So Much to Think About

Law
It is a Reformational principle that the law cannot change the heart…but imposing the law makes us feel powerful, while living the Gospel is dying to self…
Phoenix Preacher

Where is joy?
The questions have assailed the mind and troubled the spirit; the answer is not in the earthquake of argument, or the wind of aggressive enquiry, or in the fire of logic energised by reason – but in the still small voice that can only be heard during a night walk in snowlight. Assailing questions remain with not a single answer found – but
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.       
Jim Gordon 
https://livingwittily.typepad.com/my_weblog/2021/02/a-poem-in-which-we-overhear-the-gentle-interrogation-of-the-heart-by-heart-stopping-beauty-.html

Once you are a follower of Jesus, being a sinner is not a very good excuse for bad behavior.
Matt Redmond

Conservatives
…conservatives are supposed to be the ones marshaling arguments against the idea that everything is permitted and that feelings trump facts. Instead, they’re growing content with casting themselves in a cautionary tale about the perils of phlebotinum poisoning.
Jonah Goldberg
(In science fiction writing, phlebotinum is shorthand for any “impossible or imaginary device which is used to move forward the plot of a TV show, book or film, especially in science fiction and fantasy.”)

Arguments
Arguments now are about the marshaling of passions to will into existence what we want to be true, not to reveal what is true.
Jonah Goldberg

Trust in the Lord
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding” [Proverbs 3:5]. For the first time, it dawned on me: there’s a difference between doubting God and doubting my understanding of God, just as there’s a difference between trusting God and trusting my understanding of God. Would I be able to doubt my understanding of God while simultaneously trusting God beyond my understanding? In a strange way, that question for the first time in my life allowed me to see God as a mystery distinct from my concepts of God. 
Brian McLearn

Leading as Christians
Until professed Christians decide they’re going to lead with gentleness and not contempt, until they choose to actually read the Gospels and allow them to soften their hearts, and until they can find a faith that doesn’t require military-grade backup—they will continue to weaponize religion into something that doesn’t resemble Jesus and use it to wound other people.
John   Pavlovitz

We need kind people
It seems like kind people are an endangered species.
I don’t know whether they’ve gone or they’ve just gone silent, but the net result is that we have too many wounds and not enough healers. Our demand is far exceeding our supply right now.
Or maybe they’re still here and just being drowned out by the clanging bombast of a cruelty that demands and so easily gets our attention, and we just need to help people notice them again.  
All I know is that we need kind people—now.
John Pavlovitz

Epiphany 
An epiphany is a revelation. Often, it is not exactly new, but finally “seeing” what you have been looking at for so long. Epiphanies come when by some mysterious shift we cease to look “at” something and begin to see “into” it. The “eyes of our hearts are enlightened.” Epiphanies happen when observation gives way to flashes of insight. The edges of our faith so easily become flattened by the warp and woof of life, by traumatic disappointments on the one hand, and on the other by thousand mile stretches of endless monotonous flat highways across the great “plains” of life (sorry Kansas!). 
J D Walt

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