Front Porch View
This is the last Front Porch View until our front porch is restored when we return from Florida in March. In the interim, I will be sharing Views from the Lanai.
Recently, neighbors, a young couple, two doors down from us moved. They departed quickly, without farewell. We greeted them when they moved in two years ago, they were cordial, but that was the last conversation we had. I observed their daily routines and occasionally spoke to them as they passed by over the years. I often wondered about them and was disappointed that we were not able to connect. I feel sure they are a nice couple but I wonder if they are not some what typical of our society, other neighbors are similar.( I must not discount the possibly that I am the problem) In any case, I am thinking more about loving my neighbor and what that looks like in my neighborhood.
Peter Kuzmich once said, “Hope is the ability to hear the music of the future. Faith is having the courage to dance to that song today.”
Cynicism
The cynic cloaks himself in the wise disguise of a realist. Truth be told, realism is just another name for a defeated idealism. Cynicism is the bitter fruit of a desecrated imagination. Cynicism treats the sickness of our hopelessness with the topical ointment of our thinly veiled anger.
J D Walt
Purity
Purity means embracing your unity with Christ and, in that unity, becoming free to open yourself fearlessly to others in ways that are safe and healthy and truly loving—in ways that draw others into fellowship with Christ too. Blessed are the pure in heart, Jesus said, for they shall see God. But such purity is not something to achieve through careful rule following. It is something to receive as the gift of God to you in Christ, and it is something that can never be lost.
Peterson, Amy. Where Goodness Still Grows (pp. 85-86). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
Hope
The existence of hope does not depend on us. It does not rely on our virtue or wisdom. It is a delivery from elsewhere.
Michael Gerson
More than Raw Matter
…it is possible to live honorably in revolt against a meaningless universe. But it is also possible to live dishonorably with the same justification. If raw matter is all that is, ideals such as justice are ultimately rootless. Consciousness would be a brief gap between oblivions. And death would always win in the end.
Michael Gerson
Fruits of Repentance
…the greatest prophet who ever lived said to “bear fruits worthy of repentance.” Fruits worthy of repentance—it is a fascinating concept. Fruit comes at the end of a process, not the beginning. Maybe checking the box of a donated coat isn’t the ticket. Fruit begins with breaking up fallow ground, and sowing, and cultivating, and watering, and more cultivating, and waiting, and finally by God’s grace, fruit. Maybe repentance can’t be reduced to a transaction at Goodwill. Maybe repentance takes sustained attention and effort. By the power of his Word and Spirit, Jesus wants to reach deeper than mere behavior and into our dispositions, desires, and affections.
D Walt
Reflecting the image of God
…reflecting the image of God is more than passive reflection, like that of a mirror….Because of the plasticity of human nature, reflecting the image of God is active, developmental, and formational. Unlike a mirror reflecting back light, human nature is changed in the process of reflection, becoming a clearer and brighter reflection, a better and better mirror if you will. Alone in creation, only humans have this ability to reflect back the image of God to greater and greater degrees.
Richard Beck
Absolute Faith
Everyone talks about the importance of having faith. Well, these guys had faith, absolute faith. And there’s one really desperately upsetting…ideologically, there’s one desperately particularly upsetting moment where – in the book – where I talk about how Himmler and Hoss most admired, as prisoners, Jehovah’s Witnesses. They pointed to them and said, see that faith? That’s the kind of faith we need in our führer – absolute, unshakable faith. (from an interview with Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: A New History) Richard Rohr
The Circle of Life
Listen of the Week
Still on the Journey