Almighty and everlasting God, by whose grace we have been admitted into the glory of the new covenant: Grant, we beseech thee, that being delivered from the death of sin and the bondage of the law, we may rejoice in the life and liberty of the Spirit, and evermore find our sufficiency in thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Swan wrapped in sunrise sky reflections pic.twitter.com/SRCZfpabzm
— Nikon Photographer (@Astrid_Tontson) August 22, 2021
The gospel is the good news that God is love. ‘In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins’ (1 John 4:8-10). The background of the gospel is God’s wrath and judgment against us sinners. The heart of the gospel is the double truth of propitiation for sin, and remission of sin – through the cross of Christ, atonement by blood, and justification by faith. ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them…. He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the ighteousness
of God in him’ (2 Cor. 5:19, 21).
The gospel of free forgiveness through Christ crucified appears as the mainspring of worship throughout the whole Prayer Book, and it is noticeable that current discontent with the Prayer Book is strongest among those whose grasp on this gospel is most suspect. A modern prophet, in an article entitled Un-Christian Liturgy, has censured the Prayer Book stress on guilt and pardon as morbid and unhealthy. Our own judgment goes rather with [Charles] Simeon [1759-1836]:
‘I seek to be, not only humbled and thankful, but humbled in thankfulness, before my God and Savior continually. This is the religion that pervades the whole Liturgy, and particularly the Communion Service; and this makes the Liturgy inexpressibly sweet to me. ‘The repeated cries for mercy to each Person of the ever-adorable Trinity for mercy, are not at all too frequent or too fervent for me; nor is the Confession in the Communion service too strong for me; nor the Te Deum, nor the ascriptions of glory after the Lord’s Supper, Glory be to God on high, etc. too exalted for me this shows what men of God the framers of our Liturgy were, and what I pant, and long, and strive to be. ‘This makes the Liturgy as superior to all modern compositions, as the work of a Philosopher on any deep subject is to that of a schoolboy who understands scarcely anything about it.’
—The Gospel in the Prayer Book (Marcham Manor Press, 1966)
Having just heard about the home going of J. I. Packer, I am filled with mixed emotions: joy for him, sadness for us. I first met him when I was about 15. I can’t calculate how much I owe to him, not only his teaching and writing but his godly example. #jipacker pic.twitter.com/lt9HG0FeVQ
— Michael Horton (@MichaelHorton_) July 18, 2020
O God, who hast brought life and immortality to light by the gospel, and hast begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead: Make us steadfast and immovable in the faith, always abounding in the work of the Lord, who died for our sins and rose again, and now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, world without end.
–The Rev. James Mountain (1844-1933)
A stunning Kentucky sunset, by @mypicworld #ScenesOfTheBluegrass pic.twitter.com/1EB1DKGfKf
— Scenes of the Bluegrass (@BluegrassScenes) August 20, 2021
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Like many of you, I have been soberly watching the situation unfolding in Afghanistan. I know it has surfaced many emotions for people across the world, especially those who have personal connections with Afghanistan and the Afghan people. Whether justified or unjustified, war is always a tragic consequence of the Fall. While in war we can witness the greatness of human courage and selflessness, we also realize the depths of human sinfulness, as poet Robert Burns wrote, “man’s inhumanity to man.”
Please join me in prayer for the people of Afghanistan, those Afghans and Americans seeking safe passage out of the country, and those on the ground continuing to help. Pray for wisdom for leaders at all levels who face very difficult decisions. Pray for the ever-growing underground Church in Afghanistan. Even more, pray that all Afghanis, especially those in power, are met by the Holy Spirit and come to personally know the risen Christ. Please join me in prayer and fasting with special prayers in our worship services this coming Sunday.
I want to send a personal message to all the military, foreign service, civil service, contractors, missionaries, and aid workers, and their families, who have given so much of their blood, sweat, and tears in service to their nations and for the welfare of the Afghan people. Know that your efforts are not in vain.
.@ArchbishopFoley issues a call to prayer for #Afghanistan, #Haitiearthquake2021, and all those affected by the ongoing #COVID19 pandemic.
Read more at: https://t.co/MeIbI04Nsd
and give at https://t.co/x7Ma2Q1x1O#anglican pic.twitter.com/hVSSdElbKP
— ACNA (@The_ACNA) August 18, 2021
In Psalm 121 David lifted up his eyes to the hills; but here he declares that they were not lifted up in any other sense. When the heart is right, and the eyes are right, the whole man is on the road to a healthy and happy condition. Let us take care that we do not use the language of this Psalm unless, indeed, it be true as to ourselves; for there is no worse pride than that which claims humility when it does not possess it.
