The Little Friar

Make no doubt about it: The kindness to which we Christians are called is difficult. It’s never easy to go about the work of reconciliation in the world. We Christian talk about love, but I oftentimes think that’s just a warm fuzzy word to make us sound good. It’s simply too amorphous and too abstract. We’ve pretty much lost the biblical sense of love a long time ago. So I don’t focus there. Because, while we’re being honest, I know too many brothers and sisters in the Faith who use the word love to justify being harsh and exclusive. Love becomes doing what is “best” for you and, by the way, you don’t get to decide what is best for you. (In full disclosure, I’ve done this all-too-often in the past. But I try to catch myself from doing it.) This is why I think the Bible so much stress on God’s loving-kindness. We’re supposed to start small. Work on kindness first, then worry about love. If we’re thoroughgoing kind people, love will follow. But if we get kind wrong, it’s re...

In praying the Daily Office recently I noticed the Psalm was printed like this:  "Psalm 68: 1-20(21-23)24-36". Those of us familiar with the Book of Common Prayer  know what those parentheses mean.  In essence, feel free to read from verses 1-20, skip that bit between 21-23, pick back up at verse 24, and finish reading at verse 36. Verses 21-23 are optional.  But why? Generally, when you see those parentheses in the lectionary you're being warned that you are about to encounter one of those dark and difficult texts in the Bible and that you might, depending upon the situation (kids, you know, might be listening in), want to read around those passages.   I hate it when they skip over bits like that.   Make no doubt about it:  Psalm 68 has some rough bits in it.  Right where the BCP said it would, in fact.  But in the midst of the darkest spots, there's Light. That is, when I read this psalm Christologically , it...

Charles Ryrie's Acts  from Moody's Everyday Bible Commentary Series is a solid theological exposition of Acts. Ryrie takes the approach that the narrative of the early Christian church in Acts is not a closed tale, but one that is open-ended and plays out in the contemporary church each and every day.  As a result, though the commentary has been around for a while, its message is as relevant as the church's life here and now, in the twenty-first century.  The lessons are sometimes obvious, but sometimes shocking.  To quote Ryrie:  "(Acts) furnishes us the principles for revival and missionary work; it shows the divine pattern for church government; and it exhibits not only steadfastness but expansion under persecution. It is a book for the church in any century" (p. 9). Through and through, Ryrie provides us with a consistent analysis of the text without reverting into technical matters.  Teachers and preachers should read this book, and dedicated ...

Alexander Shaia's Heart and Mind:  The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation is a rich reorientation toward the gospels -- those stories about Jesus at the heart of the Christian faith -- that blends prayer and action, "heart and mind", into a transformation experience instead of a dead text. Heart and Mind is a deeply textured respect for the New Testament and its original audiences that connects its message with the real lives of real people in the real world.  There is a mystery and magnitude to those texts that Shaia is able to respect, even as he simultaneously moves beyond traditional modern exegesis to embrace the early Christian transformative experience of spiritual reading. It is a wonderful spiritual gift to the modern Church! _____________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.

Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew's Living Revision:  A Writer's Craft as Spiritual Practice explores writing as a spiritual discipline.  She uses the language of faith to explore what writing offers to its practitioners.  Essentially a "writer's bible", this book is full of rich wisdom about the nature of writing itself, but she is most like a writer's prophet -- one who helps the writer-disciple follow the story and make it the best it can be.  The book is a spiritual challenge to engage in the writing craft as a spiritual exercise. Drawing on various examples of different writers and their work, Andrew helps the writer-disciple develop their faith-craft.  She uses various lists, illustrations, and exercises to guide the writer-disciple.  The book is comprehensive.  It can really help a writer-disciple grow in their faith-craft. In fact, I think it would be most helpful for pastors -- those who draft, week-in and week-out, sermons and articles ...

Hettie Brittz's Growing Kids with Character:  Nurturing Your Child's Potential, Purpose, and Passion offers rich spiritual wisdom in identifying your child's natural bent and how that affects your parenting journey.  Through Brittz's famous tree metaphors, you will discover how to let kids excel at being who they naturally are. This is a great guide for new and struggling parents that flows with rich theological wisdom.  Brittz starts off with a few memories of her mom and thinking that she would not let the same things happen to her children as her mom did to her.  But as time went on, God touched her heart and mind, and so this book begins. The book is particularly useful as a guide that parents return to again and again, instead of one you read and put away. _______________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.

