Almighty and eternal God, who has so made us of body, soul and spirit, that we live not by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth from thee: Make us to hunger for the spiritual food of thy Word; and as we trust thee for our daily bread, may we also trust thee to give us day by day the inward nourishment of that living truth which thou hast revealed to us in thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

Take care, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
For we share in Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end, while it is said,

“Today, when you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

Who were they that heard and yet were rebellious? Was it not all those who left Egypt under the leadership of Moses? And with whom was he provoked forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they should never enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

–Hebrews 3:12-19

There were actually at least two countercultures in 1968. The street mutineers dreamed of a political revolution, which was acted out as theater, using old scripts. In the second, politics became personal; emancipation came in the form of consumer choices. The first was collectivist and failed, the second was libertarian, individualistic, futuristic, and carried the day.

Hat tip: Scott Beauchamp.

The Anglican primates of Oceania, who have been meeting in Australia, have warned of the threat to their region from climate change. In a joint statement, the five Primates said : “We agreed that as whole nations of ocean people lose their island homes, climate justice advocacy and action must become the most urgent priority for Oceanic Anglicans.”

Archbishop Philip Freier of Australia, Archbishop Clyde Igara of Papua New Guinea, Archbishop Winston Halapua, and Archbishop Philip Richardson of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, and Archbishop George Takeli of Melanesia met in Tweed Heads, in New South Wales. They noted that they were four provinces covering many nations, more than 1,000 languages, with rich and diverse cultures. They said they were united through the interweaving of history and long friendships, but were coming together against a backdrop of disharmony:

“We gather at a time when the rhetoric of nationalism, ridicule, fear-mongering, and hatred is so prevalent. In such a climate where ‘me first’ or ‘we first’ dominates, we affirm: ‘we together.’”

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Urban planning fail. pic.twitter.com/7JXNtaqo30

— You Had One Job (@_youhadonejob1) March 6, 2017

Angela Merkel has described the idea that she is now the de facto leader of the western world as “grotesque” and “absurd”. The German chancellor’s angst is understandable. Modern Germany has no desire to lead the west and is not powerful enough to bear that burden. But unrealistic expectations are not the only reason for German anxiety. If Ms Merkel looks out from the glass box of the chancellor’s office in Berlin there is trouble on every horizon. To the east are the ever more authoritarian and Germanophobic governments of Poland and Hungary. And further east a hostile Russia. To the west, is the US of Donald Trump; to the north the UK of Brexit. And to the south lie Italy and Greece, two troubled countries that increasingly blame Germany for their economic woes. Collectively, the situation threatens to revive an old German nightmare: the fear of being a large, isolated power at the centre of Europe. The situation must feel even more grotesque because — unlike in the 20th century — Germany’s current loneliness has very little to do with the country’s own malign behaviour. On the contrary, it is the world around Germany that is changing fast, as populism and nationalism surge across Europe and in the US.

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The referendum campaign, and its aftermath, revealed deep divisions, my Lords, in our society, as the Noble Lord, Lord Hain, has rightly commented; and like him, this feels like the most divided country that I have lived in in my lifetime.

Whatever the outcome of the next two years, our nation’s future – particularly for the most vulnerable – will be profoundly damaged if we arrive in 2019 even more divided, without a common vision to confront the opportunities and challenges before us. To meet these opportunities and challenges – in every aspect of policy and every level of society– we must find a level of national reconciliation. So how we conduct this process is as important as the outcome itself.

I believe it would be dangerous and unwise and wrong to reduce the substance of the terms on which we exit the European Union to the result of a binary yes-no choice taken last summer – and the Government should avoid any inclination to oversimplify the outcome of the most complex peacetime negotiations, probably ever.

But neither is the complexity of a further referendum a good way of dealing with the process at the end of negotiation. It will add to our divisions. It will deepen the bitterness. It is not democratic. It is unwise….

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You can listen directly there and download the mp3 there.

O God the King of saints, who didst strengthen thy servants Perpetua and Felicitas and their companions to make a good confession, staunchly resisting, for the cause of Christ, the claims of human affection, and encouraging one another in their time of trial: Grant that we who cherish their blessed memory may share their pure and steadfast faith, and win with them the palm of victory; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Saint of the Day (Monday, March 7, 2016)-Sts. Perpetua and Felicity, pray for us #SaintOfTheDay pic.twitter.com/dLVKTTK9MQ

— Stefano Vazquez (@StefanoVP2013) March 7, 2016

O Lord our God, grant us, we beseech thee, patience in troubles, humility in comforts, constancy in temptations, and victory over all our spiritual foes. Grant us sorrow for our sins, thankfulness for thy benefits, fear of thy judgment, love of thy mercies, and mindfulness of thy presence; now and for evermore.

