What if the whole purpose of creation is to enable us to fall deeply in love with Jesus?
What if the key to falling in love with Jesus is realizing He already fell in love with us?
What if that is how we love the rest of the world back to Him?
Tag Archives: theodicy
12/15 Poem: Right Suffering
StandardThe real source of pain
It now seems to me
Is where I conflict
With reality
Limerick: Larm Bell
StandardInverting “alarm” gives us “larm”
Good news that acts like a charm
If even a cross
Brings more gain that loss
Then earth’s worst pain can’t us harm!
Poem: Goodly Evil
StandardAs mortals we dare not believe
Truths that our eyes can’t perceive
How God in His goodness may lead
Us faster through lands where we bleed
Poem: En-viable Life
StandardProverbs 24:1 Do not envy wicked men or desire their company;
Do I envy wicked men?
Would I take their place?
Do I crave the power to rule
More than the pow’r of grace?
Poem: The Grace Response
StandardHow we respond
When we feel pain
Tells us what
We hope to gain
Poem: The God Who Is (and We Are Not)
StandardWe Christians and Jews
Do not get to choose
Our reality
Is defined by Thee
The One that You are
Must be our North Star
Your plan from above
Must be how we love
Limerick: Grown-Up God
StandardWhen we are little God’s small
Though to us He seems all-in-all
But as we grow our brain
In a world filled by pain
That comfort is destined to fall
Limerick: Under-Handed
StandardGod sometimes seems under-handed
Our suffering, as if He has planned it
It feels like our pain
Is just for His gain
And we must give what He demanded
Where Grief Begins
StandardBy its very nature
Grief feels like The End
Death
Dissolution
Destruction
Loss of connection
Loss of belonging
Loss of hope
The Loss
Is Real
And Final
And yet…
Continue readingRedeeming Animism, Part 4: Effacing Death
StandardContinued from Part 3
Prologue
Here in my own private Eden
I stare into the eyes of a snake
Like unto the one that deceived Eve
Seeking the truth that could unmake Satan
But seeing only the Face of Death
I am no stranger to Death
Hell, Hades and I are so close he loans me his keys
But this…
This is different
Nehushtan
Continue readingImmanuel Encounter: Into the Woods
Standard[As experienced at the Wisdom Upgrade Workshop #2 with Father Andrew Miller, during the 100X Wisdom challenge]
I am in the woods at IVCF camp in Massachusetts
At the moonlit lake
I remember from my college days
Jesus is there
I am seven years old
It is daytime
TRG-S6E4: Core Concepts
StandardJoin us on The Great Reset (via Zoom or YouTube Live at Tue Dec 22 1PM PST) as David Johnson pitches us on the concepts he feels we need to Love More Like Jesus.
Question: What does this group need in order to function the way God intended for us?
TRG-S6E3: All Creation Groans
StandardJoin us on The Great Reset (via Zoom or YouTube Live at Tue Dec 15 1PM PST) as we wrestle with Ted’s challenge about how to love the whole world More Like Jesus.
Question: Why did God place us in a world full of brokenness and pain?
Perspective: So we could share in the glory that only comes from becoming more like Jesus.
Broken Words: Lament of the Spiritual Entrepreneur
StandardC Am C Am / F G7 / (C)
Broken words and broken hearts, Broken lies keep us apart
How can we speak a truth we’ve never heard?
Broken words inside my heart, They are tearing me apart
How can we save the world with broken words?
Broken Words
Knight Club: Levels of Love
StandardThe first rule of Knight Club: you must talk about Knight Club.
In the comments on my first Knight Club post, my friend Jor Bratko talks about “raising adults”, and points out that:
the legitimacy of my authority like all legitimate authority comes from love: the care of the other
He is absolutely correct. I actually knew this, but I didn’t understand how it applied to fatherhood. Part of the problem is that the English word “love” refers to (at least) three different phenomena, which in this context I call Baby Love, Bro Love, and Boss Love — loosely inspired by the four loves described by C.S. Lewis.
If Only In My Youth
StandardThis is a another poem from my old site, written back in 2004 as I was beginning my current voyage of self-discovery. It starts out a bit whiny, but that’s where I was back then. 🙂
The meter is loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven, and the plot is partly inspired by Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis.
Song: No Longer Alone
StandardThis is a song I wrote back in 1996 in my post-college, pre-Apple days in Pasadena, California. It was for a girl I knew — heck, it fit pretty much all the girls I hung out with and/or was interested in during that decade.
I also sang it during a “Christian Connection” (online dating site) cruise back in 1999, just before I met Sandhya. By God’s grace I got to perform for the ship talent show. I said I was part of a Christian singles group with 80 women and 15 men — and I was having a *great* time! (as was reported almost daily on the ship’s TV :-).
“But being single wasn’t always fun and games — and that’s why I wrote this song.”
Continue reading
Radically Happy 