Brennan Manning on Grace

Brennan Manning on Grace:

“Yes, the gracious God enfleshed in Jesus Christ loves us.”

“Grace is the active expression of his love. The Christian lives by grace as Abba’s child, utterly rejecting the God who catches people by surprise in a moment of weakness—the God incapable of smiling at our awkward mistakes, the God who does not accept a seat at our human festivities, the God who says “You will pay for that,” the God incapable of understanding that children will always get dirty and be forgetful, the God always snooping around after sinners.”

“At the same time, the child of the Father rejects the pastel-colored patsy God who promises never to rain on our parade….

…the child of God knows that the graced life calls him or her to live on a cold and windy mountain, not on the flattened plain of reasonable, middle-of-the-road religion.”

“For at the heart of the gospel of grace, the sky darkens, the wind howls, a young man walks up another Moriah in obedience to a God who demands everything and stops at nothing. Unlike Abraham, he carries a cross on his back rather than sticks for the fire…like Abraham, listening to a wild and restless God who will have His way with us, no matter what the cost.”

“This is the God of the gospel of grace. A God who, out of love for us, sent the only Son He ever had wrapped in our skin. He learned how to walk, stumbled and fell, cried for His milk, sweated blood in the night, was lashed with a whip and showered with spit, was fixed to a cross, and died whispering forgiveness on us all.”

“The God of the legalistic Christian, on the other hand, is often unpredictable, erratic, and capable of all manner of prejudices. When we view God this way, we feel compelled to engage in some sort of magic to appease Him. Sunday worship becomes a superstitious insurance policy against His whims. This God expects people to be perfect and to be in perpetual control of their feelings and thoughts. When broken people with this concept of God fail—as inevitably they must—they usually expect punishment. So they persevere in religious practices as they struggle to maintain a hollow image of a perfect self. The struggle itself is exhausting. The legalists can never live up to the expectations they project on God.”

“A married woman in Atlanta with two small children told me recently she was certain that God was disappointed with her because she wasn’t “doing anything” for Him. She told me she felt called to a soup kitchen ministry but struggled with leaving her children in someone else’s care. She was shocked when I told her the call was not from God but from her own ingrained legalism. Being a good mother wasn’t enough for her; in her mind, neither was it good enough for God.”

“In similar fashion, a person who thinks of God as a loose cannon firing random broadsides to let us know who’s in charge will become fearful, slavish, and probably unbending in his or her expectations of others. If your God is an impersonal cosmic force, your religion will be noncommittal and vague. The image of God as an omnipotent thug who brooks no human intervention creates a rigid lifestyle ruled by puritanical laws and dominated by fear.”

“But trust in the God who loves consistently and faithfully nurtures confident, free disciples. A loving God fosters a loving people.” [Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel]

Summer Long Hiatus/Tragedy In The Church

Sorry for the Summer long silence, but I spent most of my Summer at our pool or playing video games as well as spending time with family and friends. We had a lot of company this Summer, too---especially since my 30th birthday was August the 3rd. Anyways, I hope to get back into full blogging mode soon now that Fall is rolling around---but I figured I'd break my silence today as we had a tragic death in our church this week. A little boy was playing with some friends and climbed a tree and fell off it and died later in the hospital earlier this week. It is always sad to lose someone so young, but his parents even in the face of tragic circumstances did a graceful thing by donating his organs to help save and give life to others and that is what following Jesus is about---acts of self-less grace. Even-though, these parents lost a life by living out their faith, they gave hope and life to others who might have lost a life as well.

God's Grace In Action

Here is a news article in which one can discern God's Grace in action:

Accuser, Exonerated Man Are Friends
AOL
posted: 6 DAYS 13 HOURS AGOcomments: 1213filed under: Law News, National NewsPrintShareText SizeAAA

(March 9) - When Jennifer Thompson identified Ronald Cotton as her rapist in 1984, she was sure she had found the right man. But she was wrong.
Cotton, then 22, was convicted of raping Thompson and another woman on the same night in Burlington, N.C. He would spend the next 11 years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit.

In 1995, DNA evidence cleared Cotton of the rapes and showed that another man who was in prison with him was the rapist, a case recently covered by CBS' '60 Minutes'. Now, Thompson and Cotton are friends and have written a new book together on their story, called 'Picking Cotton.'
The two speak on the phone weekly and travel together to speak out on the problems with eyewitness evidence. Even their families are friends.

Thompson said she felt horrible guilt when she found out Cotton was not her rapist. "Suffocating, debilitating shame," she told Lesley Stahl in a CBS '60 Minutes' interview that aired Sunday. She asked Cotton if she could meet with him at a local church.

