How would it change the shape of social struggle if we understood that we wrestle not just against flesh and blood but also against principalities, against powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies? What are the practical implications of putting on the whole armor of God and praying at all times in the Spirit (Eph. 6:10-20)? How would it change the nature of our wrestling if we did so in the context of continuous Bible study and singing and worship? . . . It is the way increasing numbers of others have learned they must live, in order to keep on struggling against the Beast without being made bestial.
Read more ›Author: ppadmin
Ken Sehested
The purpose of God is framed, and the passion of God is fired, in the wounds of the world. That is to say, God bleeds. — Ken Sehested
Christian Wiman
Faith steals upon you like dew: some days you wake and it is there. And like dew, it gets burned off in the rising sun of anxieties, ambitions, distractions. — Christian Wiman
Walter Brueggemann
It happens often among us that praise is either escapist fantasy, or it is a bland affirmation of the status quo. In fact, doxology is a daring political, polemical act that serves to dismiss certain loyalties and to embrace and legitimate other loyalties, and other shapes of reality. — Walter Brueggemann
Miroslav Volf
[T]he economy of undeserved grace has primacy over the economy of moral deserts. — Miroslav Volf
Thomas Kelly
Paradoxically, this total Instruction [God’s Spirit moving in our lives] proceeds in two opposing directions at once. We are torn loose from earthly attachments and ambitions. And we are quickened to a divine but painful concern for the world. He plucks the world out of our hearts, loosening the chains of attachment. And he hurls the world into our hearts, where we and He together carry it in infinitely tender love.
Read more ›Elizabeth O’Connor
At the center of our pain, we glimpse a fairer world and hear a call. When we are able to keep company with our own fears and sorrows, we are shown the way to go, our parched lives are watered, and the earth becomes a greener place. Hope begins to grow, and we are summoned to the work that will give us a feeling of wellness and make possible that which we envision.
Read more ›St. Ambrose
It was in common and for all, rich and poor, that the earth was created. Why then, O rich, do you take to yourselves the monopoly of owning land? . . . It is not with your wealth that you give alms to the poor, but with a fraction of their own which you give back; for you are usurping for yourself something meant for the common good of all. — St. Ambrose
Vincent Harding
The question of “race is like a bone stuck in our throat, refusing both digestion and explusion, endangering our life.” It is “the unmistakable need and desire of our nation to deal with its terrifying and compelling history, to exorcise the demons of our racial past and present, perhaps even to discover the healing possibilities that reside in our many-hued and wounded variations on the human theme.” — Vincent Harding
Vincent Harding
For it is likely that there can be no resurrections by proxy. Each person and each generation may be called to stand anew—but not alone—at the river. — Vincent Harding