brought me into bigger spaces, not smaller.
Straight paths
“As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’.””
In my prayers I claim the promise in Proverbs 3 that if I acknowledge God in all my ways, he will make my paths straight. Do I give equal attention to the prophetic command in Isaiah 40, repeated by John the Baptizer, to make Jesus' paths straight?
Let me not—even unintentionally—be like Elymas in Acts 13, placing obstacles in Jesus' path. Instead let me be the one who builds a straight highway for him—who levels hill and vale, and smooths the rough places. Let me be one who removes obstacles and distractions, not the one who sets them in place.
- love
- Holy Spirit
- humility
- church
- poverty & mercy
- politics & society
- mission & witness
- holiness
- parable & metaphor
- identity
- eternal life
- doubt & deconstruction
- leadership
- grace
- justice
- scripture
- spiritual life
- advent & christmas
- imagination & creativity
- technology & AI
- knowing God
- human dignity
- faith & trust
- incarnation & cross
- kingdom of God
- community
- reconciliation
- spiritual formation
- epistemology
- prayer
- gratitude
- culture
- creation & nature
- discipleship
I practice the spiritual discipline of rescuing earthworms on paved surfaces. It's a reminder to me that I can pause what I'm doing, get a little dirty, and help. Also, that I've been given the responsibility to care.