Christian Living on World

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All That Good Stuff

Author

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:null, Revelation 21:18-19, John 1:14, 1 Timothy 4:4, Colossians 1:16, Psalm 24:1, Genesis 1:31

Sometime in the last decade or so I started hearing the phrase “all that good stuff.” I think it happened first when I was ordering dinner at a restaurant. The waitress summarized the menu briefly, en...

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Author

Henri J. M. Nouwen

Keywords

Scripture

Acts 17:26, Genesis 1:27, Romans 5:12, Romans 3:23

Across all barriers of land and language, wealth and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, we are one, created from the same dust, subject to the same laws, and destined for the same end. With this compas...

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The Goodness of the Physical World

Author

Christopher West

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:31, 1 Timothy 4:4-5, Colossians 1:16, Romans 1:20, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

God is the author of the physical world, and in his wisdom, he designed physical realities to convey spiritual mysteries. “There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God,” as C. S. Lewis insist...

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Author

Charles Hodge

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:26-27, Psalm 8:3-5, Isaiah 43:1, Luke 15:1-7, Romans 5:8

We could search the world over, but we could not find a man so low, so degraded, or so far below the social, economic, and moral norms that we have established for ourselves that he had not been creat...

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Dear Lord, we come before You today as

Author

Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:27-28, Psalm 104:24-25, Romans 8:14-16, 1 John 3:1-3, Genesis 1:1-31, Hebrews 11:3, John 1:1-3

Dear Lord, we come before You today as Your children. We praise You as the God of all creation and the giver of life. You have made us, saved us, and called us to be Your people and to serve in Your K...

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Adapted from Genesis 1 / John 1 (WEB)

Author

Jacob Traeger

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:null, John 1:null

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep. And God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters. In ...

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God, the fact that we feel

Author

Mark D. Roberts

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 24:1, Genesis 1:26, James 1:27, Matthew 25:40, Amos 5:24, Isaiah 1:17

God, the fact that we feel uncomfortable is evidence that we perceive the injustices in our world. We don’t ask you to help us hear the cries of injustice, but rather to give us courage to act against...

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Goodness: A Home for Humanity

Author

Jen Pollock Michel

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:null, Genesis 2:null

In Genesis 1–2, God makes a home for his people. From the primeval wilderness and wasteland God begets beauty and form, building the grand house called Earth. God’s creative acts are not simply intend...

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God made it. God loves it. God cares for it.

Author

Emily Hunter McGowin

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:31, Psalm 104:24, Colossians 1:17, Isaiah 40:26, John 1:10, Romans 8:19, Hebrews 1:3

Julian of Norwich was a fourteenth-century mystic-theologian who maybe understood the belovedness of creation and new creation better than anyone. In the fifth chapter of her book Revelations of Divin...

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Author

Wendell Berry

Keywords

Scripture

John 3:16, Genesis 1:31, Romans 5:8 , Ephesians 3:17-19, Romans 8:38-39, Colossians 1:16-17

I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, inso...

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Util and Frui

Author

James Bryan Smith

Keywords

Scripture

Ephesians 2:10, Hebrews 10:24-25, Psalm 8:, Genesis 1:31, Psalm 19:1, Ecclesiastes 3:11

Two Latin words are used to describe useful and beautiful things: util and frui. Util means useful, beneficial, helpful. Frui means enjoyable, pleasurable, and delightful. The created world is both fr...

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Polemic Against Paganism

Author

Nahum Sarna

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:, Genesis 2:, Exodus 3:14, Deuteronomy 4:14-19, 1 Corinthians 1:16-17

Whether the Hebrew Genesis account was meant to be science or not, it was certainly meant to convey statements of faith. As will be shown it is part of the biblical polemic against paganism and an int...

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Consider the Egg

Author

Robert Farrar Capon

Keywords

Scripture

Colossians 2:3, 1 Timothy 4:4, Romans 11:36, Matthew 6:26, Psalm 104:27-28, Job 12:7-10, Genesis 1:24-25

In this short excerpt, the author and priest Robert Farrar Capon describes just how intricate and beautiful one single part of God’s creation is, the chicken egg: Forget for the moment the fantastic...

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Near a Wonderful Beauty

Author

Donald McCullough

Keywords

Scripture

Ecclesiastes 3:11, Genesis 1:31, Psalm 19:1, Psalm 8:3-4, Romans 1:20, Psalm 96:11-12, Psalm 65:9-13, Colossians 2:2-3

J.M. Montgomery’s novel Emily of New Moon has a passage that conveys the attractive and terrifying aspects of the mystery of God: It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, th...

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The Heresy of Body/Spirit Dualism

Author

Christopher West

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:31, 1 Timothy 4:4-5, Colossians 1:16, Romans 1:20, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

Christianity Does Not Reject the Body The “spirit-good / body-bad” dualism that often passes for Christianity is actually an ancient gnostic error called “Manichaeism,” and it couldn’t be further from...

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Baptism: Out of the Watery Chaos

Author

Rowan Williams

Keywords

Scripture

Titus 3:5-6, John 3:5, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Matthew 3:16-17, Genesis 1:1-2

At the very beginning of creation, the book of Genesis tells us, there was watery chaos. And over that watery chaos there was, depending on how you read the Hebrew, the Holy Spirit hovering or a great...

