Reflections

…creating our own version of god means we can tame it. A created thing can only do what we allow it to do unlike the true God who isn’t manageable. He can’t be put on a shelf or told to hush. We want to worship what we can control.
~ Jackie Hill Perry, Contemporary writer and hip-hop artist

The promise of the new covenant is not that we’re liberated from God’s word, but that we’re liberated to keep it. … Our desires are to mature, so that our souls, brought to life by the Spirit, move us to pursue real treasure and eternal glory with passion.
~ Peter Leithart, The Ten Commandments: A Guide to the Perfect Law of Liberty

The list of blessings and curses in the Torah reminds us that we must choose each and every day to be active partners with God working to repair the world.
~ Abraham Heschel, Rabbi and leading 20th Century Jewish Theologian

Nations pass away, thrones crumble, but the church remains. What is then the power which has protected this church, thus assailed by the furious billows of rage and the hostility of ages? Whose is the arm which, for eighteen hundred years, has protected the church from so many storms which have threatened to engulf it? … I marvel that whereas the ambitious dreams of myself, Caesar, and Alexander should have vanished into thin air, a Judean peasant—Jesus— should be able to stretch His hands across the centuries and control the destinies of men and nations.
~ Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), During his exile on the island of St. Helena

This Sunday’s readings: Deuteronomy 29:9-20