Fred Sievert's Grace Revealed:  Finding God's Strength in Any Crisis is a collection of stories that highlight the power of healing grace. The book begins with three questions that plague each of us at some point in life:  Has life worn you down?  Have you been kicked in the teeth by illness?  Are you in crisis? And, at some point, each of us can answer yes to each of these questions. Sievert writes with a pastoral insight about the various types of grace and maps them onto various kinds of crises that crop up in people's lives, including sexual abuse, alcoholism, and suicidal tendencies.  These personal stories are told in vivid narrative detail and are followed up with Sievert's reflections on how each tale illustrates a different redemptive quality of God's grace. Some readers -- like me -- may be troubled by the book's gentle but persistent implication that prayer is a fit and sufficient method for dealing with deep physiological and psychological i...

Phil and Diane Comer's Raising Passionate Jesus Followers:  The Power of Intentional Parenting brings together pastoral wisdom with nearly four decades of actual parenting to offer help for parents who desire nothing more than to raise passionate Jesus followers. It's a manual of practical advice, with theological depth, that encourages parents to be intentional about the way in which they aide in the development of their children's character and spiritual formation.  Starting at birth, into grade school, through the daunting teenage years, to launching them into college, and finally letting go, this book contains the whys and the hows that parents need.  This book will serve as an invaluable resource for any parent whose greatest longing is to shepherd their children into a vibrant faith in God. Each chapter is short enough for a quick, daily read, and still offers enough weighty meat that readers will be left to ponder for the rest of the day. _____________...

Katie Jacobs' So Much to Celebrate is a beautiful cookbook that contains some of the easiest recipes and ideas for entertaining those we love. There are party ideas for every major event in life, particularly on a budget.  This is the ideal book for anyone who loves good times, good people and good food.  Because Jacobs is able to envision bringing all three together as an expression of our love and care.  There are plenty of inspiring ideas here, but it's Jacobs' advice about planning (and preparing) ahead that I found the most helpful.  We all know that entertaining these days -- amidst all the hectic daily living -- can be difficult.  Jacobs not only relieves a good bit of that difficulty, but does so in amazing ways. This is a must-have resource for every kitchen. _______________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.

From Matthew 13.24-30: He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, ‘Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'” As Jesus goes on to say, the wheat represent the children of the kingdom. The weeds represent the children of the evil one. The field i...

The Hebrew Bible and New Testament both say very unequivocal things in favor of helping the poor and excluded, welcoming the stranger, and a host of other topics immediately relevant to our political environment. But unfortunately, all of the folks who should be receptive to those teachings have been systematically inoculated against them. The Bible simply isn’t a challenging word for any mainstream Christian, but rather a license for conformism — we Americans have been transformed into good Americans long before we’re ever good Christians. That conversion is complete. And thus it’s difficult to get Americans to take the Bible’s tradition about helping the poor and excluded or Christian hospitality seriously. The existence of a few oddball radicals — guys and gals like me — who actually take the biblical demand for justice seriously only serves to highlight the inert mass of Christians counting on a fix of what Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”. American grace is “grace we bestow ...

To properly understand an action, you need to interpret it in the light of the social context in which it takes place. For example, if we were to hear about a white male offering his seat at the front of a bus to an African American woman, we would probably interpret this as a nice gesture, but nothing more. If we were to learn that this took place in Birmingham, Alabama in 1955, however, we would interpret this same gesture as having much more significance. For in the pre-civil rights South, this act would have defied racist laws and social norms. Similarly, many today miss — or misread — the revolutionary dimension of Jesus’ life because they interpret his actions by twentieth century western standards. They thus think the way Jesus treated oppressed and marginalized people was merely nice. These folks conclude that being a Christian is about being nice. In reality, when we understand Jesus in his original first century Jewish context, the way Jesus treated people went way be...

Nancy Leigh DeMoss' Lies Women Believe:  And the Truth that Sets Them Free explores the "soul-sickness" of our age:  The bondage to all the lies our culture teaches women to believe.  The foundation of all this bondage and struggle is deception.  DeMoss believes that Christian women have been duped into believing the satan's lies. To help women confront his lies, DeMoss has identified the most prevalent strongholds of sin and categorized them according to a set of lies relate to that sin.  Each chapter is dedicated to a specific "family" of lies.  Each chapter follows the same pattern:  DeMoss explains the lie and offers proof (either through testimony or research statistics) that the lie is believed by many women and causes damage in their lives, which is followed by select scriptures to refute the lie, which is sprinkled with biblical encouragement and admonishments from DeMoss to repent and believe the truth.  She places an emphasi...

