This past week I have been re-reading two writers I need to spend more time with. The first is Paul. (I continue to work through his letter to the Galatians. It is stunning how many ideas he packs into six short chapters). The second is Martin Luther King, Jr. The 50th anniversary of his assassination has led to many articles and editorials about King. I wish more leaders led from positions of moral authority not positional power.
Ripped from the Headlines: Last week The Financial Times ran an article called, “The Return of Religion.” The piece – which you can access here – is long, and not the first thing I’d point you to this week. But here is a paragraph worth reading. It notes how the mood, especially in the UK, has changed quite a bit from when Richard Dawkins was most energetically championing atheism:
Dawkins was writing in 2006. That was before the economic crash, the migration crisis and a new wave of Islamist terrorism hatched a singularly un-progressive Zeitgeist that scorns the idea that humanity, though modernising in technological terms, is moving in any hopeful moral or social direction. That the quandaries of a disordered world and the alienation caused by displacement are forcing a reassessment of faith and religion is a reality trickling into the marrow of our secularised bones. Islamic and Hindu revivalisms have become titanic forces. Even Anglicanism, a strain of Christianity so unassuming it was said to have inoculated the English against religion, has a new lease of life. “Congregations are up in London,” a senior bishop told me recently, with something like a chortle, “but our real growth market is China.”
Quotes Worth Requoting.
- Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours. C.S. Lewis
- In Christ we are offered the possibility of partaking in the reality of God and in the reality of the world, but not in the one without the other. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
- Our behavior is a product of our decisions not our conditions. Steven Covey
Articles Worth Reading:
- Along the same lines as the Financial Times, The Federalist ran a piece entitled, Reports Of Christianity’s Death In Europe Have Been Greatly Exaggerated. You can access it here.
- If you have enjoyed reading any of David McCullough’s books – John Adams, The Wright Brothers, etc. – you will not want to miss this article from last week’s WSJ, entitled, What is Keeping David McCullough from Sleeping.
Thanksgiving: We did not manage to get all of the Woodruffs at home at the same time during Easter weekend, but over the course of the weekend we did get time with all three boys and the newest Woodruff, our daughter-in-law, Hannah. And that is a privilege we do not take for granted. (BTW, this is late because my lap top crashed. I am very thankful for IT people who can engineer their own form of resurrection).
Prayer Requests: This weekend we have Gordon MacDonald into town. In addition to preaching, we have him meeting with staff and a dozen staff from other churches. He will also speak on Monday night at The Forum, the monthly outreach we hold in a local sports bar.
A Prayer from Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 1153): You taught us, Lord, that the greatest love a man can show is to lay down his life for his friends. But your love was greater still, because you laid down your life for your enemies. It was while we were still enemies that you reconciled us to yourself by your death. What other love has ever been, or could ever be, like yours? You suffered unjustly for the sake of the unjust. You died at the hands of sinners for the sake of the sinful. You became a slave to tyrants, to set the oppressed free. Amen.