Before you head out on this final weekend of January, here are three things that I have been thinking about this week. Hope they are as helpful and challenging to you as they have been for me.
I’ve started a new daily devotional writing project to share. Click the link above (Daily Devotional Sign-up) if you’d like to receive it in your inbox each morning.
Have a great weekend!
#1
No work of grace subsequent in time can have meaning apart from the integrity of a repentant attitude that never ends.
A Theology of Love by Mildred Bangs Wynkoop
Just as you cannot hold something new when your hands are full, so too unless repentance is part of our life we cannot receive God’s grace. Repentance is first turning and then turning loose. It is putting God in our view and then putting down whatever we are holding onto. Often we hold on to things in hopes they will answer our deepest needs. Only God can meet those needs. Only through grace will he do it. Only through grace can we do it. Only with empty hands are we prepared.
#2
We think that idols are bad things, but that is almost never the case. The greater the good, the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepest needs and hope Anything can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the very best things in life.
Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller
I’ve been thinking and writing about good versus the best. Tim Keller reminds us that the difficulty with the greater goods is that they elevate our hope. But it is a false hope. He gives us a name for the things we are holding in our hands that only God’s grace received in an attitude of repentance can help us shed. Idols.
#3
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
Albert Einstein
While some sites on the internet say that Einstein never said this, let me say that whoever ultimate said this is on to something. Miracles are gifts from God’s hand to our reality. The air that I breathe is a gift. The ability to type these sentences a gift. Seeing God as the initiator and giver of all good gifts places us in the perspective of gratitude which shapes our lives. In fact, I believe seeing all of life as a miracle as a deeply formational spiritual practice.
todd nelson 