Thought for the Day

True worship of God consists in doing god's will. But this sort of worship is not to our taste. Generation after generation, people have busied themselves with a worship that consists in having one's own will, but doing it in such a way that the name of God is brought into conjunction with it.
--Soren Kierkegaard

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Thought for the Day

Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.
--C. S. Lewis

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Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair.
--Thomas Merton

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Thought for the Day

Religion and devout feelings are useless unless they are expressed in action and in truth, that is, in real community.
--Eberhard Arnold

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Thought for the Day

And here is one choice that our Father wants us to understand as Christians--and I believe this is the choice of our age: Do we want to be brave or safe: Gently, lovingly, our heavenly Father wants us to know that we simply can't be both.
--Gary Haugen

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Thought for the Day

Repentance is not an emotion. It is not feeling sorry for our sins. It is a decision. It is deciding that you have been wrong in supposing that you could manage your own life and be your own god; it is deciding that you were wrong in thinking that you had, or could get, the strength, education and training to make it on your own; it is deciding that you have been told a pack of lies about yourself and your neighbors and your world. And it is deciding that God in Jesus Christ is telling you the truth.
--Eugene Peterson

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Sunday's Prayer

Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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Thought for the Day

The spirit of "emptying" lies at the very heart of Christianity. Thus, unwillingness to empty one's cupboard, whether literal or spiritual, is a serious impediment to the pilgrim heart finding its way to God. Fore one thing, God has much to offer us, bug if we are already full--of ourselves or the things of this world--then we have no room to receive.
--Darryl Tippens

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Thought for the Day

Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good--above all, that we are better than someone else--I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of god is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.
--C. S. Lewis

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Thought for the Day

Christianity should not be lectured about. Christ says, my teaching is food. Christ has not appointed assistant-professors--but followers.
--Soren Kierkegaard

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Thought for the Day

The human side of religion, its creeds, rituals and instructions is a way rather than the goal. The goal is "to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God." When the human side of religion becomes the goal, injustice becomes a way.
--Abraham Joshua Heschel

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Thought for the Day

I have come to the conclusion that for we who live in the Western world, the major challenge to the viability of Christianity is not Buddhism, with all its philosophical appeal to the Western mind, nor is it Islam, with all the challenge that it poses to Western culture. It is not the New Age that poses such a threat; in fact, because there is a genuine search going on in new religious movements, it can actually be an asset to we who are willing to share the faith amidst the search. All these are challenges to us, no doubt, but I have come to believe that the major threat to the viability of our faith is that of consumerism. this is a far more heinous and insidious challenge to the gospel, because in so many ways it infects each and every one of us.
--Alan Hirsch

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Thought for the Day

The first responsibility is to define reality.
--Max DePree

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Sunday's Prayer

Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world: Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ's glory, that he may be known, worshiped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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In one sense, all culture is a gift from God. The challenge to us is in learning how to take what is good in contemporary culture, reclaim and retool it, and put it to work in a Christian framework for the sake of forging new culture.
--T. M. Moore

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Thought for the Day

We have to challenge the dubious assumption that our world or our work will fall to chaos without our constant presence and control.
--Darryl Tippens

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Thought for the Day

Trivial gods may prove useful in many ways; manageable deities can serve our desires, providing religious inspiration without any unsettling disorientation But in the end, though they often give us what we want, they can't deliver what we need.
--Donald D. McCullough

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Thought for the Day

What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?' We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven--a senile benevolence who, as they say, 'like to see young people enjoying themselves', and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of the day, "a good time was had by all'...I do not claim to be an exception: I should very much like to live in a universe which was governed on such lines. But since it is abundantly clear that I don't, and since I have reason to believe, nevertheless, that God is Love, I conclude that my conception of love needs correction
--C. S. Lewis

