Saturday, 14 June 2008

Time to choose

Can Sundays
be fun days
if they precede
Mondays?
I'd rather choose
Tuesday
as follow-on to
Sunday.
But what then
of Monday?

Wednesday
needs its
own space
and Thursday
its own grace
in the race
to Saturday.
It ought not
be replaced.

Try next to
Friday
but grieve not
that the weeks
seem simply
to fly by
these days.

Friday, 13 June 2008

A different take

on the Beatitudes from Scot McKnight:

The Beatitudes are normally misunderstood as a list of virtues. The Beatitudes are not, however, a virtue list: they are a list of the kinds of people in the society Jesus maps for his listeners. Those who are responding to his kingdom vision are the poor and the hungry, those who weep and those who are despised by the powerful - and those who are not responding are the rich, the well-fed, the party-prone and those who are approved by such powerful folks. No, this is not a virtue list but a sociopolitical statement:the work of God in Jesus and through the kingdom is to include the marginalized, to render judgement on the powerful, and to create around the marginalized (with Jesus at the centre) an alternative society where things are (finally, by God) put to rights. Here we come into a vision of the kingdom of God on the part of Jesus that is an extension of the Magnificat and the Benedictus and Jesus' inaugral address.

McKnight, A Community Called Atonement, p.12