This week I was doing a little reading on the life of St. Francis of Assisi. He has quite a story.
Though this prayer below is usually attributed to him, it’s fair to say he probably did not pen it. However, it still captures the essence of who he was. It very much spoke into my life and work these days.
This is The Peace Prayer: Continue reading
I recently came across an article in which Dr. Joseph McGarry was interviewed by Benjamin Corey, a missiologist.
Who is Dr. McGarry? He is a Bonhoeffer scholar who, not long ago, had his doctoral thesis accepted for publication by Fortress Press under the title, Christ Among a Band of People: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Formation in Christ.
I was quite interested in the interview with McGarry, particularly as he shares how many have overplayed the card that claims Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a would-be assassin of Adolf Hitler during World War II. Here are some comments of McGarry during the interview: Continue reading
It’s all around us.
Violence.
I drive to work listening to NPR in the morning and I’m greatly reminded of this through the news about Russia-Ukraine, Palestine-Israel, Afghanistan, Iraq. And then there’s the homeland as well – shooting after shooting, living in a city with one of the highest violent crime rates per capita in the U.S, drones heading every which way, and more.
It’s all around us.
Violence, war, killings, murder, the whole lot.
We recently celebrated a “holiday” (holy-day??) in which we remember how our nation came to “freedom” through war, a war of rebellion. “…And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.” Our flag still hanging, possibly by only a few threads, as a war ended with approximately 25,000 deaths. This set the path for a Civil War some 80 years later in which the death toll might have reached 750,000.
“…that our flag was still there.”
But I’m not so sure much of this falls in line with the Jesus whom we encounter within holy Scripture.
Just a few days ago, I shared about a newly published book: A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor’s Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace by Brian Zahnd. I started reading the book a couple of days ago. This morning, as I was finishing up ch.1, I read a poem that Zahnd penned. It was written in 2008, a couple of years after God began to radically change his perspective on war and violence.
I leave it for you to ponder.
And though the Kindle version of the book is no longer going for free, you can still get it for a kind $3.82. Continue reading
On Sunday, Brian Zahnd, lead pastor of Word of Life Church in St. Joseph, Missouri, released a new book entitled A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor’s Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace.
Zahnd has traveled a path of change across various theological and ecclesiological areas. And one is detailed in this book, noted in the subtitle – moving from adopting a view of the sword towards one of embracing the gospel of peace as seen in the cross.
The Amazon blurb is as follows: Continue reading
The Prodigal Thought 