The Beauty Chasers: Recapturing . . . Timothy D. Willard recently published The Beauty Chasers: Recapturing the Wonder of the Divine (Zondervan Reflective, 2022). A writer and independent scholar. Timothy lived in Oxford, England, for two years. There he studied beauty and northern aesthetics in the works of C. S. Lewis for his PhD. In […]
“But if we’re going to defeat the mountain of doubt in our lives again and again, silence is going to have to become part of life. We’re going to have to learn to get comfortable with it. Because silence before God is a source of strength.”- Nicki Koziarz “The LORD is in his holy temple; […]
“The silence serves as a colander, helping me discern what I need to hold on to and allowing what I don’t need to fall gently away, making space to access courage and creativity, quieting to hear the voice of God.”- Emily P. Freeman Emily P. Freeman concludes Chapter 2 of The Next Right Thing as […]
“We need those (thirty minutes of silence in heaven) moments of silence on this side of the space-time continuum too. It’s one way we nurture a sense of wonder. Blaise Pascal, the seventeenth-century French philosopher, went so far as to say, ‘All of man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a […]
In Chapter 9 (“When You’re Mad at God”) of How Can I Possibly Forgive?, Sara Horn observes that non-Christians might respond to hurts, disappointments, and tragedies by asserting that God is out to get them. Christians, however, may not want to verbalize that God is out to get them, yet secretly wonder if He is- […]
John Ortberg begins Chapter 16 (“Dark Night of the Soul”) of Soul Keeping by observing that if you ask people who don’t believe in God why they don’t believe, the number one reason they give is suffering. Conversely, if you ask people who believe in God what helped them achieve the most spiritual growth, the […]
Today’s blog incorporates the final three elements of Timothy Keller’s suggested frame work for prayer- Word prayer, free prayer, and contemplation. 3. Word prayer. Pastor Keller states that Martin Luther gives us an important and often overlooked step in daily prayer. Before he moved on to free-form prayer, Luther took time to “pray the text” […]
“If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.”- Psalm 66:18 “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”- 2 Corinthians 5:21 Timothy Keller concludes Chapter 14 of Prayer by reminding us that, in […]
At noon the whole country was covered with darkness, which lasted for three hours. At about three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud shout, “Eli, Eli, lema, sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why did you abandon me?”- Matthew 27:45-46 (TEV) Max Lucado begins Chapter 19 (“Abandoned! God-Forsaken Places”) of Next Door Savior […]
“And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper.”- 1 Kings 19:12 “Be still and know that I am God.”- Psalm 46:10 In Chapter 4 (“A Startling Realization”) of AHA, Kyle Idleman recalls that in the mid- 90s a certain […]