Therefore, holy brethren, who share in a heavenly call, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession. He was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in God’s house. Yet Jesus has been counted worthy of as much more glory than Moses as the builder of a house has more honor than the house. (For every house is built by some one, but the builder of all things is God.) Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ was faithful over God’s house as a son. And we are his house if we hold fast our confidence and pride in our hope.
Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,

“Today, when you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
on the day of testing in the wilderness,
where your fathers put me to the test
and saw my works for forty years.
Therefore I was provoked with that generation,
and said, ”˜They always go astray in their hearts;
they have not known my ways.’
As I swore in my wrath,
”˜They shall never enter my rest.’”

–Hebrews 3:1-11

Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ”˜thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.

–C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (San Francisco: Harper, 2001), p. 134

For people who have never questioned their birth sex, the concept of gender fluidity – which simply means that your gender identity varies – can be confusing. But in the same way that transgenderism has moved into the mainstream, thanks to the likes of Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox, gender fluidity is now coming to the fore.

Hit series Billions made TV history recently by introducing television’s first gender fluid character, Taylor, played by Asia Kate Dillon. Like the on-screen character, Dillon also identifies as nonbinary, as do a plethora of high-profile names. Miley Cyrus, Jack Monroe, Angel Haze, Sting’s daughter Eliot Sumner, Tilda Swinton and Orange is the New Black star Ruby Rose have all spoken openly about feeling that their gender is not binary.

Recently, an 11-year-old actor made international headlines after being deemed eligible for an award in the male and female categories at the Leo Awards in Canada. Ameko Eks Mass Carroll starred in Limina, a short film about a non-binary child. (To be clear, non-binary refers to any gender that is not exclusively male or female.)

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

I guess I’m giving up silence for Lent this year.

That’s an odd thing to say when you make a living yapping about sports on ESPN. And odder when the show I host, “Around the Horn,” makes a game out of LOUD NOISES. (That is to say, loud, perspicacious noises from the most insightful sportswriters in America!) I press a mute button to shut them down if (when!) our sports debate careens out of bounds (Fake News!). Silence is how I penalize. Silence works. But is silence good?

I’ve been on national television for 16 years and for all 16 I wore an ash on Ash Wednesday. I am grateful to ESPN and fortunate to work in an environment that allows me to be myself. But it’s shocking to me that I’m one of the few faces you see on TV wearing an ash. I did an interview where the reporter told me if you put “The Guy Who Wears Ashes on TV” into Google, I’m the first name that comes up. That’s surprising.

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YAMBIO, South Sudan — Simon Burete was weeding his peanut field a few weeks ago when he saw smoke coming from his house. He ran as fast as he could.

He and his wife, Angelina, had enjoyed years of peace, he farming the fields, she selling the produce in the market. They were poor but welded to each other. Just that morning, they had talked about walking into town to buy their first mobile phones.

But as Mr. Burete made it back to the house, out of breath, red dirt still stuck to his knees, he couldn’t believe his eyes. His wife was lying on the floor, burned to death in a rampage by government forces.

“I used to call her akara-ngba,” he said, which means in the Zande language “the last word on beauty.”

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O Heavenly Father, subdue in us whatever is contrary to thy holy will, that we may know how to please thee. Grant, O God, that we may never run into those temptations which in our prayers we desire to avoid. Lord, never permit our trials to be above our strength; through Jesus Christ our Saviour.

Blessed is he who considers the poor!
The Lord delivers him in the day of trouble;
the Lord protects him and keeps him alive;
he is called blessed in the land;
thou dost not give him up to the will of his enemies.
The Lord sustains him on his sickbed;
in his illness thou healest all his infirmities.

–Psalm 41:1-3

To those pushing an agenda that says your bathroom is my bathroom and your gender is whatever you want it to be, we want to say:

This is absurd. Patently absurd. There is no scientific reason, no justice reason, no internally consistent reason to think we can be boys or girls just by declaring it so. In our saner moments we know this to be true. No one would allow me to “become” Asian or African American even if I thought that’s who I was deep down. There are facts about my biology that cannot be denied. Why is gender open to self-definition while race and ethnicity are not?….

But that’s not all that must be said. There are people—men and women made in God’s image—who feel all sorts of confusion about who they are and what they want to be.

To those struggling with feelings they don’t understand and a sense of self that feels horribly unsettled, we want to say:

This happens. All the time. Not necessarily with gender, but human identity. We all struggle to figure out who we are, especially in our growing-up years. Sometimes that means we don’t know how to makes sense of our own bodies and our own sexuality. We don’t want anyone to feel unsafe in a bathroom. So let’s figure out how to have more unisex single stalls. Let’s provide well-trained, warmhearted counselors. Let’s make sure kids are not made fun of for being tomboys or for being sensitive or for being immigrants or for being Muslim or for being Christian or for being whatever.

Read it all.

That simple statement from 1 Timothy 1:15 has always been one of my favourite Bible verses, for a number of reasons. Pre-eminently, though, it is because it conveys the heart of the gospel. It always reminds me of the picture the Lord Jesus himself gave of the shepherd who seeks the lost sheep until he finds it, lays it on his shoulders and brings it home safely.