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth & Dannah Gresh's Lies Young Women Believe:  And the Truth that Sets Them Free (updated edition) explores the nature of deception in our contemporary culture and how a young woman can know when she believes a lie.  The remedy is a relentless pursuit of the Truth, Jesus Christ. In a book uniquely designed to appeal to 13-18 year-old young women, Wolgemuth & Gresh offer their findings of over 1000 interviews in ten different cities across the United States.  The book explores 25 of the most important lies these young women have grown to love. It's a book that would be ideally suited for young women to read with friends.  Or even with parents. _________________________ I received a free copy of this book from Moody Publishing in exchange for my honest review here.

Dana White's Decluttering at the Speed of Life:  Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff is a book filled with hope -- particularly for those of us "clutter" and "excess" are words that would be used to describe your home. In Decluttering at the Speed of Life , White cuts through our paralysis at the sight of all that stuff in your home.  Because, let's admit it, that vision creates a paralysis:  What are we supposed to do with so much stuff?!?  We know "decluttering" involves picking the stuff to leave your home, but how do we make that decision? This is where White's wisdom shines through.  She gives you a tangible place to begin:  Your "clutter threshhold": My Clutter Threshold is the point at which stuff becomes clutter in my home. When I'm living above my Clutter Threshold, there’s more stuff in my home than I can handle, and my house is consistently out of control. Living under my Clutter Threshold helps m...

Earlier today I made a few comments about the Woman at the Well from John 4. Tonight I want to expand that line of thinking out just a bit. And I start with a simple enough theological notion: God gives the grace-gift, Jesus, to the unworthy. In the ancient context that was a revolutionary idea. According to the ancients, gifts were only to be given to worthy recipients to ensure the web of social reciprocity at the heart of the ancient gift economies. We tend to miss the radical social implications of Paul’s message of grace. We moderns tend to make grace a personal and psychological experience: I feel grateful because God loves me, an unworthy sinner. But in Paul’s context the message of incongruous grace — God gives gifts to the unworthy — blew up the entire ancient way of thinking about social relationships. In short, rather than creating an internal, private experience, grace creates a new social imagination and reality. According to Paul, in the light of grace a...

I was reading this morning in John 4: A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The phrase that jumped out at me was Jesus’ response to the woman: “If you knew the gift of God … you would have asked”. If you knew the gift of God you would have asked. For centuries we’ve commented on the transgressive nature of Jesus’ actions at the well. A Jew speaking to a woman, and a Samaritan to boot, let alone a women deemed to be a sinner due to her domestic situation, was highly transgressive and shocking. So much so the text takes the time to comment on the disci...

I’m a Christian. Occasionally, I’m asked if I’m a “born-again” Christian. I’m really ambivalent about answering “yes” to this question. Instead of being a term with which all Christians can and should identify, “born-again” has become a phrase that some Christians like me are hesitant to claim for themselves, while others claim it for themselves with a sense of exclusive ownership, both fervently and vehemently, in a weaponized, “Gottcha!” sort of way. Above all — yes — the way the term is used by some Christians to make themselves feel more Christian and others feel less Christian. Apparently it’s not sufficient to say (as Jesus himself rephrases being “born again”) that you have been “born of water and Spirit” (John 3.5), that is, that by baptism and faith, the gift of the Holy Spirit, you have been incorporated into the church. No, to be a “real” Christian, you’ve got to have a special conversion experience, usually dramatic, often dateable, and frequently expressed in public “te...

This Lent, praying the daily office, I’ve been frequently struck with this refrain: God himself will me free from the hunter’s snare. The image comes from places like Psalm 124: “If the Lord had not been on our side” — let Israel say this! — if the Lord had not been on our side, when men attacked us, they would have swallowed us alive, when their anger raged against us. The water would have overpowered us; the current would have overwhelmed us. The raging water would have overwhelmed us. The Lord deserves praise, for he did not hand us over as prey to their teeth. We escaped with our lives, like a bird from a hunter’s snare. The snare broke, and we escaped. Our deliverer is the Lord, the Creator of heaven and earth. This is wonderful Christus Victor imagery for the Lenten season.  Salvation here isn’t about avoiding the punishment of a wrathful God.  Our saving God is, rather, wholly benevolent and kind, the One who finds us terrified, help...

Rory Feek's This Life I Live: One Man's Extraordinary, Ordinary Life and the Woman Who Changed It Forever is a heart-touching read that offers a memoir of Feek's life, and highlights the love of his life that changed that life:  Joey. Many are most likely familiar with the couple's battle with Joey's cancer, and of her subsequent death after having fought that valiant fight.  But The Life I Live places that narrative into a whole life -- offering lessons about living along the way. The memoir has very brief chapters that fly by.  Here, readers will meet a humble, honest, and genuine man who is both grateful and in awe of how God has blessed him. It's an amazing book! _____________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.