Christian living

Sandra Glahn is the author of fiction (including a Christy-nominated book), nonfiction, and Bible studies. She's editor of the award-winning magazine, Kindred Spirit, and adjunct professor at Dallas Theological Seminary. She's mentored and encouraged me and my writing, and is a fascinating person who would probably be the in-demand teammate for Trivial Pursuit (the woman's brilliant).

It happened one night, it was a dark and stormy night, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. No matter how it begins, everyone has a story to live. This series looks at the story of the Christian life. Part Nine talks about The Road Back, or intigrating The Reward into your everyday life.

This video runs about 4 minutes.

I'm up today at the Tapestry blog talking about why I'm a Jazz Chrstian.

From the post:

"I call myself a Jazz Christian because jazz music has structure, and this structure gives freedom and improvisation. It constantly invents. No two performances can ever be alike. It is infinitely interesting."

It's fitting that I write on this today. It's Charlie Parker's birthday.

It happened one night, it was a dark and stormy night, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. No matter how it begins, everyone has a story to live. This series looks at the story of the Christian life. Part Six talks about our allies and enemies and how we are to react to them as Christians.

So continuing the thread from yesterday...

I have a group of women of different age, experience, and life position who are getting ready to begin blogging about women's ministry (and women in ministry). What would you like to see us blog about? The door's wide open. 

I just finished Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis and needed to come get out some of these thoughts swirling around in my head. I started talking about it on Christianne's blog because I see parallels in the book to so many ares of the Christian life. It's one of those books that you could pick up a dozen times and get something different out of it because you're in a different place in your life every time.

Some of the authors of the Bible used a writing technique called chiasm. It's where the outside statements work in parallel to each other, coming together and pointing to the center statement as the crux of it all. Like a cross. A1, B1, C1, D, C2, B2, A2.

Or sometimes the middle will be two statements reflecting each other (a D1 or D2).

I like writing techniques.

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Matthew 11 has always been a difficult passage for me. John the Baptist, a faithful preacher for the Lord, is in jail for his work for Christ. In his cell, he begins to wonder, perhaps even have a shade of doubt. He sends his disciples to ask Jesus, "You are Christ, right? I mean, this isn't for nothing?"

Stop. This isn't the difficult part. In fact, this part comforts me. Even John the Baptist had his doubts. Maybe we should call them semi-doubts. He's not renouncing Christ. He's not taking back his message. But he needs some reassurance.