Whatever else you may think about the Lord coming into the world, saving sinners was his chief aim and his death on the cross was the chief means.

Those of us brought up on the Book of Common Prayer will remember that 1 Timothy 1:15 is one of those precious ‘comfortable words’ which we hear in the context of confessing our sinfulness to the Lord. For our sins, amply revealed by the Law of God, leave us with nowhere to go. And yet, the Good Shepherd finds us.

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Read it all and compare the pictures.

Blessed Lord, who wast tempted in all things like as we are, have mercy upon our frailty. Out of weakness give us strength; grant to us thy fear, that we may fear thee only; support us in time of temptation; embolden us in time of danger; help us to do thy work with good courage, and to continue thy faithful soldiers and servants unto our life’s end.

“All the commandment which I command you this day you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your fathers. And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments, or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know; that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. Your clothing did not wear out upon you, and your foot did not swell, these forty years. Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you. So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, by walking in his ways and by fearing him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.

–Deuteronomy 8:1-10

On Thursday, hundreds of students at Middlebury College shouted down political scientist Charles Murray, forcing him to deliver his remarks in a private room via a live web stream.

While he delivered his remarks, student troublemakers pulled the building’s fire alarm multiple times. Shouting could be heard in the background throughout the live-streamed lecture and subsequent conversation with Political Science Professor Allison Stanger.

When Stanger and Murray left the building, things turned violent, the Addison County Independent reports:

As Stanger, Murray and a college administrator left McCullough Student Center last evening following the event, they were “physically and violently confronted by a group of protestors,” according to Bill Burger, the college’s vice president for communications and marketing.

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

In a stated effort to train up Christian leaders in disciplines that will help them connect with a rapidly changing culture, Hope Bible College & Seminary announced Thursday its new course offerings in advanced meme-making.

“The first reformation was all about creeds, the second reformation was all about deeds—now we’re starting a new reformation that’s all about the dank memes,” college dean Chuck Lyle told reporters. “The best way to communicate truth to a postmodern world is by slapping a clever zinger on a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio or Robert Downey Jr., and we want to equip the next generation of Christians to engage culture with the dankest memes.”

Read it all from the Babylon Bee.

The Bishop of Durham is urging Christians to talk about Jesus, not about Brexit.

He also suggested that anyone hoping to evangelise new Christians should avoid talking about the Church of England.

He was one of up to 25 bishops, including the Archbishop of York, in Durham for a four-day evangelism event, ‘Talking Jesus’. They are examining a series of 450 outreach programmes ranging from abseiling to coffee mornings.

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Tomasz Stańko Quintet / Grand Central from Kijek / Adamski on Vimeo.

“Grand Central” was nominated for Best Polish Music Video and for The Best Animated Music Video awards at Yach Film Festival 2010; enjoy it all.

O thou who hast taught us that we are most truly free when we lose our wills in thine: Help us to attain to this liberty by continual surrender unto thee; that walking in the way which thou hast prepared for us, we may find our life in doing thy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness;

To the end that [my] glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever.

–Psalm 30:11-12 (KJV)

Gill Booth, Executive Headteacher for the Dayspring Trust, said: “As a school community, we wanted to explore how our students can access prayer in an interactive way and also to see how prayer spaces can impact positively on well-being. We were delighted to welcome the Archbishop to meet with our young people and to be able to talk about the impact of our Prayer Space project with a wider community audience. The outcomes have been incredible with many young people saying that they feel more confident in themselves as a result.”

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu said, “It has been wonderful to spend time with students from Venerable Bede Church of England Academy and to find out more of how they have used the Prayer Spaces they have created to engage in a fresh way in talking and listening to God. There is no better thing we can do than to find a space to spend time with God, and I encourage all to do so.”

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Thousands of worshipers were gathered at a prominent Sufi shrine in Sehwan, Pakistan, last month when a suicide bomb ripped through the courtyard, killing more than 80. As a counterterrorism analyst, I had long expected that something terrible would happen at the site—the mausoleum of Hazrat Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, revered as a Sufi saint. And I wasn’t surprised that an Islamic State affiliate quickly claimed responsibility for the bombing. But as a human and a Muslim who practices Sufism, it wrenched my heart.

Many Westerners today associate Islam with the doctrinaire tradition of Salafi jihadism, embodied by organizations like ISIS and al Qaeda. Yet Islam is so far from monolithic that sectarian differences often lead to violence and hatred among Muslims. Islamic State attacked the shrine precisely because of its importance to adherents of Sufism.

Sufism is an esoteric, mystical dimension of Islam whose adherents focus on maintaining a direct, personal relationship with God. It isn’t a sect. Rather, Sufism is an approach to understanding Islam. Sufis seek conciliation, rather than confrontation, among all religions. They can be found throughout the world, and Sufism is apolitical. Its adherents are on a quest not for temporal power but for self-knowledge and an understanding of the divine. To Sufis, all those who believe in a higher power and divine connection are Sufis.

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