There’s something about that conviction that gives us a radical freedom. A freedom to be generous to those with whom we disagree. A freedom to be wrong and not obsess about it.
I remember a period of about three weeks one summer when I got into the zone playing tennis.
Every day is a day when we can reclaim an inch of the planet, including an inch of our own psychological and spiritual territory. All it takes is a little turning.
Paul asks us to walk a fine line between two unacceptable extremes
Today we have a story of God’s wisdom being exercised through Joseph to create an enormous federal program to organize the agricultural industry in order to prepare for a famine that the federal bureaucrat Joseph predicts.
Paul gives us today the fundamental truth that echoes from Genesis: You are God’s temple, and all things are yours.
Teaching and healing. Word and sacrament. Religious/political discourse and hands-on service to the needs of others. Walking the talk.
Dorothy Sayers says it nicely: “God did not abolish the fact of evil. He transformed it. He did not stop the crucifixion. He rose from the dead.”
Today we begin the Joseph saga in Genesis. We also start Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, and we open the first gospel, the Gospel of Mark.
“The Lord is near.” What a gentle encouragement. Much of the intention of the many prayer disciplines is to create in us a constant sense of God’s presence. Classical spirituality calls it “recollection” — the state of being constantly aware of God and responsive to God’s presence. Some use the word “mindfulness”. A gentle reminder — “the Lord is near” — repeated over and over can help plant a mindful consciousness within us.