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George McDonald’s Great Fear

Author

George MacDonald

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 8:, Genesis 1:31, Psalm 19:1, Psalm 104:24-25, Psalm 96:11-12, Psalm 65:9-13, Matthew 6:28-29

George MacDonald, The Scottish author who had a profound effect on C.S. Lewis among others, once wrote a letter to his father about what he believed would be a great obstacle to his faith; that once h...

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Baptism: A New Beginning out of the Watery Chaos

Author

Rowan Williams

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:1-2, Genesis 8:6-12 , Isaiah 32:14-17, Matthew 3:13-17, John 3:5-8, Romans 6:3-4

At the very beginning of creation, the book of Genesis tells us, there was watery chaos. And over that watery chaos there was, depending on how you read the Hebrew, the Holy Spirit hovering or a great...

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Creator Spirit, by whose aid The

Author

John Dryden

Keywords

Scripture

Titus 3:5-6, Ezekiel 37:1-14, 2 Corinthians 3:17-18, Romans 8:11, Psalm 104:30, Genesis 1:1-2

Creator Spirit, by whose aid The world's foundations first were laid, Come, visit every pious mind; Come, pour thy joys on humankind; From sin and sorrow set us free, And make thy temples worthy t...

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The Devil Buried the Bones

Author

Austin Fischer

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:null, Revelation 21:4, Philippians 4:6-7, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Romans 8:38-39, John 1:5, Isaiah 40:31

And I was reminded of an event from my father’s childhood: He was in a Sunday school class, listening to his teacher expound on Genesis 1 and a young earth, and asked his teacher how to make sense o...

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The Good and the Beautiful without God

Author

C. S. Lewis

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 19:1, Genesis 1:2, John 4:1-26, Philippians 4:8, Genesis 1:27

You can’t, except in the lowest animal sense, be in love with a girl if you know (and keep on remembering) that all the beauties both of her person and of her character are a momentary and accidental ...

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Heavenly Father, we stand in awe of

Author

Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church

Keywords

Scripture

John 14:6, Genesis 1:1, Psalm 19:1, Isaiah 40:28, John 14:6, Psalm 100:3, Colossians 1:16, Romans 5:8

Heavenly Father, we stand in awe of Your creation. You are the master of design. You know the change of seasons, You know the orbit of planets, and You know exactly what human beings were made for: a ...

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Creator of heaven and earth, you have

Author

Serapin of Thumis

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 65:9-13, Genesis 1:29-30, Joel 2:23-24, Deuteronomy 28:12, Isaiah 55:10-11, 1 Kings 18:41-45, Leviticus 26:3-4, Psalm 104:13-14, James 5:17-18

Creator of heaven and earth, you have studded the sky with stars and made it bright with lights, enriched the earth with fruits to satisfy our needs, given to humankind the clear light and the shining...

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Almighty God, You created us in your

Author

Charles Teixeira

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:27, Ephesians 2:10

Almighty God, You created us in your image, each of us in your likeness. Help us to worship You alone, Lord, and never bow to any created thing. We see your handiwork in every one of your works, b...

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God blessed them, and God said to them,

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:28, Genesis 2:15, Exodus 20:9-10, Psalm 90:17

God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth' Lord be with those who work and worship The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to ti...

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Author

Gordon and Gladis DePree

Keywords

Scripture

Colossians 3:17, Galatians 2:20, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, Ephesians 2:10, 2 Corinthians 4:7, Romans 12:1, Genesis 1:27

Has God’s face ever been on a coin? We are the coin that bears the living likeness of God. Giving of ourselves with whatever that may include, is the only legal currency of the kingdom of heaven.

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Gracious God, sometimes I am so caught

Author

Mark D. Roberts

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:null, Philippians 1:6, 2 Corinthians 3:18, James 1:17-18, Colossians 3:10, Ephesians 2:10

Gracious God, sometimes I am so caught up in my failures, in all the ways I am not like you, that I neglect the deeper truth, the earlier truth of Genesis 1. You have made me, as a human being, in you...

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The Land Slows Us Down

Author

Jennifer Dukes Lee

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 55:10-11, John 15:1-2, Matthew 13:31-32, Deuteronomy 11:10-12, Psalm 65:9-10, Leviticus 25:23, Genesis 1:11-12

It’s been right here all along—the land teaching us how to un-hurry our hurry-sick hearts. Land speaks stunning truths through Scripture. The Hebrew word for land is eretz. It is the fifth most freque...

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Author

Bob Goff

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 25:40, Genesis 1:27, James 2:8-9, 1 John 4:20, Galatians 6:2, Luke 10:25-37, Luke 19:1-10, John 13:12-15, Luke 17:11-19

What I’ve come to realize is if I really want to “meet Jesus,” then I have to get a lot closer to the people He created. All of them, not just some of them.

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Adapted from Genesis 1

Author

Chip Hardwick

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:null

Leader: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, Darkness was over the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. People: Centuries before Jesus walked among us, Th...

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