Coram Deo: Living in the sight of God…
While I am by no means a Latin expert, there is a Latin phrase I love. Given you’ve seen the title of the post, it won’t come as a surprise that it’s “coram Deo”, which essentially claims that all of life takes place in the sight of God. We live and move and have our being before God’s face. Nothing is unknown to God, nothing a surprise to God. Should God ever get into a discussion about us we can be assured that nothing the discussion partner says will see God’s hands fling up in surprise with a startled, “Oh my goodness! I hadn’t heard...
Read MoreAmor Fati: From things happen to me to things happen for me…
The Stoics have a lovely expression, “Amor Fati”. In essence it means love your fate, or at the very least, embrace your fate. Probably originating with Epictetus, the slave who became one of the founders of stoicism, it was popularised through the work of Nietzsche who in Ecce Homo writes: “My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it… but love it.” Love your fate. Why? Stoics differentiate between what you...
Read MoreRemembering and Hope…
We live in an era of chronological snobbery, where only the most current is seen to be worthy of attention. Often we judge the past too severely, assuming every tool at our disposal was available to earlier generations and forgetting how much they did with so much less than we have. While I am convinced that we should look more to the future than to the past, it is possible to push that too far. After all, one of the most frequent cries in scripture is “remember”, and to forget to remember is too risk misunderstanding the part we are called to shape and play in the ongoing story...
Read MoreWhen faith is a quest
Jesus commended the faith of little children, seeing in it innocence, spontaneity and deep trust. But for many, faith doesn’t come easily or naturally. Indeed, for some, nothing comes easily or naturally. William Blake in his Auguries of Innocence writes: Every Morn and every NightSome are Born to sweet delight Some are Born to sweet delight Some are Born to Endless Night It’s lovely for those who are born to “sweet delight”, but what about those who seem born to “endless night”? You probably know some who fall into this category, and perhaps you...
Read MoreOur Responsibility to the Future…
Christianity has a 2000 year history, and it is therefore natural that we should think about our responsibility to the past, and those who have gone before us. You see this in debates about faithfulness to our heritage, or how the Bible needs to be interpreted in a way consistent with the longer term tradition of understanding its texts, as well as in efforts to keep doing things the same way as we have before. All this is understandable, and has value. However, I wonder if we pay as much attention to our responsibility to the future – to the version of the Christian faith we are...
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