ppadmin – Page 169 – Prayer & Politiks

Methodist Bishop Timothy W. Whitaker

America has become a Linus nation . . . always searching for our security blanket. . . . There is nothing more dangerous than a powerful nation that is afraid. — Methodist Bishop Timothy W. Whitaker

– Marine Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold, former director of operations at the Pentagon’s military joint staff, writing in Time magazine. Newbold resigned four months before the invasion of Iraq.

My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions—or bury the results. — – Marine Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold, former director of operations at the Pentagon’s military joint staff, writing in Time magazine. Newbold resigned four months before the invasion of Iraq.

James Finley

[G]race uses faltering beginnings to achieve its own unforeseeable ends. — James Finley

For it is in the act of worship that the church steadily renews itself in the discipline of wisdom. Worship is a vigorous act of reordering our desires in the light of God’s burning desire for the wellness of creation.

Ellen F. Davis

In our culture, mysticism is sadly misunderstood and maligned as disconnected with reality: impractical at best and dangerously irresponsible at worst. Even those who may admire mysticism often regard it as the special capacity of a few spiritually gifted people, almost all of whom lived in the Middle Ages. . . . Mysticism is not an escape from reality, but the opposite. It is a prayerful penetration of reality. — Ellen F. Davis

Walter Brueggemann

The doxologies of ancient Israel, the lyrical soaring of Paul’s Epistles, and the regular amazement evoked by the deeds and teaching of Jesus all converge in the stunning affirmation that the world is other than we had taken it to be, because the world is the venue for God’s reign.

Ken Sehested

Violence is a form of evangelism for the Devil. It’s claim is that there is no Sovereign other than the the one who, currently, aims the business end of the barrel and sets the terms of the market’s beneficiaries.

Charles Elliott

[T]he demand for radical love of God is indistinguishable from the radical love of those who have no claim on us. So prayer comes to focus on that vortex: where freedom to give and receive the abundance of God’s love spills over into, comprehends, includes, becomes the essence of the splendour of love of the vulnerable and the dispossessed.