Procrastinated a bit today by designing a custom day planner sheet to put in a discbound notebook.

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Accidentally initiated a factory reset a couple of weeks ago. Took the opportunity to not reinstall social media (excepting micro.blog) and re-think how my home screen and app library should work for me.

Good news! Successfully replaced the light switch yesterday without killing myself.

Gearing up to replace a few switches and outlets around the house. This video was super helpful.

Today at St. George’s Anglican Church Pastor Shane reminded us that pride is the source of judgmentalism, and that ultimately, no one has any cause to compare themselves to others.

All pride in ourselves is ultimatley misplaced, because we all miss the mark when it comes to what’s most important: eternal life now and forever.

God pours out his mercy on all, and that’s all that matters.

Hope for the renewal of all things in and because of Jesus is what keeps me going when I consider and experience the suffering of the world. I’ve also found light in the ways that ultimate renewal manifests in the present–in true worship, in acts of kindness between strangers, in the refusal to receive the injustices of the world as the status quo.

Dusty’s stress at my wife Amber going out on the lake is palpable in this photo, I think.

Woods Canyon Lake, AZ

We want our comfort and convenience. We want our power. We want to point out our success in pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps. But Jesus subverts these “saviors” and offers something different. He offers himself. He offers forgiveness of sins and grace to forgive others.

And many of us simply can’t see how this can work in the real world. What’s the point of living if we’re uncomfortable much of the time? How will we get anything done without requiring others do what we think is best? Where’s our identity if we can’t build up ever-improving sense of accomplishment and expression?

These are reasonable questions, and this is why the message of the Cross, the Good News of God in Christ, the Gospel of Jesus, is a scandal. We often say it is counterintuitive, which means it doesn’t conform to how we might thing things go.

Yet, Jesus conquers our objections, because as God in the flesh, he conquered death. When we look a the results of our pursuit of saviors apart from him, we all find the same ending point: death itself, with no hope for anything past that. We might find temporary comfort, we might have our way for a bit, we might experience a self-esteem high that feels great! But that doesn’t keep us from dying as result of our and everyone else’s selfish and self-destructive attitudes, actions, and affections.

Jesus, on the other hand, proved that his way is the way of life by coming back to life. This why he said people had to understand “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected… and be killed, and on the third day be raised…”

The Resurrection vindicates the downward way of Christ as the ultimate way of life and health and peace.

This commentary on Luke reads like a bunch of really great sermons. Which is probably its genesis!

This how I try to understand and live out my pastoral and priestly vocation: “lashed to the mast of Word and Sacrament.”

“One more thing: We are going to ordain you to this ministry, and we want your vow that you will stick to it. This is not a temporary job assignment, but a way of life that we need lived out in our community. We know that you are launched on the same difficult belief venture in the same dangerous world as we are. We know that your emotions are as fickle as ours. That is why we are going to ordain you and why we are going to exact a vow from you.

We know that there are going to be days and months, maybe even years, when we won’t feel like we are believing anything and won’t want to hear it from you. And we know that there will be days and weeks and maybe even years when you won’t feel like saying it. It doesn’t matter. Do it. You are ordained to this ministry, vowed to it. There may be times when we come to you as a committee or delegation and demand that you tell us something else than what we are telling you now. Promise right now that you won’t give in to what we demand of you. You are not the minister of our changing desires, or our time-conditioned understanding of our needs, or our secularized hopes for something better. With these vows of ordination we are lashing you fast to the mast of Word and Sacrament so that you will be unable to respond to the siren voices.

There are a lot of other things to be done in this wrecked world, and we are going to be doing at least some of them, but if we don’t know the basic terms with which we are working, the foundational realities with which we are dealing – God, kingdom, gospel – we are going to end up living futile, fantasy lives. Your task is to keep telling the basic story, representing the presence of the Spirit, insisting on the priority of God, speaking the biblical words of command and promise and invitation.”

Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles

Christian brothers and sisters, Prayer for the world is an essential aspect of our vocation.

We must stand firm in prayer always, and especially in this terrible moment for our human family that is unfolding in Ukraine.

Let us pray:

Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, no strength known but the strength of love: So mightily spread abroad your Spirit, that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace; to whom be dominion and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

Almighty God, from whom all thoughts of truth and peace proceed: Kindle, we pray, in the hearts of all people the true love of peace, and guide with your pure and peaceable wisdom those who take counsel for the nations of the earth; that in tranquility your kingdom may go forward, till the earth is filled with the knowledge of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O God, the Creator of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth; deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you in Jesus Christ; in whose Name we pray. Amen.

Prayers from BCP2019 p. 654-655

Learning about Ephrem of Syria today. Really looking forward to reading him and other Syriac Fathers more.

Battle station ready for my Monday morning sermon prep focus session (reading/research)

I am pretty excited to preach about God’s heart for the nations tomorrow morning–not least because I see how that heart is being manifest in our local church. What a joy!

I need these prayers

Goals for today: finish some key tasks for Desert Mission Anglican Church, play some games with the kids (they’re still home on break), read some George MacDonald while smoking a pipe

It’s the Third Day of Christmas. We remember St. John the Theologian.

He wrote:

“…the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14, ESV)

This is an indispensable part of the Good News: God delights in humanity! Why else would he become one?

God doesn’t become something he doesn’t love.

And—get this—God delights in you!

We are told in the Scriptures that—by the Spirit—the Word of God dwells in all who will receive him, which is our guarantee of eternal life.

God doesn’t dwell where he doesn’t want to be.

“Shed upon your Church, O Lord, the brightness of your light; that we, being illumined by the teaching of your apostle and evangelist John, may so walk in the light of your truth, that at length we may attain to the fullness of eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

Promise & presence. Light & life. This is Christmas.

