I love thee, O Lord, my strength.
The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer,
my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
and I am saved from my enemies.

The cords of death encompassed me,
the torrents of perdition assailed me;
the cords of Sheol entangled me,
the snares of death confronted me.

In my distress I called upon the Lord;
to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice,
and my cry to him reached his ears
Then the earth reeled and rocked;
the foundations also of the mountains trembled
and quaked, because he was angry.
Smoke went up from his nostrils,
and devouring fire from his mouth;
glowing coals flamed forth from him.
He bowed the heavens, and came down;
thick darkness was under his feet.
He rode on a cherub, and flew;
he came swiftly upon the wings of the wind.
He made darkness his covering around him,
his canopy thick clouds dark with water.
Out of the brightness before him
there broke through his clouds
hailstones and coals of fire.
The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
and the Most High uttered his voice,
hailstones and coals of fire.
And he sent out his arrows, and scattered them;
he flashed forth lightnings, and routed them.
Then the channels of the sea were seen,
and the foundations of the world were laid bare,
at thy rebuke, O Lord,
at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils.

He reached from on high, he took me,
he drew me out of many waters.
He delivered me from my strong enemy,
and from those who hated me;
for they were too mighty for me.
They came upon me in the day of my calamity;
but the Lord was my stay.
He brought me forth into a broad place;
he delivered me, because he delighted in me.

The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness;
according to the cleanness of my hands he recompensed me.

–Psalm 18:1-20

Read it all.

For a storm that inflicted less damage than many had feared, Hurricane Matthew nevertheless impaired or destroyed more than 1 million structures, forced businesses from Florida to North Carolina to close and put thousands temporarily out of work.

In many affected areas, small-business owners were still assessing the damage.

“I’ve never had anything like this in 12 years of business,” said Ami Zipperer, who has two garden supply stores in the Savannah, Georgia, area.

Read it all.

The piece is essentially an op-ed commentary on a survey conducted by Lifeway Research and funded by Ligonier ministries. The defining feature of the survey, at least to me, was an inability for those surveyed to think consistently about their faith. For example, 60% of respondents believed that Heaven is a place where “all people will ultimately be reunited with their loved ones” however 54% percent of respondents said that “only those who trust in Jesus Christ as their Savior” will go to heaven. Adding to the confusion, 64% believe that “God accepts all forms of religion.” It doesn’t take a seminary degree to see the incompatibility of the above viewpoints. The only way I could reconcile the above viewpoints would be with the theologically liberal solution of a Universalist Cosmic Christ, which is probably not what the respondents intended!

And while logical inconsistency might be the defining feature of the survey, it is by no means the most interesting. Apparently, for this survey LifeWay used “stringent criteria” in order to separate “Evangelicals” from Christians in general. Those respondents who identified as “Evangelical” must indicate the Bible as “their highest authority,” that personal evangelism was important and that “trusting in Jesus’ death on the cross is the only way to salvation.” The expectation was that the Evangelicals would perform better on the more theological/biblical portions of the survey than the more generic “Christian” respondents. But as Morris points out in his article for The Federalist, Evangelicals actually performed worse. And the points they scored worse on were not Bible trivia such as “who was the first Apostle called by Jesus,” but rather the Evangelicals struck out on fundamental articles of the Christian faith.

Read it all (emphasis mine).

Ms. Weber had to get a medical marijuana card to buy products for her dog Emmett. That led her to an awkward conversation with a physician who solely prescribes medical marijuana for people.

“I went to the weed doctor and said, ”˜I need a card so I can get it for my dog who had cancer,’” said Ms. Weber, who said she doesn’t smoke pot or drink. “He said, ”˜I don’t have a solution for that.’ So I told him I had insomnia.”

Maureen McCormick, 54, lives in Newport Beach, Calif., and was persuaded of marijuana’s benefits after relatives used cannabis products for their own aches and pains. She thought they would benefit her 14-year-old cat, Bart, who has arthritis in his front legs. “I told the doctor I had a knee that aches, and my shoulder, too,” she said. “I also said I want to use it for my cat.” She got the card in July.

Ms. McCormick is using a tincture by Treatwell, a California company that also makes edibles for humans.

Read it all.

Platform Intentionally

In Divided By Faith esteemed sociologists Emerson and Smith make the following assertion: Racial practices that reproduce racial division are invisible to most whites. If this is true, then our churches need people at the table who help make the invisible visible.

