GENEralities

My Sabbath is on a Wednesday this week. Some interesting bits from my blog reading this morning:

More Anglican good news

…this time from The Rev’d Dr. John W. Yates II who lists the good things about Anglicanism. At its best, Anglicanism:

1. is Biblical
2. is Sacramental
3. is Evangelical
4. is Liturgical
5. is Worldwide
6. is Charismatic
7. is about Accountability (we have bishops)
8. is Musical
9. Engages society and the world us
10. is Prayerful
11. is a Community of Grace
12. loves Children
13. loves Beauty

All here (H/T VirtueOnline).

What Marriage and Leadership Have in Common

In our Sabbath devotional this morning, Jude and I read this:

Contrary to hundreds of Hollywood romance movies, marriage is not primarily designed to make us happy. God is not primarily interested in our happiness, but in something deeper and more lasting: our holiness. Or we might say that God is so interested in our long-term happiness — our eternal joy, which only holiness leads to — that he reserves the right to sacrifice our short-term happiness to ensure we receive it.

Ditto for leadership. Kevin Miller, here.

The Anglican Covenant

The excellent ANGLICAN DOWN UNDER has a good point about the living with an Anglican Covenant and whether or not it can work:

Is homosexual practice compatible with Scripture? Some say No, some say Yes. But together we have not yet agreed to one of two things which would accord with a common approach to truth: either that it does not matter if an open contradiction on this matter is a feature of Anglican life, or that it matters that there is an open contradiction but nevertheless we can live with the contradiction.

That’s the question. Wise Kiwi. All DOWN UNDER here.

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Today was our highway clean up day. StB has a 3km stretch of the highway as it goes through Redcliff. It amazes me how many people still throw their empty drink (or whatever) containers and fast-food wrappers out their windows as they’re driving. It’s hard not to think ill of them.

I found a wallet. It was empty. Sigh. But then last year I found a pair of men’s underpants. They, too, were empty. Thanks be to God.

And this afternoon I got to preside at a wedding.

A day of contrasts.

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Christ the Lord: the Road to Cana

Still enjoying the afterglow of Anne Rice’, Christ the Lord: the Road to Cana. I feel like, through her, the Lord gave me some idea of what might have been going on in his head in those early days as he struggled to comprehend and accept the reality of who he really was. I loved him as I read it. I was brought to tears as John baptized him in the Jordan. Rice’s imaginative take on the wedding at Cana and how Jesus came to be there is brilliant. Wonderful.

Kingdom Swordplay

Camping in Psalm 18 this week with A Guide to Prayer. It’s the “by my God I can leap over a wall” psalm. “He trains my hands for war (v32),” writes David. “I pursued my enemies and overtook them (v37)…I thrust them through, so that they were not able to rise; they fell under my feet (v38).” I can’t imagine thrusting someone through with a sword. David’s world was also one in which what he was called to do exposed him to the risk of being thrust through himself. It’s foreign to me except in some sort of allegorical, “spiritual warfare” kind of way, not to mention being seriously incorrect politically.

Still, it is God’s upright and true Word of Life.

Jesus has something to say about swords:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. (Mt 10.34)

and

But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one. (Lk 22.36)

But on the other hand,

Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. (Mt 26.52)

What Are My Hands Trained For?

How does one apply that to life and ministry in twenty-first century Medicine Hat? What have You—do You—train my hands for? Who, or what, must I (figuratively, I presume, I hope!) pursue, overtake and thrust through so they are unable to rise and will fall beneath my feet?

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The WHO came up with these ratings in 2000:

1 France
2 Italy
3 San Marino
4 Andorra
5 Malta
6 Singapore
7 Spain
8 Oman
9 Austria
10 Japan

And where was Canada, you ask? 30th, right behind Morocco. I wonder where we are now.

If Italy, with all its mad governmental chaos, can be number 2, what does that say about the way our governments do health?

Not so long ago I read that it’s way quicker for a dog to get a hip replacement than a human. Much of my pastoral care work is with people who are waiting for some sort of test or care.

Found it here.

