A quote from the Bruderhof Community in today’s e-mail. This is what I need to hear, because this is where I am!
Plunge In
Martin Luther
“Discipleship is not limited to what you can understand – it must transcend all comprehension. Plunge into the deep waters beyond your own understanding, and I will help you to comprehend.
Bewilderment is the true comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge. In this way Abraham went forth from his father, not knowing where he was going. That is the way of the cross. You cannot find it in yourself, so you must let me lead you as though you were a blind man.
Not the work which you choose, not the suffering you devise, but the road which is contrary to all that you choose or contrive or desire – that is the road you must take. It is to this path that I call you, and in this sense that you must be my disciple.
Source: Martin Luther (1483-1546), quoted in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Cost of Discipleship.”
Daily Archives: November 7, 2005
This is The Christian Paradox
My good friend Amy Quillen sent this to a number of people – me being one of them. How about that…
Click below to read the whole article. It is long, but worth of reading. Here is just a paragraph:
I confess, even as I write these words, to a feeling close to embarrassment. Because in public we tend not to talk about such things – my theory of what Jesus mostly meant seems like it should be left in church, or confined to some religious publication. But remember the overwhelming connection between America and Christianity; what Jesus meant is the most deeply potent political, cultural, social question. To ignore it, or leave it to the bullies and the salesmen of the televangelist sects, means to walk away from a central battle over American identity. At the moment, the idea of Jesus has been hijacked by people with a series of causes that do not reflect his teachings. The Bible is a long book, and even the Gospels have plenty in them, some of it seemingly contradictory and hard to puzzle out. But love your neighbor as yourself – not do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but love your neighbor as yourself – will suffice as a gloss. There is no disputing the centrality of this message, nor is there any disputing how easy it is to ignore that message. Because it is so counterintuitive, Christians have had to keep repeating it to themselves right from the start. Consider Paul, for instance, instructing the church at Galatea: “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment,” he wrote. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'”
Oldest Holy Land Church?
The mosaic flooring of what could be the oldest church in the Holy Land was recently found by prison inmates preparing a site for an expansion of the prison. It is believed, yet to be proven, that the church may be from the second century, and have existed before Constantine legalized the religion of the Christians throughout the Empire in the early 300’s.
Read the story: http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com…