Offer platforms to the issues. Offer platforms to minorities who might feel marginalized. Years ago, I appreciated events like “A Time to Speak” held at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis to discuss race relations in America. These types of events confront racism head-on.

But platforms aren’t reserved for conferences and moderated national panels. The local church has an underused platform. Think about your church’s sermon series over the past nine months. Was racial tension in America addressed? Was any time set aside during service for prayer after tragedies occurred around our nation?

Read it all.

In this worrisome and wearisome election year, Yuval Levin offers a gracefully written, big-picture analysis of American society and politics. Levin, editor of National Affairs and a conservative of the David Brooks type, challenges both Democrats and Re­publicans, whom he views as snared in nostalgia for bygone (and not to be recovered) eras.

Progressives long for the post”“World War II era of relative income equality, powerful national institutions, and a highly regulated economy. Conservatives yearn for the cultural conformity of the immediate postwar years and look to the 1980s as the political and economic model. “Our polarized parties are now exceptionally backward-looking,” writes Levin. “They are offering the public a choice of competing nostalgias, neither of which is well-suited to contending with contemporary American challenges.”

Levin’s essay is a work of political philosophy, but there is an implicit theological and moral critique in his analysis. Nostalgia-driven parties and the nation they would lead face the future with more fear than hope, more despair than faith. Levin implicates the Boomer generation, whose “self-image casts a giant shadow over our politics, and . . . means we are inclined to look backward to find our prime.” (Both presidential candidates, one might note, are Boomers.)

Read it all from Christian Century.

Entering the 9th inning, the win probability for the @Cubs was just 2.5%.

🤔#FlyTheW pic.twitter.com/5oN00nhHo1

— Baseball Tonight (@BBTN) October 12, 2016

The Cubs expressed understandable joy and jubilation after their 6-5 comeback victory over the Giants in Game 4 to win the National League Division Series, but mostly they felt rewarded for keeping the faith when everybody but them had lost it. Admit it, you did too.

Just when you concluded the Cubs were done, they reminded everyone how they won 103 regular-season games. Just when you thought their bats had died, they came back to life. Just when Chicago doubted the Cubs the most, they gave everyone reason to believe again.

Just when you started to wonder if this really was the year, the Cubs left the impression the 108-year wait might be ending soon.

Read it all.

THE Dean of Peterborough, the Very Revd Charles Taylor, has bowed out of office with a stinging attack on envious people at the centre of the Church of England who resent “uppity” cathedrals and who wish to impose a “monochrome blandness” on the Church.

In late July, it was revealed that a cashflow crisis at Peterborough Cathedral meant that staff were in danger of not being paid. A loan was secured from the Church Commissioners. At the same time, it was announced that Dean Taylor was planning to retire.

In his farewell sermon on Saturday, Dean Taylor, who is 63, dropped a strong hint that the decision to leave had been forced upon him. Despite hundreds of letters of support, he said, he had not made any public remark about “the circumstances surrounding my ”˜retirement’ ”” although some have alleged that the manner in which it was effected was legally dubious, morally reprehensible, and pastorally disgraceful. Well, they might care to think that. I could not possibly comment.”

Read it all.

The first vision was experienced by a monk named Godwine, “a man of great simplicity and innocence”, who was a former sacristan of the monastery. While asleep on the eve of Wilfrid’s feast, he was woken by sounds in the choir: he heard the singing of the familiar chants appointed for the beginning of the vigil – Domine, labia mea aperies; Deus, in adiutorium meum intende – and the Psalm, Domine, quid multiplicati sunt. Then he heard voices singing Unum Deum in Trinitate fideliter adoremus, cuius fide Deo uiuit sanctus presul Wilfridus – “Let us faithfully worship one God in the Trinity, through faith in whom holy Bishop Wilfrid lives in God”. When he heard this, Godwine thought he must have overslept, so he jumped up and hurried to the choir, chastising himself for his laziness. He reached the entrance to the choir and hesitated, realising that he didn’t recognise the voices which were singing as those of his brother monks.

Then he looked into the choir, and it was empty. Since he could still hear the singing, he thought his eyes must be blurred by sleep, so he went to his usual place in the choir; but as he stood there he could see everything clearly, and there was no one there. But he could still hear singing – a multitude of voices in harmony. “But now it seemed to him that he was not hearing them singing psalms nearby, but rather from above, as if they were in the rafters of the church; and so, ascending as they sang and escaping as they ascended from the ears of the brother listening to them, these holy angels who had come, praising in hymns God who lives gloriously in his saint, once again sought the heavenly realms.”

