Matt Erickson
After re-reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, I am even more moved by it than before. The combination of carnage and beauty, death and hope, in the midst of the world that seems alternately godless and God-rich is marvelous. 📚
There’s nothing quite like the oncoming sound of kids excitedly running out from the school building to the playground. It’s like a freight-train of joy rushing toward its destination.
I feel like this tree could be a parable, like “If your roots are strong, you can hang in there,” but I don’t want to diminish the sheer wonder of this particular tree growing in this particular way.
"You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget"
He pulled the boy closer. Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
You forget some things, dont you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.
Cormac McCarthy, The Road, p. 10.
Here is “The Weekend Wanderer” with reflections by Michael Frost, Russell Moore, & David French on Hillsong’s Marty Sampson, plus J D Vance’s Catholicism, Esau McCaulley on preaching about racism, & more.
Spending time studying the prayers of St Paul in his epistles is such an interesting experience, raising so many questions. Why did he pray the way he did? What was it in certain churches that brought certain prayer responses? What can we learn for our own prayer lives from Paul?
I re-worked some reflections from a few years ago on Abraham, birds, God, and spiritual conflict from Genesis 15 in “Beating Off the Demons.”
The latest edition of “The Weekend Wanderer” with the first woman General Secretary of the AG, Brian Dijkema on justice, Toni Morrison’s passing, Replogle on Bonhoeffer, America’s gun problem, and more.
After a week away, “The Weekend Wanderer” is back with Joshua Harris’ loss of faith, reflections on evangelical purity culture, Rob Moll’s passing, preaching lessons from Gardner C. Taylor, and much more.
Every time I read Eugene Peterson, I reminded of how wise his insights are about pastoral ministry and spiritual growth. There are few pastor-writers I encounter who have such a biblically-rich and incarnationally-rooted approach to life with God.
“The well-established and much-verified fact is that following Jesus is not a consumer activity. Prayer is not a technique that can be learned as a skill; it can only be entered as a person-in-relation.” - Eugene Peterson
Mist over Lake Superior in Grand Portage, Minnesota. Another photo from last week’s Lake Superior Circle Tour with no edits or filters.
Here is the latest edition of “The Weekend Wanderer” with Milliner’s field guide to Richard Rohr, ‘tradpunk’ Christianity in Brooklyn, House Chaplain exorcises Congress, religious persecution in Iraq, & more.
The more I study Scripture, the more I am amazed at the depths found within it. There are depths about who God is that continue to thrill me, including the wisely complex and gentle ways in which God graciously tends both the cosmos and each human being.
“Only that fellowship which faces disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Life Together.
Eugene Peterson in Practice Resurrection: “Christian maturity is not a matter of doing more for God; it is God doing more in and through us. Immaturity is noisy with anxiety-fueled self-importance. Maturity is quitely content to pursue a life of obedient humility” (222-223).
The type of growth Christ has in mind for His Church
Thinking about these words today as I work on a message from Ephesians 4. >“The Church is in Christ and has to grow up toward him. This underlines that the Church’s growth is not being thought of in terms of quantity, a numerical expansion of its membership, but in terms of quality, an increasing approximation of believers to Christ.” - Andrew T. Lincoln
What sort of growth are we aiming for?
Another photo from last week at Fort Wilderness in northern Wisconsin. There’s just something about that place.
Evening sky before sunset and a rainfall on a quick trip to the Dells to visit our oldest son, Isaiah.
“We are God’s: let us therefore live for him and die for him. We are God’s: let his wisdom and will therefore rule all our actions.” - John Calvin
The latest edition of “The Weekend Wanderer” is now available with Jeremy Begbie’s recommendations on classical music, questions about authenticity, faith at the border, forming citizens, and much more.
