From the Standard

Came across a piece from the Christian Standard on "Small Church Stereotypes" and thought this was interesting:
Small Churches Live in the Past
     This is often true. Some older members are glad to tell you about the three-week revival in 1963 when the building was so full that people were looking in through the windows. They'll also praise the nearly perfect preacher who was adored in the early 1980's.
     Not every smaller congregation has been around for lots of years, but many of them have. Older, smaller churches often commit systematic, congregational suicide by going to one of two extremes. They either back into the future while looking into the past (and then lament the fact that no young people are around anymore), or they show blatant disregard for time-honored ministries and traditions in a misguided attempt to bring relevance and instant growth.
     Balance is critical, so small churches need to celebrate past victories, recognize years of faithful leadership, and rejoice over life-changing moments that have occurred. Churches can learn from these things, while moving forward with exciting dreams and timely, well-explained changes.
     An old Russian proverb says, "Dwell in the past and you'll lose an eye. Forget the past and you'll lose both eyes." Churches need to honor the past without dwelling there.

As a small-church pastor, I can attest to the importance (and difficulty) of striking that balance.

Wendell Berry being Wendell Berry

Here's a link to the 2012 National Endowment of the Humanities Jefferson Lecture, delivered by a man whose voice has long demanded to be heard, Wendell Berry:
http://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/wendell-e-berry-lecture

Top of the food chain, indeed

This from Norman Wirzba's excellent Food & Faith: A Theology of Eating:
"Though everything that lives eats, we are the ones privileged to garden, feast, and be hospitable. We are the ones who can give voice to gratitude and develop eating practices reflective of faith, hope, and love."

NT Wright on the resurrection body

"Dust we are, and to dust we shall return. But God can do new things with dust."
         ----Surprised by Hope, 158

Love that, both for its concise elegance and its commitment to the power of God.

The Psalmist at Harvest Time

This delightfully agrarian reflection from Psalm 65:

9 You visit the earth and water it;[b]
    you greatly enrich it;
the river of God is full of water;
     you provide their grain,
    for so you have prepared it.
10 You water its furrows abundantly,
    settling its ridges,
softening it with showers,
    and blessing its growth.
11 You crown the year with your bounty;
    your wagon tracks overflow with abundance.
12  The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
    the hills gird themselves with joy,
13  the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,
    the valleys deck themselves with grain,
    they shout and sing together for joy.

Chesterton and Aquinas

Reading Chesterton's biography of "The Dumb Ox". There is (as is always the case with Chesterton) such a wealth of wit and insight here, that Aquinas' quote, as related by Chesterton, seems appropriate:
     "When asked for what he thanked God most, he answered simply, 'I have understood every page I ever read.'"

Were I Aquinas, it would be enough to say I have understood every page I have ever written. But that was probably far too modest a goal for such a prodigious mind.

A Truly Astonishing Observation

This from Eugene Peterson's The Pastor:

"Pastor John of Patmos knew his Bible inside and out. The Revelation has 404 verses. In those 404 verses, there are 518 references to earlier scripture. But there is not a single quote; all the references are allusions. Here was a pastor and writer who was absolutely immersed in scripture and submitted himself to it. He did not merely repeat, regurgitate, proof-text. As he wrote, the scriptures were re-created in him. He assimilated scripture. Lived scripture. And then he wrote what he has lived....I wrote an article on Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I recognized it as a tour de force of spiritual theology. I made the comment in my article that there was hardly a page in the book that didn't have an allusion to the Bible, yet there was not a single quote...She wrote to me,"I have been treated very generously by my reviewers. But nobody has ever noticed that the book is saturated in scripture. I wondered if anyone ever would. Thank you for noticing.'"