Life on Planet Earth on The Material World

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Let science extend the domain of actual knowledge, and lay bare as it may the secrets of the material world. It only exposes more and more the proportions of the great cathedral, and shows us the lamp...

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Ronald Rohlheiser

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Christianity is without doubt the earthiest of all religions. Unlike most other religions, it doesn’t call you out of the physical, out of the body, or out of the world. Rather it tells you that God e...

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Ole Hallesby

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The purpose of fasting is to loosen to some degree the ties which bind us to the world of material things and our surroundings as a whole, in order that we may concentrate all our spiritual powers upo...

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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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Ephesians 1:22-23, Psalm 139:13-14, Acts 17:28, 1 Timothy 4:4-5, Psalm 24:1-2

By virtue of Creation, and still more the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see.

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Surrounded by Possessions

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Jeff Manion

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Matthew 6:19-21, Luke 12:33-34, Luke 12:15, Hebrews 13:5, 1 Timothy 6:6-8, Luke 16:13, Matthew 6:24

Members of the Natomo family sit on the flat roof of their mud house in Mali, Africa, posing for their early morning photograph. Their earthly belongings are arrayed in front of them. Two kettles, pla...

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The Heresy of Body/Spirit Dualism

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Christopher West

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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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The Utopian Dream

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The myth of progress has deep roots in contemporary Western culture, and some of those roots are Christian…This utopian dream is in fact a parody of the Christian vision. The kingdom of God and the ki...

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Room Re-Design

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Andy Crouch

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Find the room where your family spends the most time and ruthlessly eliminate the things that ask little of you and develop little in you. Move the TV to a less central location—and ideally a less com...

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The Goodness of the Physical World

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Christopher West

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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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Richard Rohr

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Nature

The physical world is the doorway to the spiritual world.

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Robert Banks

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While American society is rich in goods, it is extremely time-poor. Many societies in the two-thirds world, by contrast, are poor in material possessions, by our standards, but they are rich in time. ...

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Ancient Creation Accounts Were Functional, not Material

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The Pastor's Workshop

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Genesis 1:1, Genesis 1:14, Psalm 33:9, Isaiah 45:18, John 5:17

John Walton argues in The Lost World of Genesis One that rather than concerning material creation, the creation account in Genesis one concerns functional creation, because that is how ancient reade...

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Basil of Caesarea

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The world is a work of art, set before all for contemplation, so that through it the wisdom of Him who created it should be known …"

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The Creation of Light

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Genesis 1:3-4, John 8:12-20, 1 John 1:5-10, Psalm 27:, Matthew 4:12-17

In The Lost World of Genesis One , John Walton points out that the creation of light and the division of day and night is profoundly puzzling if we understand light in the modern way, as a material o...

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Author

Esau McCaulley

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Matthew 6:1-21, Matthew 5:16, Luke 6:20-21, Matthew 25:34-36, Mark 12:41-44

Yes, we mark our heads with ashes—public shows of piety are not in themselves evil. But we must guard our motivations and do most of our spiritual work in private, because the privacy of those acts re...

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Rationalizing: Making Life Possible in a Morally Challenging World

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We rationalize to make life with ourselves possible in a morally challenging world. Often the motivation for rationalization, though, is quite different. In recent decades, psychologists have argued c...

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Marva J. Dawn

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[W]e cannot really solve the problem of our world’s injustices by merely giving a little more of our surplus to fight hunger. More deeply, we need to be freed from our reliance on material consumption...

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Two New Year Prayers for Church Services: A Collect and Prayers of the People

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The Pastor's Workshop

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Are you thinking of adding New Year prayers in your church services? Below you'll find two complete, ready-to-use prayers: a collect for the New Year and responsive prayers of the people looking b...

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The Perfect Soil for Winemaking

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Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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My first call to ministry was in Eastern Washington state. It turned out to be one of the most prolific winemaking regions in the country. One of the things I learned from a local winery was really qu...

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Everyone: Holy God, we live our lives

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Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church

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Scripture

Romans 5:8, Luke 15:11-32, Luke 10:25-37, John 4:1-26, John 3:16, Ephesians 4:32, 2 Timothy 1:9

Everyone: Holy God, we live our lives struggling in our own burdens and failing to trust You with all the things that hold us down. Leader: Your Scripture says, "Come to Me all you who are wear...

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Review: Atomic Habits by James Clear

Author

Scott B. Bullock

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Scripture

Psalm 1:null

My Aversion to Self-Help Books & Their Gurus but Why I Recommend This One! I am not one for “self-help” books. I know that I probably could use some more personal coaching advice, but… my habit ...

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Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert

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Psalm 113:7-8, 2 Corinthians 8:9, Luke 1:52-53, Matthew 11:25, Luke 6:20, Matthew 5:3, James 2:5

The claim here is not that the poor are inherently more righteous or sanctified than the rich. There is no place in the Bible that indicates that poverty is a desirable state or that material things a...

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Afraid of Myself

Author

Timothy Keller

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1 Corinthians 10:12, Romans 7:24-25, Ecclesiastes 7:20, 1 John 1:8, Mark 7:21-23, Romans 7:18-19

Adolf Eichmann was one of the Nazi architects of the Holocaust who escaped after World War II to South America, where he was caught in 1960 and taken back to Israel for a trial. He was tried, found gu...

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Image Bearers in the Garden

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Timothy Keller

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If we are to be God’s image-bearers with regard to creation, then we will carry on his pattern of work. His world is not hostile, so that it needs to be beaten down like an enemy. Rather, its potentia...

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Saving Souls Without Discipling?

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Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert

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Genesis 1:28, James 2:15-17, Romans 12:2, Isaiah 58:6-7, Micah 6:8, Colossians 1:19-20, Matthew 28:19-20

I had just finished presenting much of the material in this chapter [on the role of the Church helping the poor] to an audience in Africa. A very tall and muscular African man in the audience approach...

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Born Again Bodies and Christian Weight-Loss

Author

Liuan Huska

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1 Corinthians 6:19-20, 1 Timothy 4:8, Matthew 6:25, 2 Corinthians 12:7-9, John 9:1-3, 1 Timothy 4:8

In recent decades, many Christians have tried to make sense of the tension between our bodies and spirits by swinging to the opposite pole. Instead of saying, “The body doesn’t matter,” they have said...

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Author

Martin Heidegger

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Home

The world is the house where mortals dwell.

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Calling on God, not Bank of America

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Scripture

Isaiah 41:13, Proverbs 18:10, Philippians 4:6-7, Matthew 6:19-21 , Psalm 46:1

The comedian Richard Pryor, who was critically injured in a severe accident, once shared on Johnny Carson’s show that when faced with life-threatening situations, worldly concerns lose their significa...

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The Problem of Forgetfulness

Author

Eugene H. Peterson

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One of humanity’s problems is forgetfulness. Forgetfulness can happen at multiple levels, from a simple problem of recall to a posture of hard-heartedness and disobedience toward the command-giver. Wh...

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The Great Wall of China & The Desire for Safety

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Proverbs 4:23, 1 Samuel 15:22, Matthew 7:24-27, 1 Corinthians 3:11, Psalm 127:1

The Great Wall of China was an immense and costly project, built with tremendous effort and resources, designed to provide security and protection. Yet, within a few years of its completion, it was br...

life on planet earth on The Material World

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