I took this walking home from the last bananas game of the regular season. I'm grateful to the King for the neighborhood I live in, and whoever it was that took the risk of trying something creative in a rundown municipal stadium. You have given my sons and I a gift. If tradition is the memory of someone's past enthusiasm and presence, then may the noise from Grayson keep Parkside awake for a thousand years.
Christianity is a Boring Revolution
What to Expect Sunday (8/5)
Songs to Help Us See
When I (Soren) was in first grade, I failed a vision test. Which is sad. But not nearly as sad as the fact that I failed it on purpose. The doctor pulled my mom out of the room and said, "He failed the test on purpose. He was describing letters and signs that look like one another- but that isn't how your vision goes bad."
Do you know how your vision goes bad? Do you know what defective eyesight is? There are signs of the kingdom everywhere- but what if we don't know how to look? What if we don't want to look?
The songs we sing this week are attempts to help correct our vision. But they don't just correct our vision- they help us want to see.
Incarnational... Policework?
What to Expect Sunday (7/29)
on the life in a neighborhood
Cruises and Christ
What would it be like to live as a Christian in Savannah like the passengers on a cruise ship? As Michael Black writes in the New York Times,
"Close quarters among guests and crew demand constant interaction, which results in one of the best qualities of a leisure cruise: civility. For a week, I never heard a single argument. I never even heard a raised voice. People treated each other well, and I can’t count the number of times I heard guests asking crew members questions about their lives: their time at sea, their families, their adventures ashore. Everybody seemed to care."
Back on land, we self-select who we will be around, without reference to location, based on who we think is in our tribe. But the way of Jesus is different. Its the way of the cruise ship. In the parable of the Good Samaritan found in Luke 10, Jesus calls his followers to acts of radical love and hospitality, not towards their own tribe, but to the actual neighbor who is there, in physical space, close to them. By living humbly in place, aware of our surroundings, we come into contact with all the diversity of humanity.
What to Expect this Sunday
Chaos. Kids everywhere. A taco bar. Baxter the dog (see image). And singing and prayer and Scripture. Join us this week!
Songs For When Things Don't Change
God promises that, though we have abandoned him, he will not abandon us. That he will not leave us. That he will be faithful to us, and that through his presence among us, his kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven. And even though in Jesus Christ this kingdom has already come, it is at the same time not yet here. The darkness is (still) passing away. The songs we will sing this week reflect the tension of life as humans in a time when Jesus' kingdom is both already and not yet here.
Bifrost Arts' "How Long" is a meditation on Psalm 13. The Psalmist uses the absence of the kingdom not as a reason to doubt the existence of God, but instead to throw himself deeper into relationship with God. So he repeats the title phrase as a longing question to God: How long will you turn your face away?
As Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing suggests, Jesus is already the source of every blessing, and we put up monuments ("Ebenezer") to that goodness.
Because sometimes, in this life, it is hard to remember.