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Reading Alister McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: the Protestant Revolution—a history from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first (HarperOne, 2007)…from the public library, yet! Very good. Some bits that caught my eye:

Other nations might have been tempted to experiment with atheism or agnosticism in response to the religious intolerance and bigotry of the Puritan era. The English, however, decided to reinstate the Church of England instead, presumably believing that, for all intents and purposes, this amounted to more or less the same thing.

The same thing as atheism or agnosticism, that is. Hmmm. Does history repeat itself? He goes on:

Under Charles II, who reigned from 1660 to 1685, a decidedly docile form of Anglicanism emerged as the religion of the English establishment. The Church of England would be expected to be submissive to the expectations of the people and to keep its religious beliefs to itself rather than impose them on others. 142

Is there still the tendency to docile submissiveness to the spirit of the age and to keeping its beliefs to itself? I think so, alas. I do it myself.

On early protestantism in America

Whereas Massachusetts became a hotbed of Protestant religious experimentation, with generally secondary interests in commerce, southern colonies from Delaware to Georgia were primarily concerned with trade and saw religion as peripheral to this enterprise. It was an ideal context for Anglicanism to take root and flourish, primarily as the religion of the planting class. Long used to issues of social class and distinction, Anglicanism proved an ideal provider of a veneer of religious dignity to the social structures of the plantations that continued to the dawn of the nineteenth century. 154

Allowing our religion to be peripheral to our lives is still a hazard for Christians. So it devising a form of Anglicanism which merely provides a veneer of religious dignity to living and consuming like everyone else.

The problem with nineteenth century pastors

Who were seen by some as little more than “thin, vapid, affected, driveling little doodles.” 369

Ahem. I AM not thin.

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Bell Satellite TV
We’ve just cancelled our Bell satellite service. The picture is nice but the monthly fee is just too hard to justify for watching The National and the occasional movie. To try and persuade us to stay, Bell offered us 6 months at 30% off our present monthly rate and upped that to 12 months when we refused. Too little, too late. The generous Bell deals and offers seem always aimed at new customers. The irritating thing is that they require 30 days notice of cancelation. For what, I wonder, other to get another month’s worth from me?

So it’ll be DVDs (thanks to our Zip.ca subscription) and The National online from now on.

Bell Mobility
We’ve also cancelled our mobility account. They also required 30 days notice for that. It’s indicative of the Bell approach to things. When I broke my Treo 650 a couple of years ago, they reactivated my old phone for free, but charged me $35 to reactivate my Treo when it was fixed. I doubt that there was $35 worth of labour in that and I doubt that there’s 30 days fee’s worth in the cancelations, either.

I’d take some convincing to go back.

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Who are the crash-test dummies now?

CBC story here.

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A good, even-handed look at Canadian young evangelicals last night on Global. These two lines caught my attention: first, from Jim Pattison, who bank-rolls the Alpha advertising campaign:

The message doesn’t change, but the presentation should.

Something we Anglicans need to take to heart.

The other thought that connected with me was expressed by Connexus Community Church lead pastor Carey Nieuwhof, who said something like this at one point on the subject of welcoming all comers:

It’s not so much about getting people to change so that God will love them; they are more likely to change because God loves them.

O yes!

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More than 100,000 Britons have recently downloaded “certificates of de-baptism” from the Internet to renounce their Christian faith.

Some folk have been bemoaning this development. I don’t know what the fuss is all about. It seems to me this is a good thing. Better than having thousands of  people with baptismal certificates which are meaningless because they have never accepted the Christian faith.

Read it all here.

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No, David, but tell us what you really think!

Even at best, Darwinism has been the great obliterator of that holy sense of wonder in the presence of nature that is intrinsic to our humanity. It replaces the rich world of gorgeous particularities with the steady drone of a feeble-minded atheistic propaganda. 

What a great phrase is “the rich world of gorgeous particularities.” That’s the world I want to inhabit.

I also remember reading somewhere about about how what David describes as that “steady drone of a feeble-minded atheistic propaganda” has diminished what used to be called “the heavens” to merely “space.” 

Alas. 

All here.

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