"I started to cry immediately. And I looked at him, and I said, 'Ron, if I spent every second of every minute of every hour for the rest of my life telling you how sorry I am, it wouldn't come close to how my heart feels. I'm so sorry.' And Ronald just leaned down, he took my hands…and he looked at me, he said, 'I forgive you,'" Thompson told CBS.
"I told her, I said, 'Jennifer, I forgive you. I don't want you to look over your shoulder. I just want us to be happy and move on in life,'"Cotton said.
There have been 233 people exonerated by DNA evidence across the country, and more than 75 percent of them have been convicted at least in part because of faulty eyewitness testimony, Stahl reported.

See video at: CBS 60 Minutes or AOL.

2009 AOL LLC. All Rights Reserved.
2009-03-09 15:02:59

Mom Let 3-Year-Old Son Smoke

Mom Let 3-Year-Old Son Smoke
AOL / Wire Services
posted: 17 HOURS 54 MINUTES AGOcomments: 312filed under: World News

LONDON (Jan. 22) - A British woman has pleaded guilty to child cruelty for allowing her 3-year-old to smoke in front of her.

Prosecutor Jonathan Rees said video taken by a mobile phone showed the small child popping a cigarette into his mouth, lighting it with a lighter and taking a drag.
Rees told a court in the Welsh town of Merthyr Tydfil that the boy's mother, 24-year-old Kelly Marie Pocock, was sitting next to him and talking on the phone at the time.
The video was shot by Pocock's friend, Natasha Dudley, who showed the footage to social workers.
"It doesn't cause him any discomfort," Rees said, according to the British Broadcasting Corp. "It is clear that the boy, at the age of three, knows what to do with a lighter and cigarette."
Judge John Curran said Thursday it was clear Pocock's child was a habitual smoker and called the situation appalling.

Pocock was given a 40-week suspended sentence.
According to the Daily Mail, the judge told Pocock he did not want to separate the single mom from her son and two other small children. He also took into account that she had completed a parenting class.
"This offense would normally cross the custody threshold but I do not want to cause your children any further emotional harm by separating them from you," he said.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

Copyright 2009, Reuters
2009-01-22 19:13:17

I have no comment other than that my mom never let me smoke---let alone when I was 3. I had to try it in secret with a friend when I was 10 and I still got caught and in trouble for it---but the good thing is when I tried smoking, I hated it and thankfully never did it again. Anyways, this news article is a good example of when to show grace to the world. So what are your thoughts?

Faith and Theology: Iron & Wine and Augustine: on grace and mothers

Faith and Theology: Iron & Wine and Augustine: on grace and mothers

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These type posts are always interesting to me as the connection between theology, spirituality and music are my forte.

Here is snippet of Faith And Theology's new post:

TUESDAY, 25 NOVEMBER 2008

Iron & Wine and Augustine: on grace and mothers
One of Augustine’s favourite biblical texts was Paul’s question to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 4:7): “What do you have that you did not receive?” – Quid enim habebat quod non acceperat? Against Pelagian conceptions of grace, Augustine insists on the absolute priority of God’s action towards us in Christ. Even when God rewards us for good works, God is merely “crowning his own gifts.” There is, in other words, a sheer incommensurability between God’s gift to us and the gifts that we return to God. Even the best of our gifts are always derivative and dependent on the grace that we have already received.

Read more at the above link.

Karl Barth On Grace

The Incomprehensibility of Grace
Posted on October 9, 2008 by Halden

“Grace is the incomprehensible fact that God is well pleased with a man, and that a man can rejoice in God. Only when grace is recognized to be incomprehensible is it grace. Grace exists, therefore, only where the Resurrection is reflected. Grace is the gift of Christ, who exposes the gulf which separates God and man, and, by exposing it, bridges it. . . . Where the grace of God is, the very existence of the world and the very existence of God become a question and a hope with which and for which men must wrestle. For we are not now concerned with the propaganda of a conviction or with its imposition on others; grace means bearing witness to the faithfulness of God which a man has encountered and recognized, and which requires a corresponding fidelity towards God. The fidelity of a man to the faithfulness of God–the faith, that is, which accepts grace–is itself the demand for obedience and itself demands obedience from others. Hence the demand is a call which enlightens and rouses to action; it carries with it mission, beside which no other mission is possible. For the name of Him in whom the two worlds meet and are separated must be honoured, and for this mission grace provides full authority, since men are shattered by it.”

– Karl Barth, Epistle to the Romans 6th Edition. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 31.

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