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Thought for the Day

Science gives us knowledge, a gift that is surely always welcome as providing a better basis for decisions than ignorance. But then science's lusty offspring, technology, uses that knowledge to give us power, the ability to do things not previously thought to be possible. This is a more ambiguous gift, since not everything that can be done, should be done. Therefore, humanity needs to seek the further gift of wisdom, the ability to discern and choose the good and to discern and refuse the bad.
--John Polkinghorne

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Thought for the Day

We are more like those described in a novel by Charles Williams who prefer "their religion taken mild--a pious hope, a devout ejaculation, a general sympathetic sense of a kindly universe--but nothing upsetting or bewildering, no agony,, no darkness, no uncreated light."
--Donald W. McCullough

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Sunday's Prayer

O God, you make me glad with the weekly remembrance of the glorious resurrection of your Son my Lord: Give me this day such blessing through my worship of you, that the week to come may be spent in your favor; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Thought for the Day

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
--Oscar Romero

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Thought for the Day

No program accomplishes the church's mission.
--Ocar Romero

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Thought for the Day

We can't seem to make disciples based on a consumerist approach to the faith. We plainly cannot consume our way into discipleship. All of us must become much more active in the equation of becoming lifelong followers of Jesus. Consumption is detrimental to discipleship.
--Alan Hirsch

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Thought for the Day

We must become holy not because we want to feel holy but because Christ must be able to live his life fully in us.
--Mother Teresa

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News form Brooklyn

Wendy called me a little while ago and gave an update on how the mission trip to Brooklyn is going and more specifically the kinds of service projects in which they are involved.

On Monday that worked with a group called Furnish a Future, a furniture bank run by a coalition of churches and the city to help those formerly homeless families who are moving out of shelters obtain furniture and household goods. The group helped put furniture together. In the afternoon the worked with Operation Exodus an after school program for 1st-9th graders. They did activities with the kids and then broke off and helped with tutoring about 60 Dominican children. Last night they ate at a Dominican restaurant. (They ate at a Thai restaurant on Sunday night.)

From 10:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. today they worked with a food pantry that operated out of a bus that served soup and hot chocolate. Wendy said that it was really cold working outside and gave them a greater appreciation for those who have to be outside. This afternoon they were heading out to work with Father's Heart Ministries, a family shelter organization, this time with Chinese-speaking immigrants in an ESL program. They are planning on eating at a Polish restaurant this evening.

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Thought for the Day

The world cannot save itself. And despite the fact that so many churches in comfortable middle- and upper-class circumstances now so proclaim it, the gospel heralding God's kingdom is not focused on the inner serenity of materially comfortable individuals. The world needs so much more than that And the kingdom of God is so much grander, so much more exciting and challenging than that.
--Christoph Blumhardt

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Consumer Identity

The Sunday Globe had an article in the Money and Careers Section written by Michelle Singletary with the title, "Make 2009 the year you stop defining yourself as a consumer." I consider this a spiritual issue, and found the author's perspective interesting. What do you think?

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Thought for the Day

[C]haracter is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
--Abraham Lincoln

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Sunday's Prayer

O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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Thought for the Day

Evangelism and sales are not the same. And we market the church at our peril if we are blind to the critical and categorical difference.
--Tyler Wigg-Stevenson

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The Girl Effect

Michael Kruse has two great video's about "The Girl Effect"--how helping girls growing up in poverty can change the world--on his blog today. What do you think?

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Thought for the Day

That we pray to God in heaven is a reminder that we become part of a large struggle by praying this prayer [the Lord's Prayer]. The thing between us and Jesus is not merely personal; it's cosmic. The God whom we have been taught by Jesus to address as "our Father" is the one who rules the whole cosmos, who speaks in earthquake, wind, and fire. Any less of a god wouldn't do us much good.
--William H. Willimon and Stanley Hauwewas

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Prayer for the New Year

Father, let me dedicate
All this year to thee,
In whatever worldly state
Thou wilt have me be:
Not from sorrow, pain or care,
Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer,
'Glorify thy name.'
--Lawrence Tuttitt

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