–Treasury of David
Beautiful sunrise in Greer this morning. #scwx
If you snagged a picture on the sunrise this morning we would love to see it. Tag us on social media! 🙌 pic.twitter.com/P7Cdsb8abI
— NWS GSP (@NWSGSP) August 19, 2021
“The fact that God is revealed to us is then grace. Grace is the majesty, the freedom, the undeservedness, the unexpectedness, the newness, the arbitrariness, in which the relationship to God and therefore the possibility of knowing Him is opened up to man by God Himself. Grace is really the orientation in which God sets up an order which did not previously exist, to the power and benefit of which man has no claim, which he has no power to set up, which he has no competence even subsequently to justify, which in its singularity–which corresponds exactly to the singularity of the nature and being of God–he can only recognise and acknowledge as it is actually set up, as it is powerful and effective as a benefit that comes to him. Grace is God’s good-pleasure. And it is precisly in God’s good-pleasure that the reality of our being with God and of His being with us consists.”
–Karl Barth Church Dogmatics II.1 (London:T+T Clark, 1957), E.T. p. 74 (Hat tip: Matthew Lee Anderson)
Anything ending with “ism” has little or nothing to do with God. – Karl Barth pic.twitter.com/iIcEp7wLEI
— Taylor Mertins (@taylormertins) February 1, 2021
From there:
Ultimately, without that higher purpose to bind it, society would fall — as it has — into “emotivism”, relativism and ultimately disintegration. If every culture is cored around a sacred order — whether Christian, Islamic or Hindu, the veneration of ancestors or the worship of Odin — then the collapse of that order will lead inevitably to the collapse of the culture it supported. There is a throne at the heart of every culture, and whoever sits on it will be the force we take our instruction from. The modern experiment has been the act of dethroning both literal human sovereigns and the representative of the sacred order, and replacing them with purely human, and purely abstract, notions — “the people” or “liberty” or “democracy” or “progress.”
I’m all for democracy (the real thing, please, not the corporate simulacra that currently squats in its place), but the dethroning of the sovereign — Christ — who sat at the heart of the Western sacred order did not lead to universal equality and justice. It led — via a bloody shortcut through Robespierre, Stalin and Hitler — to the complete triumph of the power of money, which has splintered our culture and our souls into a million angry shards.
The vacuum created by the collapse of our old taboos was filled by the poison gas of consumer capitalism. It has now infiltrated every aspect of our lives in the way that the Christian story once did, so much so that we barely even notice as it colonises everything — from the way we eat to the values we teach our children. Cut loose in a post-modern present — with no centre, no truth and no direction — we have not become independent-minded, responsible, democratic citizens in a human republic. We have become slaves to the self and to the power of money; broken worshippers before the monstrous idol of Progress. “In the ethics of the West,” wrote Spengler, “everything is direction, claim to power, will to affect the distant.”
After Virtue ends with its author declaring that the task we face today is similar to that set for those living through the collapse of Rome: not to “shore up the imperium” but to start building anew. Macintyre famously concluded that the West was waiting for “a new — and doubtless very different — St Benedict.” That was forty years ago, and we are still waiting, but it’s not a bad way to see the challenge we face. Despite the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan, the post-Christian West is not at all short on ideas, arguments, insults, ideologies, stratagems, conflicts or world-saving machines. But it is very short on saints; and how we need their love, wisdom, discipline and stillness amidst the chaos of the times. Maybe we had better start looking at how to embody a little of these qualities ourselves.
Aaron Weinacht describes the arc of Paul Kingsnorth's trilogy of novels and considers how they respond to a fundamental human question: "How do we respond to losses we can’t do much to change?" https://t.co/tKqd518PMW pic.twitter.com/16LpG6G2rX
— Front Porch Republic (@FrontPorchRepub) April 27, 2021
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.
—Mere Christianity
C.S. Lewis's Augustinian reflection.
"Continue seeking Him with seriousness. Unless he wanted you, you would not be wanting Him."
⏤ C.S. Lewis, Letters of C. S. Lewis (13 June 1951)
HT: C.S. Lewis Institute Chicago#CSLewis pic.twitter.com/BHoXbGtTwP
— Kenneth R. Samples (@RTB_KSamples) August 13, 2021
“The west as a modern progressive society is committed to live as if God does not exist, etsi deus non daretur, or at any rate to live with no sense of the devil”
-—Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity? (Eerdmans, 2003) p. 83
I have been at this blog since the first part of 2003, and it is time to step back. As I am constantly insisting to my friends, none of us is indispensable, and this is a way of living that out by yours truly.Some longtime blog readers may remember how I have mentioned that I am the type of person who goes to bed every night just a little sad–only a little–about how much I don’t know (and still wish to find out). So moving away from the information addiction for me will not necessarily be easy–but it is important.
