Devotions
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Ready to Go
As the patriarch Abraham faces the death of his beloved wife Sarah and ponders his own mortality, he realizes there is an important task left undone. The son of his old age, his heir Isaac, is in need of a wife. Appalled by the immorality of the people around him, Abraham decides that the only suitable wife for Isaac would be a woman from his own clan, and from the faraway land of his origin.
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Budgeting Our Attention
I’m writing this near the end of December, the time of year when we take stock of where we’re at as we look at the past year, assess our progress, and plan for the new year to see where we can improve. We scrutinize our budgets, especially at the Christmas spending season, to analyze what went wrong, and to prevent similar mistakes in the new year. While we hope to be careful managing our money, we also need to be especially careful about managing our attention. We have only a limited number of attention units. That is why, in an increasing number of places, there are laws that prohibit talking…
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Weight of Glory
While Canadian winters are known for their shortened days and darkness, what I love the most about a crisp winter's day is the quality of the sun's light when it does deign to shine. There is a blue, piercing quality to the light of winter that doesn't exist at any other time of the year. It is a purer, truer light that shines on a sunny December morning.
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No Helmet Required
Last summer I had the opportunity to spend some time in the beautiful state of Ohio. With its verdant, rolling hills and miles of scenic roads through lush Amish farm country, Ohio is a motorcyclist's paradise. One other thing that makes it so is Ohio's lack of a helmet law. While young bicyclists in Ohio are expected to wear helmets, motorcyclists are free to ride bareheaded. I admit it caused me to do a double take every time I saw a helmetless biker.
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Rags or Riches?
A certain ruler asked Jesus, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good,” except God alone. You know the commandments: 'Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.'" "All these I have kept since I was a boy," he said. "When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "You still lack one thing."
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Reducing Consciousness 2
"A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms--it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude."
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Reducing Consciousness 1
In the classic Dickens story, A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge sees a ghost. Skeptic that he is, he does not believe what he sees. When the ghost asks him why he doubts his senses, he replies: "Because, a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato."
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Beyond Good Manners 2
As Emily Post, the guru of good manners, acknowledges, it's what's inside that counts. It is possible to conceal a core of evil behind a smiling facade. A woman can be sweet and pleasant to your face and then figuratively stab you in the back with hurtful words. A man of "good-breeding" can politely send millions to their deaths in the misguided name of ethnic cleansing. These are moral infants who have never grown beyond the outward show of good manners to the internalised virtues that they are designed to represent.
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Beyond Good Manners 1
When my grandson William was not yet one year old, his mother was already training him to say please. When William wanted something, she reminded him, "Say please," and he responded by making a circular motion on his chest in the manner of American Sign Language. What can be the advantage in teaching a child who is still working on "Mama," "Dada," and "Nana" how to say please when he can't even really "say" it?
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The Hot Coal of Immortality
Seventeenth century poet and cleric John Donne is one of my favourite writers. Because of his unique perspective, writing four hundred years ago, his poems, prose, and sermons are are adorned with insightful metaphors that delight and challenge the modern reader. The delight is in the insight; the challenge is in deciphering the archaic spelling and cultural references. Donne was a contemporary of Shakespeare, and I am often thankful for the explanatory notes that accompany his writings.
