Northumbria
The Northumbria Community is a Christian community which has its beginnings in the Northumbria district of the United Kingdom and the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. Yet, it is more than a localized community and is a world-wide monastic community with its own order and communal prayers. Their website describes the community in this way: Inspired…
Continue readingSelah
A friend recently introduced me to the spiritual discipline of praying through Psalm 3. It is particularly helpful when we are at a place in life in which we feel that there are many difficulties mounting against us or when the complexities of life seem overwhelming. The word “selah” appears three times in Psalm 3.…
Continue readingOccupy Our Calendars
Our times are in your hands:But we count our times for us;we count our days and fill them with us;we count our weeks and fill them with our busyness;we count our years and fill them with our fears.And then caught up short with your claim,Our times are in your hands!Take our times, times of love…
Continue readingPrayer Changes Things Follow-Up
Many years ago I read a small book by Dr. Paul Yonggi Cho, pastor of the largest Christian Church in the world.1 Cho is a man who has devoted his life to prayer and has gone to great extremes to develop his prayer life. The book has had a large impact on me such that…
Continue readingPrayer Changes Things
I have an uneasy relationship with this quote by E. Stanley Jones: Prayer is surrender; surrender to the will of God and cooperation with that will. If I throw out a boathook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself…
Continue readingPacing The Cage
(Bruce Cockburn – 24 June 1995. Philadelphia.) (Watch him perform this song here.) Sunset is an angel weeping Holding out a bloody sword No matter how I squint I cannot Make out what it’s pointing toward Sometimes you feel like you live too long Days drip slowly on the page You catch yourself Pacing the…
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A New Twist on An Old Tale
The Pharisee sermon by Amos Nidiffe He also told this parable to some who trusted that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.Two people went to church to pray, one an intellectual, the other a politician. The intellectual, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God I thank you that I am not like other…
Continue readingCeltic Prayer
In the spirit of St. Patrick, I offer this Prayer for Starting the Morning Fire I will rekindle my fire this morningIn presence of the holy angles [sic] of heaven,God, kindle Thou my heart withinA flame of love to my neighbour,To my foe, to my friend, to my kindred all,To the brave, to the knave,…
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