Ed Cyzewski has struck gold. In a brilliant merge of technology and the Holy Bible, this succinct new paraphrase of God’s Word becomes a perfect solution for our short-attnetion span culture! Now, inspired reading is just 140 characters away!
Eugene Peterson, eat your heart out…in Christian love, that is.
“One day he’ll get his! God will get him for what he did!”
or
“Wait until judgement day! God says he will repay. He will avenge.”
or
“I just can’t wait until she gets what’s coming to her.”
Sometimes people even use these verses (below) to comfort themselves, or maybe assuage their rage while trying to wait for God dole out paybacks.
Because…You know what they say about paybacks…
Hebrews 10:30-31 For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Here’s the final Word on paybacks.
God gives them out, well, he has. God did avenge. God did repay. Justice was served…as grace (for us). God’s due wrath and fury, the full vengeance for all the horrid wrongs was repaid…
In every sickening, flesh-ripping whip strike upon the innocent body of Jesus of Nazareth. In every bash, wallop, wound, thorn gouge, spear stab, and nail pounding. Every pain.
All of sin, then, now, and forever was paid for. Their sin…. And your sin.
It is finished. Really.
The kind of revenge we want for others has already happened, and it was very expensive.
Hold back your hope for paybacks, because Jesus doesn’t need to do it again. Jesus took the blows for their debt, and more importantly for yours.
Let us be aware of how costly our sin is…
…even our sin of hoping for revenge…but calling it “justice”.
This shaggy Jewish guy, Jay, who hangs out at the local coffeehouse tells some great stories, and a lot of people like to listen to him. People seem attracted to Jay, but not because he’s good looking or in with the shop owners. Smelly homeless guys, hookers, meth-addicts, weirdos, gang bangers, and lesbians are some of his best friends, much to the dismay of the local business owners who like hipsters with disposable income, and chic, classy professionals to patronize their businesses.
Would you believe his guy doesn’t even have his own phone? A “groupie” gave him a Tracfone once to help him out. When it ran out of minutes, he never got it refilled. He gave it to his friend Mary, who was down on her luck, along with a 20 he said he found near the river. Truthfully, he didn’t call on it most of the time. Plenty of people called him though, about all kinds of problems, and so his minutes drained pretty quickly. He doesn’t seem to get bothered by not having a phone. (Honestly, I don’t get that.)
There’s one story about the coffeehouse being super crowded one day. Everybody was hot, and there was no AC running. Maybe it broke. Everybody wanted iced coffee like crazy, and nothing in the shop was working right.
So, out of nowhere Jay says he’ll take care of it. He tells his friends to dole out pitchers of the stuff. It’s like it comes out of nowhere. Iced Coffee for everybody. Plus, muffins, and cookies, and organic quiche. There were actually so many leftovers that they had 12 trays piled high afterwards. Talk about weird.
Here’s another odd thing. Jay doesn’t have his own blog either. However, four of his friends write about him a lot at their blogs. Well, I think others do too, but those four have the most visitor traffic…I’ll put it that way.
His one friend Luke–who’s kind of OCD–tweets stuff he says. I think there might even be a category on Luke’s blog that is a collection of Jay’s tweets. It’s called something like…Sermon on the Sofa…or something like that. It’s full of this subtle subversive stuff, that if you co-opt with it, it could change everything. Everything.
Another tweet of Jay’s thoughts really stuck with me. It read:
“What’s the point if a person gains the whole blogosphere and loses her own soul?”
You know when you hear something, and it sounds like it’s just for you? That’s kind of how it felt when I heard it. I favorited that one.
If I were to caption this photo for the project at hand, it would say,
“Sweater cubicle? or are bloggers too isolated for their own spiritual good?”
As I promised on Timothy Dalrymple‘s blog a bit ago, I am covering the topic of spiritual guidance for bloggers (as a series). Thankfully, some talent bloggers are joining us, too.
In plenty of ways technology has outpaced our spiritual reflection. The needed inner gaze at the practice (spiritual or otherwise) of blogging itself has not been encountered effectively. Bloggers have specific spiritual needs and encounter spiritual pitfalls that are under-addressed…even on blogs themselves, where you’d expect them to be handled. Well, no more.
In the next few weeks, I’ll lay this topic out and do just that, with the help of some talented bloggers as featured guest contributors.
For me, it’s an EPIC mashup of blogging experience (since 2006), and three scores of credit hours with my seminary education (M.A. in Religion, Spiritual Formation concentration) cross-fertilizing at the perfect juncture to rock this thing out. Boom. Pow!
For example: Pitfall #1. Bloggers can be grandiose when introducing a new series.
If you are a blogger, this is especially for you. You and I both need this.
If you know someone who blogs, please send them over. Encourage him or her to read and participate in this series. If they seem reluctant, or just too busy, just say, “See, that’s exactly the whole point!”
A peek at some of the upcoming themes:
Seductions Specific to Christian Bloggers and What to do About it
Overcoming the Spiritual Pitfalls of Blogging
A Writer’s Mistress is a Blog (humor)
The Best Spiritual Disciplines for Bloggers
Blogging and Community: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
There is also Bonus Video material I decided to upload that largely contains my own thoughts on how we tend to wrongly respond to grief and suffering, followed by Caleb’s response.
It is an unbroken 4:24 min clip. This is also very unusual, as I usually feature very few of my own thoughts in Ninja Interviews. So, I didn’t even add the Ninja graphics into this clip.
Being that this is the season of Lent, it might be nice to hear your reflections on mortality. If you’d like to share you own thoughts about the theme of Lent, or what you’ve heard through watching the video, I’d love to hear them. (You can leave them either at the youtube channel, or here. Click the comments link at the top of the post, then scroll down to the comment field.)
