To Think God as Love

The other day in university chapel we sang a chorus I’m assuming is familiar to all of you: Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of His glory and grace. As I was singing it struck me: looking at [...]

Worship is both an orientation and a performance. In the former sense worship has to do with God-directedness. The question is, Are our lived lives directed toward God? Do we find ourselves animated and organized by God-consciousness? Worship, in this sense, is doing whatever one does – seriously, whatever – “as unto the Lord.” It is offering [...]

Recently, I wanted to discover what the scholarship says about the size and makeup of the early Christian communities. In my searching, I found and read a provocative article by Keith Hopkins (”Christian Number and Its Implications,” published in The Journal of Early Christian Studies, Summer 1998), which did provide some helpful specifics, though Hopkins [...]

  Those of us who’ve grown up in “low church” traditions (for me the Holiness-Pentecostal and Pentecostal/Charismatic traditions) know how right Wright is. We have great difficulty involving ourselves in daily corporate worship because (1) our churches use their buildings once or (at most) twice a week, and (2) we lack the liturgical framework to sustain [...]

As Walter Brueggemann reminds us, the practice of liturgical lament is indispensable. We cannot afford not to protest against God to God. A genuine faith – an authentically human faith – not only permits but indeed requires this form of prayer.

This Word & World archive contains an article on Trinitarian prayer and Christian worship by Eberhard Jungel – whom I’ve recently discovered – and includes some of his prayers. The following prayer is one of my favs.  Almighty God, heavenly Father, You are a praiseworthy God, for you are a friendly God. You forgive our sins and do not [...]