1) from chambers:

. . . someone said to Him, ’Lord, I will follow You wherever You go’ —Luke 9:57

Our Lord’s attitude toward this man was one of severe discouragement, “for He knew what was in man” (John 2:25). We would have said, “I can’t imagine why He lost the opportunity of winning that man! Imagine being so cold to him and turning him away so discouraged!” Never apologize for your Lord. The words of the Lord hurt and offend until there is nothing left to be hurt or offended. Jesus Christ had no tenderness whatsoever toward anything that was ultimately going to ruin a person in his service to God. Our Lord’s answers were not based on some whim or impulsive thought, but on the knowledge of “what was in man.” If the Spirit of God brings to your mind a word of the Lord that hurts you, you can be sure that there is something in you that He wants to hurt to the point of its death.

2) 'Journey of Questions':

'Followers of Jesus are called to this place of paradox. It is a place of difficult questions that often go unanswered, and where our earnest desire for immediate answers must be sacrificed as we place our trust in a loving Father. Indeed, the journey of faith is like the journey to Golgotha, for as we go forward in faith, "the questions get harder and harder because they not only stretch the mind they also call us to obedience. [For] the truth has not only to be appropriated, but also to be served".'

~

3) i went to this yesterday, and go back to it again today. only, if you've already gone to the previous article linked above, then to read both links in one sitting may be a bit of an overload! both are quite heavy duty. in this, carattini writes on treasures in jars of clay.

treasures in jars of clay

remembering last night's experience and conversation, Christ and the gospel are even more strongly counter-cultural. to the worldliness of the world, the message is even shocking. no wonder some embrace it and others recoil. the wonder and mystery of the Story!

arghh =/ =] =']

`
"As I write this, I am waiting for a bus on a busy corner in an extremely poor community in Central America, in which I lived for a year and have been visiting now for nine years. Most of the time, the tragedy of this place fades into the background of my thoughts, pushed there by familiarity, busyness, and the cheerfulness and resilience of the people who have welcomed me here. Nonetheless, it is evident that the joy many people here display is in clear defiance of the facts of their daily existence.

Sometimes, moments like this one come when I can no longer ignore these facts, and the sense of tragedy becomes overwhelming. I can see garbage strewn around me—plastic bags, empty bottles, crumpled wrappers, cigarettes—things discarded. Since it is located on the site of an old dump, garbage literally serves as the foundation of this mini-city, which is full of people discarded. I see a young girl walking towards school and I wonder if she shares the experience of so many other girls and young women here whose bodies are used, owned, or defaced. I see a boy whose swagger makes him look older and more confident than he probably is. As he joins the group of laughing older boys, I am aware of how likely his future is to be stolen by gangs and drugs. They are more lucrative ventures than most other job options that will be available to him—lucrative as long as he is alive, that is. Beside me is a woman selling tortillas and green mangoes. Like the innumerable other single moms in this community, she must choose between being with her children and feeding them. Even the dogs, whose ugly skeletal bodies manage to reproduce at obscene rates, join this dance of joy and threat, death and life that is ordinary living here.

From behind me, I hear an old man groan; he is struggling to stand up from where he is sitting against a wall. And it seems to me right now that I can hear in his groan the groaning of this whole place, and for that matter, the groaning of all creation that Paul spoke of in Romans as it waits for its redemption. The groaning of these hills, soaked with the blood of those murdered for a cell phone or a pair of shoes. The groaning of this river, polluted with chemicals and sewage. Holy groans. Like the groans of the people in Egyptian slavery that touched the ears and heart of God. Like the groans of the psalmist while his very bones wasted away. Like groans of the crucified One, bearing the weight of the whole world's pain. I want to groan too, because I don't have any words to speak. So I am thankful for the beautiful Spirit who joins the groaning, who takes my conflicted feelings of guilt and anger and love and intercedes for me with "groans that words could not express." Holy groans.

But now, I am struck by something else. I hear the voice of a little girl coming from around the corner, singing loudly and clearly a song I know well: "Oh love of God, how rich and pure, how measureless and strong, it will forevermore endure, the saints' and angels' song!"

Love of God, rich and pure, measureless and strong. In the middle of so much suffering, this can easily sound like the mockery of an indifferent universe. I am certain of one thing: it must either be a cruel joke or the deepest possible truth. It is easy for philosophers and theologians to debate the question of suffering when they are removed from its stark reality. However, it is a costly thing for those who suffer to speak of the love of God in the midst of their pain. That is why their voice carries the ring and force of truth. When it comes to questions of love and suffering, the voice of the smallest, the poorest, and the most vulnerable carries an authority far beyond that of philosophical treatises or the debates of the 'experts.' I have read many good books on this topic, and I have even tried to write about it myself. But I have never read anything that speaks so profoundly to life's deepest groans than the song of this child in this place. This song does not dismiss or deny our groaning, but assures us that we do not groan in an empty void, but in the midst of a universe whose truest reality is Love.

-

Rachel Tulloch is a member of the speaking team with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Toronto, Canada.

there was no form nor sound. the mould under the bushes, the moss on the path, and the little brick border, were not visibly changed. but they were changed. a boundary had been crossed. she had come into a world, or into a Person, or into the presence of a Person. somthing expectant, patient, inexorable, met her with no veil or protection between. in the closeness of that contact she perceived at once that the Director's words had been entirely misleading. this demand which now pressed upon her was not, even by analogy, like any other demand. it was the origin of all right demands and contained them. in its light you could understand them: but from them you could know nothing of it. there was nothing, and never had been anything, like this. yet also, everything had been like this: only by being like this had anything existed. in this height and depth and breadth the little idea of herself which she had hitherto called me dropped down and vanished, unfluttering, into bottomless distance, like a bird in space without air. the name me was the name of a being whose existence she had never suspected, a being that did not yet fully exist but which was demanded. it was a person (not the person she had thought) yet also a thing- a made thing, made to please Another and in Him to please all others- a thing being made at this very moment, without its choice, in a shape it had never dreamed of. and the making went on amidst a kind of splendour or sorrow or both, whereof she could not tell whether it was in the moulding hands or in the kneaded lump.


[here's theology for you. that search of spleandour.]

'that hideous strength', c.s. lewis

for remembering: http://fissions.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/473/#respond

*

anyway, i've been reading lewis' 'four loves', food for thought in every page but this one really struck me. i put it down not to pressure/unsubtlely hint to the male race, but because the Christ-like love is such a humbling love- 'the husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church. he is to love her as Christ loved the Church- read on- and gave his life for her (Ephesians 5:25). this headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is- in her own mere nature- least lovable. for the Church has no beauty but what the Bridegroom gives her, he does not find, but makes her, lovely. the chrism of this terrible coronation is to be seen not in the joys of any man's marriage but in its sorrows, in the sickness and sufferings of a good wife or the fauls of a bad one, in his unwearying (never paraded) care or his inexhaustible forgiveness: forgiveness, not acquiescence. as Christ sees in the flawed, proud, fanatical or lukewarm Church on earth that Bride who will one day be without spot or wrinkle, and labours to produce the latter, so the husband whose headship is Christ-like (and he is allowed no other sort) never despairs. he is a King Cophetua who after twenty years still hopes that the beggar-girl will one day learn to speak the truth and wash behind her ears.'

mending relationships

hard to do qt these days.
feels a little like the calm after heavy rain, all's quiet now but that's just because the thunderstorm ran out of energy. things haven't really changed.
hoping it all gets better asap.