Posts will be catch as catch can until I let you know–KSH.
Absolutely Gorgeous Golden Sunset Adorns Beautiful Lake Champlain in Burlington Vermont… 🌅 ⛵️ 🌲😍 pic.twitter.com/mX4O9V9UKi
— Gary (@DJGARYNH) July 26, 2021
O God, who art faithful to thy people and dost not permit them to be tempted above that they are able, but with the temptation also makest a way of escape that they may be able to bear it: We humbly entreat thee to strengthen us thy servants with thy heavenly aid and keep us with thy continual protection; that we may evermore wait on thee, and never by any temptation be drawn away from thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The is high enough to get above the cloud deck, and it's still a pretty sight! #pawx #pghwx #pittsburgh #sunrise pic.twitter.com/FbQZJSX8vW
— Brian Hutton Jr. (@BrianHuttonWTAE) August 1, 2021
The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. And he found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Beth-sa′ida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathan′a-el, and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” Nathan′a-el said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” Jesus saw Nathan′a-el coming to him, and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” Nathan′a-el said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Nathan′a-el answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You shall see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.”
–John 1:43-51
Sunrise above the clouds at 30,000 feet on the way to JFK. pic.twitter.com/8F6GNSbboa
— Alex Hayden (@TheAlexHayden) August 1, 2021
Only 1.5 per cent of the whole population of Africa has been vaccinated against Covid-19, and the continent might not even reach 10 per cent coverage by December 2021, although the World Health Organization (WHO) wanted to cross that threshold by September of this year, WHO officials warned on Friday.
“Right now, we are not on track to hit 10 per cent coverage in Africa by the end of this year,” said Bruce Aylward, senior advisor to the WHO director general, at a press conference here on Friday.
“That should be a scar on all of our conscience, quite frankly,” he added, pointing out that the number of coronavirus-related deaths has increased by 80 per cent on the African continent, the Xinhua news agency reported.
Only a fraction of the globally available vaccine doses have been administered in Africa, less than two per cent of the 4.07 billion doses used worldwide, according to the WHO.
— Bruno Maçães (@MacaesBruno) July 31, 2021
O God, by whose grace thy servant Ignatius, enkindled with the fire of thy love, became a burning and a shining light in thy Church: Grant that we also may be aflame with the spirit of love and discipline, and may ever walk before thee as children of light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, liveth and reigneth, one God, now and for ever.
O God, who raised up Saint Ignatius of Loyola
in your Church
to further the greater glory of your name,
grant that by his help we may imitate him
in fighting the good fight on earth
and merit to receive with him a crown in heaven. pic.twitter.com/HtH5tkmZmx— Catholic Church (@catholicEW) July 31, 2021
Teach us, good Lord,
to serve you as you deserve;
to give and not to count the cost;
to fight and not to heed the wounds;
to toil and not to seek for rest;
to labour and not to ask for any reward,
save that of knowing that we do your will;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
––Frederick B. Macnutt, The prayer manual for private devotions or public use on divers occasions: Compiled from all sources ancient, medieval, and modern (A.R. Mowbray, 1951)
Sunrise today pic.twitter.com/mBj2cbPyuS
— Barry (@BarryW757) July 31, 2021
For not from the east or from the west and not from the wilderness comes lifting up; but it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another…
–Psalm 75:6-7
A hazy sunrise this morning over Downtown Charleston. pic.twitter.com/ZLX4HX4BiD
— Chris Holtzman (@ChrisHoltzmanWx) July 31, 2021
The already bonkers dollars of Big Tech have become even bonkers-er.
My colleagues and I have written a lot about the unreal sales, profits and oomph of America’s five technology titans — Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook. This might feel like old news. Tech’s Titanic 5 have been big and rich for a long time, and they’ve gotten even more so as people and organizations have needed their products during the coronavirus pandemic. Yadda, yadda, yadda. We get it.
But no, we really don’t get it. American’s technology superstars have launched into a completely different stratosphere than even other wildly successful companies in tech and beyond.
"The already bonkers dollars of Big Tech have become even bonkers-er," writes @shiraovide in On Tech. https://t.co/l6suFCsMJr
— NYT Business (@nytimesbusiness) July 30, 2021
“One of the main reasons that actually separated the country [of] South Sudan was the unwillingness of the previous regime to repeal Sharia law from the country. That would actually have saved the country,” he argued.
