Happy Friday
Teach us to pray.
Luke 11:1
It’s worth noting that the disciples did not ask Jesus to teach them how to lead a group, multiply food or walk on water. They asked to be taught how to pray, which suggests they saw his prayer life lying at the center of his wisdom and power.
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Speaking of Prayer: Do yourself a favor and listen to this sermon, which was preached this past weekend at Christ Church by Jed Coppenger, the author of 21 Days to Childlike Prayer.
Speaking of Prayer 2: In 2005, Warren Buffett started raising money for his charity by auctioning a lunch with him to the highest bidder. The first year’s winning bid was $351K. A few months ago, it was $19M. Consider it the price of access. Consider also that in Christ we have free access to the Creator of the universe. (Actually, I should not say free. It costs us nothing, but it cost him his son.)
Your Move: You can wake up and immediately turn to Twitter or a radio or TV program to start mainlining the latest horrors about murder and war, or the crazy-making of school board fights and Dennis Rodman’s trip to Russia on behalf of Brittney Griner. Or, you can open God’s word and reflect on timeless truths about his love, grace and plan. It’s your call. Just don’t do the first and then wonder why your heart is unsettled.
C.S. Lewis 3.0: Twice in the past week I heard Lewis celebrated for his work as a Medieval scholar. One person argued that Lewis’s most significant contribution was not as a children’s author or Christian apologist, but as a Medievalist critiquing modernity. The second went so far as to suggest that his work as a Medievalist made him the most important intellectual in the 20thcentury. I’m twice the fan of Lewis as the next guy, and I have no trouble believing that his contributions in his academic field were significant. But I’m not buying that his work as an academic is more important than his work as an author. I suspect someone is about to roll out a new book on Lewis that celebrates his work in Medieval literature. When I learn the title I’ll buy it and read it. Perhaps I will be persuaded, but I doubt it.
Combating Conspiracies: Speaking of 20th century spiritually influential Brits – in this case not CS, JI, JRR, or JRWS – GKC had this to say about engaging someone embracing a falsehood. “It is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it, for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment. If this person believes that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it.” What to do? “We should be chiefly concerned not to give arguments so much as to give air – to convince them that there is something cleaner and cooler outside the suffocating single argument.” In her soon to be released book, Untrustworthy, Bonnie Kristian suggests that, “instead of fact checking their conspiracy, invite them to a party, to church or on a walk.”
It Seems to Me: 1) Our growth as people is most dependent on how many uncomfortable conversations we are willing to have; 2) We focus way too much on what is going wrong and way too little on what is going right; 3) A growing number of the pastoral challenges I face involve dealing with people with mental illness.
Without Comment: 1) China’s recent heat wave has now broken all previous high-temperature records dating back as far as their records go; 2) The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives reports that the production of guns in the U.S. nearly tripled between 2000 to 2020; 3) When Ronald Reagan became President, 40% of the world lived in abject poverty. Today the number is below 10%; 4) The U.S. now has 7 million prime age men (25-54) who are neither working nor looking for work.
Demography = Destiny: This chart is a novel way for me to make my bi-monthly PSA about the global population decline.
WOTW: Russia recently re-named and re-opened the 130 Starbucks stores the company abandoned after Bad Vlad made his move on Ukraine. Had they selected the obvious choice – Tsarbucks – I might have picked it as this week’s Word of the Week. (The new name, Star’s Coffee, isn’t even as much fun as Stars and Bucks, the name of a café near the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.) I’m going to select epistemology instead, for although I do not see it in the popular press, I see the need for it everywhere. We have a knowledge crisis. As David French writes in the foreword of Kristian’s upcoming book, “We not only don’t know what’s real, we don’t even know how to discover what reality is.”
Lunch?: Earlier I noted that Buffet sold lunch with him for $19M. I am not vain enough to think that my advice is worth even one-quarter as much as time with “The Oracle from Omaha.” But since 2022 was the last time he was making this offer, I will make myself available at one-tenth of the price. I am open most Tuesdays at noon.
Closing Prayer: Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he will come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. (The Book of Common Prayer)