Read it all.

12 Octobre : Saint Wilfrid, Évêque d'York (634-709)https://t.co/IuwiulK5s8#catholique pic.twitter.com/nwXlLZpl9f

— Ligue Saint Amédée (@SaintAmedee) October 11, 2016

O Lord God, the source of all grace and the judge of all men, who hast invited us to enter thy kingdom, but dost not force our wills to obedience: Grant that we may so use thy present grace that we may not have cause to fear thy final judgment; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

On their return the apostles told him what they had done. And he took them and withdrew apart to a city called Bethsa’ida. When the crowds learned it, they followed him; and he welcomed them and spoke to them of the kingdom of God, and cured those who had need of healing.

–Luke 9:10-11

“It’s been a surreal week. Last Wednesday and Thursday I met the Pope, first for a big service then for a conversation. The service was beautiful, full of a sense of the presence of God. Towards the end the Pope gave a gift, for me and my successors, a beautifully carved wooden Bishop’s staff, modelled on one given to St Augustine by Pope Gregory the Great in 597 ”“ over 1,400 years ago.

“In turn I gave him the cross I was wearing; it is called a Coventry Cross, and is the shape of three nails, modelled on the ones made at Coventry Cathedral after it was bombed in 1940. In the past 70 years they have become a global symbol of peacemaking and reconciliation.

“At that deeply emotional moment, triggered by the cross of nails, I remembered Aleppo, and those driven from homes all round the world as refugees. And then yesterday evening I met Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani 19-year-old shot for campaigning for education for girls, and still doing so. An extraordinary evening.

Read it all.

….something changed for Moore after Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president of the United States, was caught on tape bragging about his ability to sexual assault women. When Trump said, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything,” Moore had had enough.

“I’m one among many women sexually abused, misused, stared down, heckled, talked naughty to. Like we liked it. We didn’t. We’re tired of it,” Moore said. She also had a word about evangelical leaders still supporting Trump: “Try to absorb how acceptable the disesteem and objectifying of women has been when some Christian leaders don’t think it’s that big a deal.”

Moore’s broken silence about the 2016 race””rooted in her own experience with sexual assault””signals a widening gender divide between evangelicals. Increasingly, moderate and conservative Christian women are speaking out about Trump’s brand of misogyny and divisiveness, and condemning support for the nominee or silence about him from male evangelicals.

Read it all.

Before we get to the Sarah Pulliam Bailey round-up for today, it is significant that the Associated Press has produced a feature with the headline, “Why Do Evangelicals Prefer Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton?”

Of course, this headline should have included the word “some,” as in “some evangelicals.” Down in the body of the feature, AP made it rather clear that many ”“ perhaps even most ”“ religious conservatives are not planning to vote for Trump, but against you know who. This is not news to people who follow religion trends, but it will be surprising to some editors at daily newspapers:

Read it all.

Watch and listen to it all.

Correction to today's newsletter: B&C will continue publishing online until the end of 2017 [not 2016].

— Books & Culture (@booksandculture) October 11, 2016

You can find their wonderful website there.

Relations between Moscow and Washington — already at their lowest since the Cold War over the Ukraine conflict — have soured further in recent days as the United States pulled the plug on Syria talks and accused Russia of hacking attacks.

The Kremlin has suspended a series of nuclear pacts, including a symbolic cooperation deal to cut stocks of weapons-grade plutonium.

“I think the world has reached a dangerous point,” Gorbachev, 85, told state news agency RIA Novosti.

Read it all.

Yet Jesus Christ is also the Life. This means he is the one who conquers death and offers life eternal to all. But as many biblical scholars have noted, “eternal life” is about a life of unimaginable quality. A life of beauty.

“Beauty,” wrote psychologist Rollo May, “is the experience that gives us a sense of joy and a sense of peace simultaneously. ”¦ Beauty is serene and at the same time exhilarating; it increases one’s sense of being alive. ”¦ Beauty is the mystery which enchants us.”

Beauty fills us with joy and peace precisely because it indirectly and mysteriously manifests the one who is the Life. One might even paraphrase our Lord and say that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the beautiful. Or to put it more succinctly, it is in Jesus Christ that we can know, relish, and live into what we here at CT call a “beautiful orthodoxy.” It is in Christ alone that we can know, relish, and live into the truly good, the truly true, and the truly beautiful as manifested in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

Read it all.

Jimmy Cutter wheeled his pickup through the parking lot of a roadside ice machine Monday, ready to buy a bucket for his home.