Many people from Nuba fear there’s a risk of other parts of the country breaking away, or of ongoing conflict, if Sudan is not able to take religious ideology out of government affairs.
As a government peace adviser, Komey said he brought in experts from Turkey, Nigeria and other countries with large or majority-Islamic populations (but secular constitutions) to meet with members of Sudan’s government.
“That actually opened minds that Sudan, which is majority Muslim, can still go secular without endangering people,” he said.
But in Sudan’s public sphere, secularism remains a provocative and emotional word for ordinary people.
After the revolution, a secular Sudan? @HalimaGikandi reports for our series #SacredNation on religion and nationalism. With support from @HLuceFdn.https://t.co/ZWY5vEirNP
— The World (@TheWorld) July 22, 2021
The diocese of Southwark has “weaponised” safeguarding against the Vicar of Christ Church, New Malden, the Revd Stephen Kuhrt, the PCC alleges.
The diocese of Southwark has confirmed that Mr Kuhrt was suspended from all his ministerial duties on 22 June, “pending the investigation of a complaint under the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003”. Its statement says: “Suspension is a neutral act and does not imply that a view has been formed on the matter. He has been offered pastoral support during this time. It would be inappropriate to comment further.”
A statement from the PCC of Christ Church, issued to the congregation on 24 June, states: “His [Mr Kuhrt’s] offence has been to whistle-blow by expressing significant and evidenced concerns about safeguarding within Southwark Diocese. The Churchwardens believe these need to be addressed thoroughly, professionally and accountably, rather than weaponised against the person who has raised them.”
PCC accuses Southwark diocese of ‘weaponising’ safeguarding against Vicar https://t.co/m90eSwrjmS
— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) July 30, 2021
Read it all and for background please see there.
It was in 1787 that he first decided to put down a motion in the House of Commons about the slave trade. This nefarious traffic had been going on for three centuries, and the West Indian slave-owners were determined to oppose abolition to the end. Besides, Wilberforce was not a very prepossessing man. He was little and somewhat ugly, with poor eyesight and an upturned nose. When Boswell heard him speak, he pronounced him ‘a perfect shrimp’, but then had to concede that ‘presently the shrimp swelled into a whale.’ In 1789 Wilberforce said of the slave trade: “So enormous so dreadful, so irremediable did its wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for the abolition…. let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest till I had effected its abolition.
So abolition bills (which related to the trade) and Foreign Trade Bills (which would prohibit the involvement of British ships in it) were debated in the commons in 1789, 1791, 1792,194, 1796 (by which time Abolition had become ‘the grand object of my parliamentary existence’), 1798 and 1799. Yet they all failed. The Foreign Slave Bill was not passed until 1806 and the Abolition of the Slave Trade Bill until 1807. This part of the campaign had taken eighteen years.
Next, soon after the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars, Wilberforce began to direct his energies to the abolition of slavery itself and the emancipation of the slaves. In 1823 the Anti-Slavery Society was formed. Twice that year and twice the following year, Wilberforce pleaded the slaves’ cause in the House of Commons. But in 1825 ill-health compelled him to resign as a member of parliament and to continue his campaign from outside. In 1831 he sent a message to the Anti-Slavery Society, in which he said, “Our motto must continue to be PERSEVERANCE. And ultimately I trust the Almighty will crown our efforts with success.” He did. In July 1833 the Abolition of Slavery Bill was passed in both Houses of Parliament, even though it included the undertaking to pay 20 million pounds in compensation to the slave-owners. ‘Thank God,’ wrote Wilberforce, that I have lived to witness a day in which England is willing to give 20 million pounds for the abolition of slavery.’ Three days later he died. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in national recognition of his FORTY-FIVE YEARS of persevering struggle on behalf of African slaves.
— John R W Stott, Issues facing Christians Today (Basingstoke: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1984), p. 334
#OTD 29 July 1833: death of William Wilberforce, politician, philanthropist and abolitionist. https://t.co/zPUmCTqA2j pic.twitter.com/YF5D07C2Xi
— Caroline Murray (@Prof_hedgehog) July 29, 2021
Let thy continual mercy, O Lord, enkindle in thy Church the never-failing gift of love, that, following the example of thy servant William Wilberforce, we may have grace to defend the poor, and maintain the cause of those who have no helper; for the sake of him who gave his life for us, thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Died #OTD 1833 William Wilberforce, just three days after hearing that the passage of the Act through Parliament was assured. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, close to his friend William Pitt the Younger. https://t.co/DBSIrcP6cG pic.twitter.com/WHaIjk0tEK
— BIPC Hull (Hull Libraries) (@BIPCHull) July 29, 2021