RECOVERING OUR BALANCE

 Can you find out the depths of God? Or find out the perfection of the Almighty? It is higher than the heavens; so what can you do? It is deeper than Sheol; so what can you know? It is longer than the earth and broader than the sea. — Job 11:7-9 The Bible, in its entirety, finds a balance between knowing and not-knowing, between using particular and carefully chosen words and having humility about words, even though the ensuing traditions have not often found that same balance. “Churchianity,” by its very definition, needs to speak with absolutes and certainties. It feels its job is to make absolute truth claims and feels very fragile when it cannot. Then, we followers think we must be certain about things we are not really certain of at all (which is the beginning of the loss of faith)!

NO SUPERSTAR

From Reflections by Hugh Lavery 

Our contemporaries worry us about the relevance of religion. But religion was a word Christ never used. Over the years it has acquired overtones, suggestions of strange rites and eccentric observances, of practices unconcerned with making the lives of people good and purposeful.
Christ's word is not religion. It is life; no other would do. His interest was simply the whole range of common experience, his way relevant, with no whiff of the esoteric or arcane. The Lord was always a commoner. Yet life is a wide word and Jesus does not use it without qualification. He uses prefix — the life that I will give. He uses addition — life and a more abundant life.