pre road trip jitters

We are leaving shortly for a road trip to Sussex, New Brunswick. It is a Vineyard Canada thing, so we'll get to see old friends and make new ones and sit in some sessions with leaders and attend a conference where we hopefully learn together. Being in a car with Dean for 20 hours is a great treat as well!

Dean and/or I have been asked to give a little talk on Friday morning to the pastors and also to pray for a ladies' bible study group on Sunday morning. I got very excited by these opportunities because I love being able to bring something to others that makes things clearer in their lives, that adds fun and grace and beauty. And then I start to think...well, what would that be, this wonderful thing I am bringing? So I have been pondering on that for a few days and been so tired and busy that nothing has come out of all these scattered thoughts. So I feel bad that I might come there empty handed, but then I remember that the gift is not ultimately from me, is it? I have asked God for a present for these friends and I know he never disappoints.

This is the lovely little solar flower that Dean brought back from Germany, a gift from his colleagues in China. When the sun shines, it can't help but dance! Let's dance!

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Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go...

Esther's protest

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it's a mad mad mad world (of theology)

The mad dash for the end of term has begun. I have finished all my required readings and have jumped into research reading. One of my papers is on the madness of theology (the correlation seems more obvious to some of us than to others). Truly inspiring stuff, I am finding. Let me share a few quotes here: There is a certain madness in Christianity – in a desert God who is jealous and passionate, in a saviour who speaks in apocalyptic terms, in a life of sacrificial love, in the scandal of particularity. In principle, a confessional theology should bear the mark of this madness, but the mark or wound must constantly be renewed. - Walter Lowe, "Postmodern Theology" in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , 2007. “In the Scriptures the odd phenomena constituting the ‘Kingdom of God’ are the offspring of the shock that is delivered by the name of God to what is there called the ‘world,’ resulting in what I call a ‘sacred anarchy.’ C...

outWORD by Matte Downey

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