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Here’s the fifth of six posts from Peterson’s Practice Resurrection on the sacred/secular divide: If we once thought that the world around us was divided into secular and sacred and that it is the Christian’s assignment to specialize in the sacred but just put up with the secular, we can think that no longer: “God [...]

Here’s the fourth of six posts from Peterson’s Practice Resurrection on revivalism and grieving the Spirit: In some places in the church there is considerable complaint about the absence of the Spirit. These critics are confident that they know what the presence of the Spirit should look like and are loud in protesting his alleged [...]

Here’s the third of six posts from Peterson’s Practice Resurrection on morality: The Christian life does not start with moral behavior. We don’t become good in order to get God. But having been brought into the operations of God, moral behavior provides forms for maturing in a resurrection life. Moral acts are forms in the [...]

Here’s the second of six posts from Peterson’s Practice Resurrection on posture and prayer: The physical act of bowing “my knees before the Father” (Eph. 3:14) is an act of reverence. It is also an act of voluntary defenselessness. While on my knees I cannot run away. I cannot assert myself. I place myself in [...]

Normally when I finish a book, I pull out one or two quotes for this Weekend Wisdom series. Occasionally, I find a book that’s good enough to warrant more attention (Remember von Balthasar’s Love Alone is Credible?). Peterson’s latest, Practice Resurrection, is one of the good ones. Here’s the first of six posts on how [...]

Here’s an observation on the need for preachers to be serious about their craft (in Encounter with Spurgeon): Freedom in Christ is no soft spot for the lazy. And the grace that does not enlist a man to serve but is misused as a license for Christian sloppiness and dilettante slovenliness degenerates from costly to [...]

Avison developed this observation after watching birds approach her on foot (“Resting on a Dry Log, Park Bench, Boulder” in Not Yet but Still): But play is part of any living creature’s energy. I like to think birds walk for fun. . . .

Calvin’s superb at describing faith. Here’s a metaphor worth meditating on (in the Institutes): Faith needs the Word as much as fruit needs the living root of a tree.

Here’s an astute observation Kay places on the lips of Shen Li-Mei, a woman-made-princess on her way to a political marriage in foreign lands (in Under Heaven). You have to be afraid for it to count as bravery. Her father had taught her that, a long time ago.

Here’s the start of a truth-inspired poem (“Proving” in Not Yet but Still): Truth speaks all things into being. No word more, but not one left unspoken. Truth carves, incises, to the bone, and between bone and marrow. No wonder we want none of him.