St. Bernard of Clairvaux: “if you prepare your interior ear … and keep your inner senses open, this voice of your God will be sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.”

For your weekend enjoyment, the latest edition of “The Weekend Wanderer” is here with Fleming Rutledge, Andrew Brunson, the end of Christians in the Middle East, Presidents and the Lord’s Prayer, and more.

I appreciate your prayer support as I work on message preparation for the next three weekends at @EastbrookChurch on Daniel 9, 10-11, and 12. There is so much in these chapters that the challenge is particularly strong today as I try to gain clarity. Pray I don’t get distracted!

“The Pastor as Guide on the Spiritual Quest” - the eighth part of my reflections on Eugene Peterson’s Working the Angles.

No one should be misled into taking my footnotes as either proof of, or invitation to, scholarship. They are here to remind the reader of the rich harvest of memorabilia—rocks, fauna, and flora—which a man has picked up on repeated walks through a certain area, and now would like to share with others. They are here mainly to encourage the reader to venture into the shelves of the library and experiment with distinct types of reading. ( In the Vineyard of the Text, 5)

I loved preaching Daniel 8 at the beginning of Advent with my message “Faith Looking Forward”. I looked at the empires of earth and the spirit of antichrist, and how “the darkest hour is just before the dawn.”

The latest edition of “The Weekend Wanderer” is here, featuring Jo Saxton on narcissism, a bivocational refugee pastor, the death of John Allen Chau, Christopher Tolkien, redemptive fiction and more.

“Finding Peace: Isaiah” - the first week’s Sunday reading for our Advent devotional at @Eastbrook Church.

Choosing Hell: W. H. Auden on Charles Williams’ view of Hell.

I appreciate your prayer support today as I map out messages for the four weekends of Advent that coincide with finishing a series on Daniel at @EastbrookChurch on apocalyptic imagination and exile faith. Thank you all so much!

“Recovering Contemplative Exegesis” - the seventh part of my reflections on Eugene Peterson’s Working the Angles.

On this #GivingTuesday join me in supporting the work of two outstanding efforts for the kingdom of God: Sheepfold Ministries in the Horn of Africa and Congo Initiative in eastern Congo. More info here.

Thomas Oden on the authority of a true shepherd in Pastoral Theology: Essentials for Ministry, p. 53.

The proper authority of ministry is not external, manipulative, alien power that distances itself from those “under” it, but rather a legitimized and happily received influence that wishes only good for its recipient, a leadership that boldly guides but only on the basis of a deeply empathic sense of what the flock yearns for and needs.

More here.

For me, the only upside of being sick is the chance to read more than normal, including delving into some works from my childhood in this new edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Books of Earthsea that I checked out from the library.

The latest edition of The Weekend Wanderer is here.

“In reading, teaching, and preaching the Scriptures it happens: we cease to listen to the Scriptures.” - Eugene Peterson. Read my latest on Working the Angles here.

Some reflections after spending time in the book of Daniel: “Faith and the Baptized Imagination: Biblical Apocalyptic as the Key to Exile Faith”.

I’m more convinced than ever that we need trusted, ancient guides on what it means to be a pastor in a culture that no longer understands the calling and role of the shepherd within the local congregation.

This weekend’s version of The Weekend Wanderer is available here with features on Ebola in Congo, hostages freed in Cameroon, varieties of American evangelicalism, mothers of the Reformation, and more.

Spending time studying the book of Daniel is so much fun but also leaves my head swimming in ancient near-eastern history, apocalyptic imagery, the raging of earthly kingdoms, exilic tension, visions of the end of the world, and so much more.

Josef Pieper

The strain of self-mastery, which for us countrymen of Kant is inseparable from any concept of upbringing and moderation and is generally tied to and fused with the concept of virtue, is an accompanying phenomenon only of less perfect and beginner stages, whereas authentic, perfected virtue, by dint of the very definition of the concept, bears the happily radiant seal of spontaneity, of freedom from constraint and of self-evident inclination. (From A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart, p. 10)

Conflict moment: what to do when our amazing Milwaukee County library system does not have a book that I want to read but am not sure if I want to buy? What book is it, you say? Ivan Illich’s In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh’s Didascalicon.

Spending some time with Thomas Oden this morning in preparation for a book discussion next week.

Praying by the Book, in which I interact with Eugene Peterson’s call for pastors to recover their use of the Psalms as a curriculum for prayer.

I enjoyed reading Kathleen Norris’ thoughts on apocalyptic literature in Amazing Grace the other day and thought I’d share it here.