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Photo: www.blessedmart.com/shop/hand…

Over and against rulers with delusions of divine favor and power, Mary proclaims in her Spirit-inspired song that divinity is not found in those that think they already have it in and of themselves.

She preaches with passion: God is born by those that humbly, yet hungrily desire to receive him.

This isn’t heard as good news by the proud, the powerful, and the prosperous.

Yet those that have eyes to look for the Lord of Creation in places of humility, weakness, poverty, and profound humanity will find grace upon grace.

As the lowly are lifted and the high and mighty brought down, we see with clarity that all are in need and that all our needs are met Christ.

When this happens in the church, things begin to be as they should be.

They begin to be just.

God’s justice begins to be made manifest when, in the church, we find ourselves:

confessing one Lord, living one faith, sharing one baptism, all at one-and-the-same Table, all saying together,

“Lord I am not worthy to gather the crumbs from under your table! Say the word and I shall be healed!”

We find God coming again to us, his church, as we bear his Spirit in our bodies and yield to his work: to nourish, to teach, to heal, to renew.

The religious and political leaders around Jesus were right that his kingdom threatened theirs, because he was at every turn exposing the evil and destructive practices of those that thought their life was best when they pursued their desires at the expense of others.

When they bring Jesus to their Roman ruler to do their dirty work, he tries to shield Jesus by giving them a choice to release Barabbas, whose name means “son of the father,” or Jesus, the man claiming to be the true Son of God.

After all they had seen him do, after all they had heard Jesus teach, in the end worldly leaders choose Barabbas—the violent, failed insurrectionist. To them, his way is the way that makes sense.

So Jesus, the one who healed, redeemed, liberated, and gave life, is condemned to death on the Cross. And because Jesus is committed to the Kingdom of life and peace and will not move forward with violence, he is met with violence, and that Cross becomes the Throne of heavenly grace, where he loves and forgives, offering grace upon grace even to those that crucified him.

That love was the power that swallowed death in death, and it was the Spirit of Love that raised Jesus from the dead, never to die again, vindicating his kingdom of life and peace as the only eternally victorious kingdom.

John’s apocalyptic vision proclaims:

Jesus “…has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father…” (Rev. 1:6 ESV).

Our objections to the way of Jesus, our blindness to the futility of violence, our inability to realize a better kingdom than the kingdoms we were born in–it’s all been dealt with on the Cross.

The church has been made—by grace alone—the place where the Christ’s Kingdom of self-giving love is revealed first to the kingdoms of this world.

As priests in this world, we are witnesses together, just like Christ, to the Truth of who God is in Christ, and what his eternal Kingdom is really like.

What makes a good king different from a bad king is the kind of power used and the way that power is used.

The thing that destines every king to fail is the unavoidable—and for every worldly king at some point irresistible—temptation to use their power to benefit themselves at the expense of others.

Devotional writer Jane Williams says,

“…what Jesus is offering as a description of his own kingship is truth—reality, you might say. Revelation calls it ‘the Alpha and Omega, who was and is and is to come’. If the actual reality of the world, from its creation to its end, is like Jesus, then this strange human obsession with power is an aberration. It has no ability to create, to redeem or to sanctify. Jesus’s challenge to Pilate’s kind of power is too slow and subtle for many of us, who long to use the weapons of worldly power to force victory for God. But if Jesus is the truth, then any other way is falsehood, and will fail. Reality, as it was and is and is to come, is shaped by a different kingship.”

Jesus lives as King over a kingdom that is certainly powerful, but he draws on a power not from this fallen world.

Jesus rules and reigns and fights battles in this world through the power of self-giving love and truth, which can only come from God himself.

His Kingdom is fundamentally spiritual in that it is conceived, birthed, and animated by the Spirit of Love who is God the Holy Spirit, but it is not merely spiritual because this Spirit takes up residence in his subjects, his followers, for the sake of the world.

“Deconstruction” is the topic du jour in the Christian social media space right now. It’s the recognition that many former “evangelicals” America–especially younger ones, and in large numbers–are rapidly rejecting parts of their evangelical faith and culture.

As someone who has had my own unique deconstruction journey (and in many ways continue that journey to this day) I want to say to those currently in the process:

1. I see you, and you are not alone, as disorienting, scary, painful, and disturbing as the process can be

2. I know you are probably in this for good reasons. We all have certain beliefs and values that need to be deconstructed and some that need to be outright rejected

3. To the extent you are deconstructing beliefs and values that do not align with the Jesus presented in the Gospel and witnessed to by the church catholic, you are on the right track

4. There is room within the Christian family for those who doubt, question, and explore

5. You are loved by Jesus. He is secure enough to welcome your questions, and close enough bear your uncertainty, and kind enough meet you where you are in this moment

6. No matter how much you feel like you are falling apart, there is hope and a path for “reconstruction” and most of all Resurrection because (see #5)

7. I’ll say it again, you are not alone.

Pretty excited to release a collection of songs, p r o d i g a l, today.

Hit the link or stream below.

So thankful today that Jesus did what I could never do:

Every temptation, he resisted. Every sin, he rebuked. Every affront, he forgave. Every blow, he absorbed.

Every opportunity to love, he loved.

In this he condemned sin in the flesh, dragging it to death as he himself died.

But sin, having been denied in him, could not destroy him, even by death of the body.

The Divine Life in him consumed even physical death, so he was raised, Resurrected, his body healed, purfied, perfected–Spirit-soaked, through and through– by the Lord, the Giver of Life.

So every mercy, he pours out. every grace, he gives.

Every one, he saves.