But he didn’t get any ice. Without power, the machine would not run. It was the latest challenge in recent days for Cutter, who was among thousands of eastern South Carolina residents dealing with the effects of a weekend hurricane.

“It’s not bad for a few days, but after a while it gets old,” Cutter said Monday.

Read it all.

(Martha Graves)

Here are a few images that show the damage from the storm so far…Check them out.

O God, who hast made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and sent thy Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near: Grant that we, following the example of thy servant Philip, may bring thy Word to those who seek thee for the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

O Blessed Jesus, who hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, and hast consecrated us in baptism to be temples of the Holy Ghost: Make us, we beseech thee, both in body and soul, meet for thy dwelling place; that our hearts may be houses of prayer and praise, of pure desires and holy thoughts of thee, whose we are and whom we serve, and to whom be glory, now and for evermore.

Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amit’tai, saying, “Arise, go to Nin’eveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare, and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD.

–Jonah 1:1-3

Another of the king’s chief men, approving of his words and exhortations, presently added: “The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad. The sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.” The other elders and king’s counsellors, by divine inspiration, spoke to the same effect.

Read it all.

Professor Wright said: “If a pupil wanted to study Jesus in his historical context, this would not be seen as part of the general history syllabus, but would be something that was the preserve of religious studies.

“Religious studies staff would then say they had Judaism, Buddhism and Confucius, as well as Christianity, and maybe there would be something on the Gospels in the corner.

“It seems to me, in terms of the history of the western world, the narrative of how Christianity got going and who Jesus was are huge questions that ought to be in a more general syllabus.”

Read it all.

Several months ago we were praying that the Lord would guide us during the conference, specifically that it would not be political, but spiritual, seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We did experience his movement among us, and the communique reflects the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. It expressed very clearly where we stand, in a non-aggressive and non-divisive way. On the contrary, it shows how unity among the people of God brings blessing. (Psalm 133)
– Archbishop Mouneer Hanna Anis, Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East

It expresses our collective frustration, hope, and counsel to the Anglican Communion leadership on the state of our communion. It shows our faith, determination, and effort to restore this communion to wholeness. And it shows we are getting ready for the possibility of further deterioration, that we should be able to speak and act decisively.
– Archbishop Nicholas Okoh, Province of Nigeria

With the confusing messages from the centers of Anglicanism regarding Biblical morality, it clearly communicates our message, allowing us to focus on our mission to lead people to Jesus Christ.
– Archbishop Foley Beach, Anglican Church in North America

When we see conflicts and suffering in the world, this communique tells us we have to work faster and more corporately to help. But it also expresses our dissatisfaction and disappointment over the inability of the communion to address fundamental issues which are distracting us from the mission of the church. The truth of the gospel will only have power if it is not compromised.
– Archbishop Ng Moon Hing, Province of Southeast Asia

Read it all.

This past week, the latest (though surely not last) revelations from Trump’s past have caused many evangelical leaders to reconsider. This is heartening, but it comes awfully late. What Trump is, everyone has known and has been able to see for decades, let alone the last few months. The revelations of the past week of his vile and crude boasting about sexual conquest””indeed, sexual assault””might have been shocking, but they should have surprised no one.

Indeed, there is hardly any public person in America today who has more exemplified the “earthly nature” (“flesh” in the King James and the literal Greek) that Paul urges the Colossians to shed: “sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry” (3:5). This is an incredibly apt summary of Trump’s life to date. Idolatry, greed, and sexual immorality are intertwined in individual lives and whole societies. Sexuality is designed to be properly ordered within marriage, a relationship marked by covenant faithfulness and profound self-giving and sacrifice. To indulge in sexual immorality is to make oneself and one’s desires an idol. That Trump has been, his whole adult life, an idolater of this sort, and a singularly unrepentant one, should have been clear to everyone.

And therefore it is completely consistent that Trump is an idolater in many other ways. He has given no evidence of humility or dependence on others, let alone on God his Maker and Judge. He wantonly celebrates strongmen and takes every opportunity to humiliate and demean the vulnerable. He shows no curiosity or capacity to learn. He is, in short, the very embodiment of what the Bible calls a fool.

Read it all from Andy Crouch.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Aerial photos over South Carolina on Oct. 9, with SCDOT staff surveying #HurricaneMatthew damage (SCDOT photos) https://t.co/JSj43hNXpr pic.twitter.com/ckby0w8K4t

— SCDOT (@SCDOTPress) October 10, 2016

Look through them all.