Friday Funnies

Jessica:  they call "us" team rocket
 which was a pokemon reference i didn't get
 until they said the peoples names were jessie and james

Pearl: haha you giddy cheeseball

Norman: "its 4:38 pm. do you know where your children are?"
 I DO!

Kevin: dranks are like unwholesome lovers
 they take you for a spin
 and then leave you reeling

John Bunyan on Religion v. What's better and actually works

"Run, John, run," the law commands,
But gives neither feet nor hands.

Better news the gospel brings;
It bids me fly and gives me wings!

solā gratiā Dei

// Pilgrim's Progress

They're watching, they knoowww!!

Today our apartment received an anthropologie catalog in the mail addressed to ESTHER SHIBATA.

A New Docetism: We are not minds, we have them.

I could only love newliteracy more if it were more readable. I've been sitting on the last post for a month; in it, Dan describes technology like Facebook as a "modern medium for an ancient heresy... the new docetism." It tickles me and here's the gist:

As the Gnostics discarded Christ's humanity and kept only his divinity, we similarly sacrifice incarnation at the altar of ease. One way we dehumanize other humans and ourselves is by dissociating bodily presence from our minds in online communities, we conceive of ourselves as essentially minds.

Closing his thoughts he writes and compares the internet village/community/church to other cultures:

"Tribesmen in North Africa, like Native Americans... They don't want to hear your thoughts until you've sat with them for extended periods of time, not talking; this is how they get comfortable with one another. They require you to not talk but move with them for weeks to get to know you in a way that is deeper than words. Missionaries often make the mistake of going into a culture and talking right away.

"So how are we showing love towards one another through these online mediums? ... We're not doing love much justice by copping out to convenience. I'm not going to get into defining love but if it something we mean deeply, love can only be expressed personally, in presence..."

I am grateful to have such friends. The ones who are okay with silence and with simply being near. They are credible witnesses, trustworthy ones who are more than disembodied text.

Our supreme example is Christ--the incarnate Word:

"God's greatest act of love to come to us in human form and die on a cross for our sins sums it up pretty good... Shalom is something that we have little notion of today thanks to our dulled sensitivity to the spirituality of things. Powers such as Facebook continue to assert their dehumanizing agenda in an attempt to further divide our beings and souls into commodified pieces..."

For such a time as

NOW
I was cupbearer to the king (Nehemiah 1:11).

As Nehemiah wept and mourned over what God had put on his heart, his fasting and prayer continued in view of God's mercy for five months of days and nights past the initial shock and grief. And then he surveyed his post as cupbearer to the king... The text could instead read "Now I was wallbuilder and king" but God places his own in opportune-but-dependent positions that often only make sense in his story.

When I present my requests before the king, do I consider my circumstance a sovereign blessing? How might I be an agent for the change I say I want, in light of my current assignment?

Steve challenged us in small group tonight with a question: Was Nehemiah's action merely 'subsequent to' or was it the 'completion of' his repentance/prayer?

Now I was ______.
Now I was a college student
Now I was living in NYC.
Now I was with x means and y abilities.
Now I was a daughter, a sister, a roommate, a friend to z.
Now I was created, redeemed...
Now I was given Truth and Spirit...

Now where I am may make no sense in any story I could write and it may seem to bear no obvious pertinence to the requests I present or to the burdens I bear.


But in a grander narrative I am not the Author, I am at His mercy. I am His redeemed. And I am in exactly the right place at the right now.

Remember your chains.

Though God has forgiven and forgotten your past sins, yet don't forget them yourself. Often remember what a wretched bond slave you were in the land of Egypt..

// J.Eds, "Advice to Young Converts"

swing Your robe down low

my words fall to the floor
as tears drip through the telephone line

the hands i've seen raised to the sky
are not waving but drowning all this time

i'll try to build an ark that they need
to float to You upon the crystal sea

give me Your hand to hold
cause i can't stand to love alone
& love alone is not enough to hold us up
we've gotta touch Your robe

the prince of despair's been beaten
but the loser still fights

& everyone cries for the innocent
You say to love the guilty ones too

surrounded by suffering and sickness
i'll be working tearing back the roof

the pain is a burden
& it's my cross to bear
 i stumble under all the weight

i know You're simon standing there

& i know You're standing there

so swing Your robe down low

love alone // caedmon's call