Green Jacket?

This is going to be a nightmare.

Imagination

i have not read the book Subversive Spirituality by Eugene Peterson, but i came across this quote from the book:

Imagination is the capacity to make connections between the visible and the invisible, between heaven and earth, between present and past, between present and future. For Christians, who largest investment is in the invisible, the imagination is indispensable, for it is only by means of the imagination that we can see reality whole, in context. What imagination does with reality is the reality we live by.

Imagination can fashion the world into a homeland as well as in to a prsion or a place of battle. Nobody lives in the "objective" world, only a world filtered through the imagination. The imagination is among the chief glories of the human. When it is healthy and energetic, it ushers us into adoration and wonder, into the mysteries of God. When it is neurotic and sluggish, it turns people, millions of them, into parasites, copycats and couch potatoes. The American imagination today is distressingly sluggish. Most of what is served up to us as fruits of imagination is, in fact, the debasing of it into soap opera and pornography.

Intriguing to say the least.

WTC

The design has been picked for the site of the former World Trade Center.

Eye Contact

Haunting? Perhaps. Comforting? Hopefully. Proverbs Chapter 5 and Verse 21.

God always makes eye contact . . . nothing is hidden.

Chuck Colson writes today on Breakpoint about the Moral Absurdity of Cloning. He refers to an argument by Charles Krauthammer at The New Republic.

II Chr. 16:9a:

For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.

It is somewhat of a revelation to read through the Old Testament and see how often the heart is mentioned. For so many years i was ignorant of the OT and thought the heart was something relegated to Jesus' words in Mark 12 when he tells us the greatest commandments are to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

But a closer look at the OT has shown me that God has always been interested in our hearts, and doesn't stop being interested in them.

There is a good piece of fiction at Chasing Hats called Mathis der Maler. i recommend you read it. the writer does a good job of putting the reader right in the scene.

Is It . . .

Is it the weariness bleeding from my bones
Or that bitter taste left there in my mouth?
Is it just a day realizing i'm not home
Or does this mean i am really headed south?

i need a light greater than my darkness;
A great day breaking to send the night away.
"Sun, rise now," i'm calling, nearly breathless;
Burn the dross, the fear and the dismay.

Fully alive and your arms are warm around me;
Waking up to learn that i have died.
Coming to terms always stings at the beginning;
Freedom's great gift lifts me out of old chagrinning.

The glory of God is man fully alive.

St. Irenaeus.

Wild at Heart

Wow, what a weekend . . . where to even begin . . . the room was packed with men who came to get their hearts healed, ransomed from the fall . . . and we heard from God. John Eldredge just has a gift, plain and simple, and communicates so well. The power of the Gospel, the New Covenant, is overhwelming in the sense that it changes _ profoundly _ everything. There is new identity . . . there is new purpose . . . there is _ finally _ real life.

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy but Christ has come to give us life to the full. What a promise and what an invitation.