Today's Thinker: Henri Nouwen

In the way that perhaps only Nouwen could, he writes in In the Name of Jesus:

[Jesus] asks us to move from a concern for relevance to a life of prayer, from worries about popularity to communal and mutual ministry, and from a leadership built on power to a leadership in which we critically discern where God is leading us and our people.

That's a summary of his prophetic insight into Christian leadership in the 21st century, written in 1989. Perhaps in the conversations concerning ecumenism, postmodernism, emergence, and relevance, we'd do well to keep his words close to heart.

Today's Thinker: Oswald Chambers

On "the practical everyday life" habits, which are exemplified by Jesus:

If we refuse to practice, it is not God's grace that fails when a crisis comes, but our own nature. When the crisis comes, we ask God to help us, but He cannot if we have not made our nature our
ally.

So Oswald Chambers writes in The Psychology of Redemption, quoted by Dallas Willard in The Spirit of the Disciplines.

Ever wondered how often we blame God for stuff that is simply our own stinkin' fault because we refuse to conform to the image of Christ?

Today's Thinker: Jonah

So we're told that Jonah runs from God, "as far away from God as he could get," according to The Message. Yet in the middle of the most furious storm the ship crew has ever seen, Jonah is below sound asleep. We wonder: How can you sleep through The Perfect Storm?

Some have asserted that he was scared of what would happen to him, and therefore fell asleep. But that makes no sense. When someone's scared, they don't sleep, they walk the floor, panic, repent. Jonah sleeps.

What was he thinking? Think about this. Perhaps Jonah was so sure that he was right, and that God's idea was ridiculous, that he could sleep soundly without his conscience bothering him at all. After all, God had asked him to travel into an hostile environment and deliver a message which could get him killed -- or, if obeyed, could save one of Israel's worst enemies.

Jonah says no, rebels against God's plan, thinking all along that his plan is much better -- for all involved -- than God's plan.

Ever thought like that?

Today's Thinker: Dallas Willard

To kick off the blog, I have to challenge everyone to think about these words from Dallas Willard's The Spirit of the Disciplines:

Christ's death [was]...the point where his life was most fully displayed and triumphant, forever breaking the power of sin over concrete human existence.

Think about it. As Willard suggests, many people, Christians included, think of Christ's death as the necessary penalty for sin to gain forgiveness for the world. But what if his death was the ultimate expression of his life, the highest life-form to ever live, the abundant life in full abundance. The cross wasn't just something Christ had to endure, but the climactic event which, with his resurrection, proved that "in him was life."

Incredible!