galatians on Transcendent

Transcendent God, you are the creator of time, You exist inside, outside, and around time and space. In your immeasurable power, you created and ordered the universe. Amazingly, you limited yourself b...

In his excellent book, Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World , Mike Cosper shares a short vignette about the comedian Louis C.K.* Louis CK tells fans he meets in pu...

The scholastics used to say: Homo non proprie humanus sed superhumanus est —which means that to be properly human, you must go beyond the merely human.

The immortal Spirit . . . is forever tugging us toward him.

He who wraps the heavens in clouds wrapped round himself a towel. He who pours the water into the rivers and pools tipped... water into a basin. And he before whom every knee bends in heaven and on ea...

This total self-giving, to which the Son and the Spirit respond by an equal self-giving, is a kind of “death,” a first, radical “kenosis,” as one might say. It is a kind of “super-death” that is a com...

There are two wonderful Greek words that the early church theologians used to describe the Trinity: kenōsis and perichōrēsis. Kenosis is the act of self-giving for the good of another. It is found in ...

The kingdom of God turns the Darwinist narrative of the survival of the fittest upside down (Acts 17:6–7). When the church honors and cares for the vulnerable among us, we are not showing charity. We ...

Justice is less like finite land and more like the wildflowers that grow there, continually spreading as they bloom and re-seed themselves. Justice—like beauty—is rooted in infinity.

To accept this [Jesus' self-humiliation in washing the disciples' feet] is to be converted. And nothing can be added to this. If you imagine that you can add something to what is given in the ...

It is not what we do that matters, but what a sovereign God chooses to do through us. God doesn't want our success; He wants us. He doesn't demand our achievements; He demands our obedience. T...

Blessing in the ancient world was the highest form of well-being possible for human beings. The Greeks referred to the blissful existence of the gods as “blessed.” For Israel, blessing included not ju...

The kingdom is present not in grandiose accomplishments, but in showing practical love in humble ways, day after day, and in refusing to allow our failures and disappointments to hide God’s love from ...

Leader: Creator God, our Source and our Home, we belong to you. All: We praise you, and we gather to worship you and give our lives to you. Living Christ, you establish justice, overthrow the ...

Beloved of God, go now in peace. Go to love. Go to serve. Go with the unending blessing of the One, True, Living God Father – Son – Spirit. Amen.

The last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned them dry as dust, who have...

New Testament Mountains Like the Old Testament, the New Testament has plenty of references to mountains.  There’s the Sermon on the Mount, obviously.  Jesus often went onto hills or mountains to pray...

Creator God, you who love us more than we can know, Who chose us from the very beginning to be family , We praise your holy name. Jesus Christ, Son of God, Word become flesh, Who dwelt among us and wa...

Baptism is the prime sacrament, the foundation of them all…There are two things which baptism signifies, namely, death and resurrection…We call this death and resurrection a new creation, a regenerati...

Nonetheless, this singular fact, full to the bursting, remains. It is a fact grounded in infinite outpouring: Christ is in me; I am in Christ. . . . Christ in me is not some narrow, introspective, dis...

New Testament Mountains Like the Old Testament, the New Testament has plenty of references to mountains.  There’s the Sermon on the Mount, obviously.  Jesus often went onto hills or mountains to pray...

Context Matters If you have ever taken an introduction to exegesis course, you may remember one of the most important rules for properly understanding a given text: look at what comes before and afte...

Each one of us is called to live the truth of our unrepeatable uniqueness. We are not meant to model ourselves after others, however wonderful they may be. A delightful Jewish parable makes this point...

The spirit of Christmas needs to be superseded by the Spirit of Christ. The spirit of Christmas is annual; the Spirit of Christ is eternal. The spirit of Christmas is sentimental; the Spirit of Christ...

The essence of sin is we human beings substituting ourselves for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for us. We…put ourselves where only God deserves to be; God…puts himsel...

ONE: People of God, Rejoice! Our Eternal and Beautiful God is near The One who gives us new birth by water and Spirit The One who names us beloved The One who delights in our very existence Come and w...

Fire of the Spirit, life of the lives of creatures, spiral of sanctity, bond of all natures, glow of charity, lights of clarity, taste of sweetness to sinners, be with us and hear us. Composer of all ...

What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it- that He knows me. I am graven on the palms of His hands. I am never out o...

Preaching Commentary Context Matters If you have ever taken an introduction to exegesis course, you may remember one of the most important rules for properly understanding a given text: look at wha...

The Christian’s life in all its aspects—intellectual and ethical, devotional and relational, upsurging in worship and outgoing in witness—is supernatural; only the Spirit can initiate and sustain it.