Dietrich Bonhoeffer, commenting on the horizon-expanding effect that singing has on the local assembly vis-à-vis the universal church:

It is the voice of the church that is heard in singing together. It is not I who sing, but the church. However, as a member of the church, I may share in its song. Thus all true singing together must serve to widen our spiritual horizon. It must enable us to recognize our small community as a member of the great Christian church on earth and must help us willingly and joyfully to take our place in the song of the church with our singing, be it feeble or good.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

For Christians the beginning of the day should not be burdened and haunted by the various kinds of concerns they face during the working day. The Lord stands above the new day, for God has made it. All the darkness and confusion of the night with its dreams gives way to the clear light of Jesus Christ and his awakening Word. All restlessness, all impurity, all worry and anxiety flee before him. Therefore, in the early morning hours of the day may our many thoughts and our many idle words be silent, and may the first thought and the first word belong to the one to whom our whole life belongs. “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” (Eph. 5:14).

design submitted by a reader of Paul Kingsnorth’s The Abbey of Misrule

Paul Kingsnorth:

My belief in the profanity of technology is not widely shared, and…even people who I imagined would have a serious critique of technology often simply don’t. You might expect religious leaders to be clued up about the dark spiritual aspects of the technium, but while there have been astute religious critics of the Machine - Wendell Berry, Ivan Illich, Jacques Ellul, Philip Sherrard and Marshall McLuhan… - most religious leaders and thinkers seem as swept up in the Machine’s propaganda system as anyone else. They have bought into what we might call the Myth of Neutral Technology, a subset of the Myth of Progress. In my view, true religion should challenge both. But I think, as ever, that I am in the minority here.

Finished reading: What Is Christianity? by Herman Bavinck 📚

Herman Bavinck:

What is contained in that Bible is so rich and so broad in scope that it cannot be taken in and reproduced by one person, not by a single generation of people. That requires centuries. The knowledge of the length and breadth and depth and height of Christ’s love can only be attained in fellowship with all the saints. First, therefore, the confession is small. Nothing else is needed except: I believe in Jesus, the Christ. Later on, it will be explained more broadly in the words: I believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That is the root, which later on grows into the trunk of the twelve articles of faith. And each time the church is introduced more deeply into God’s revelation in subsequent times, this root grows up and various branches grow on it, some of which bend sideways and grow in the wrong direction. But thus, in the course of the centuries, the love of Christ is interpreted more and more broadly, and that glorious image which the church conceives from the Holy Scriptures and causes to radiate outwardly is further and further completed.

Herman Bavinck:

The unity of the church and Christianity is irrevocably behind us; differentiation is increasing in all areas, including religion. Just as Roman Catholics and Protestants, Lutherans and Reformed have had to get used to existing side by side. God seems to want to teach us even more in this direction; his teaching in previous centuries of the lack of charity of our hearts has not yet been received seriously enough.

Currently reading: The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis 📚