Category: faith

Bono & David Tyler: Beyond the Psalms

Last year, Fuller Theological Seminary released a series of videos documenting a conversation between Bono and Eugene Peterson. They talked at Peterson’s home about the Psalms. It’s a great video series.

Today they launched a new collection of videos, highlighting a conversation between Bono and Fuller professor of theology and culture David Taylor.

It’s good.

I don’t really believe in (death) anymore. It has no power over me as when I was 14 years old. And it’s unpleasant for the people we leave behind or if we’re left behind. But it isn’t unpleasant for the soul, to now find it’s true meaning.

Psalm 82 is a good start

Where the song is singing to me

Be brutally honest

All art is prophetic

Where Death Died

When you’re done watching, check out the related Spotify playlist as well.

Accompanying persons in the middle

The pastor is the person who specializes in accompanying persons of faith “in the middle,” facing the ugly details, the meaningless routines, the mocking wickedness, and all the time doggedly insisting that this unaccountability unlovely middle is connected to the splendid beginning and a glorious ending …

These people, when served by such a pastor, steadily acquire confidence that they are included in God’s way and are able, therefore, to persevere meaningfully even when they cannot see the meaning.

– Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder

If we follow the call as the priesthood of believers – is this not also the call of all believers?

How do we respond?

“I was hungry and you fed me, 

I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, 

I was homeless and you gave me a room, 

I was shivering and you gave me clothes, 

I was sick and you stopped to visit, 

I was in prison and you came to me …

Whenever you did one of these things

to someone overlooked or ignored, 

that was me—you did it to me.”

What does this look like in our lives today? 

What does this look like in America today?

What does this look like in our world today?

Morning prayer: proclaim with our lives

Morning prayer:

Teach us to proclaim with our lives : that we have no God but you.

—

Athenagoras said of the early church, “They charge us on two points: that we do not sacrifice and that we do not believe in the same gods as the State.”

It’s fascinating that the early church was not persecuted because the followed The Way, which some viewed as a cult (Acts 24:14), but because they chose not to worship and pledge allegiance to Caesar and the empire.

After all, Rome was a very pluralistic and religious society (Acts 17) – as long as you recognized Caesar as Lord and the greatness of the empire.

Rather than say “Caesar is Lord” or “Caesar is the Son of God” or “Caesar will save us” – the early Christians had the audacity to say “Jesus is Lord” and “Jesus is the Son of God” and “Jesus will save us.”

Rather than say “Caesar will make Rome great”, they led a counter cultural revolution of loving neighbors and living lives that proclaimed Jesus will make the world great.

Serenity Prayer

St Francis by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

God grant me the serenity 

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;

Enjoying one moment at a time;

Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;

Taking, as He did, this sinful world

As it is, not as I would have it;

Trusting that He will make all things right

If I surrender to His Will;

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life

And supremely happy with Him

Forever and ever in the next.

Amen.