Tag Archives: distraction

Saturday Six-Pack (8)

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Another week, another weekend.  Thanks for coming for a bit of “Wandering & Wondering”.

The Saturday Six-Pack brings a weekly dose of online pieces, written to inform or inspire.  Generally, these articles are faith-focused or ministry-geared, but the “disorderly pile of who-knows-what” tagline at the top of this page catching everything outside of that!

This week:

1) God is Most Glorified When We are Most Dependent on Him
Justin Buzzard takes aim at the hidden dangers of chasing independence.

2) Farewell Rob Bell
On February 26, 2011, John Piper rocked the Twitter-verse with three words: “Farewell, Rob Bell.”  The adieu was viewed as a cutting critique of the not-yet-released “Love Wins”.  This interview provides the behind-the-tweet story that you have likely not heard before.

3) Saudi Grand Mufti Calls for “Destruction of All Churches in the Area”
When I was in Syria, the group I was part of was hosted for a feast by the nation’s Grand Mufti, in Damascus.  This was more than a big deal, as the Grand Mufti is one of the country’s most influential Islamic leaders.  Knowing that, you can now appreciate the context of this article’s opening line: “Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, declared that it is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region.”  Read this brief piece to enlarge your perspective on what fellow Christians around the globe are facing, as they live out their faith.

4) Life on God’s Time
In a culture bent on instant gratification, how do we follow a God with a completely foreign sense of time?  How do you trust a Being beyond time?

5) How Do You Keep from Getting Distracted?
How do you buckle down and focus deeply when you cannot afford distraction?  Donald Miller has a few ideas.

6) Top Five Regrets of the Dying
What do you get when a palliative care nurse spends years learning from her patients how they look back on their lives?  You get a full-blown book, shrunk down for this blog post.

Have a great weekend, friends–renew yourself and reverence God.

Breaking the Chains of Modernity

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Some years back, my library-browsing habit led me to discover Adbusters magazine.

Typically irreligious, often irreverent, it covered matters of politics and economics with greater vigour than I’ve ever personally felt about either of them.  Provocatively creative, the publication intrigued me.

It still does.

A piece from the latest issue, titled, “Breaking the Chains of Modernity,” opens like this:

The philosophical and spiritual problems of our age are so great that what our time calls for are new manifestos of knowledge and being. We need a kind of spiritual change that exceeds the political. Unfortunately most of us in the Westernized world spend more time trying to escape from ourselves (sex, shopping, addiction, fashion, entertainment, success), than we ever spend reflecting on the state of our existence, our heart or our soul. We are people driven by our desires: desires which destroy our hearts and any ability to have a connection to the greater spiritual realities that are all around us. As the Qur’an says, “God does not change the condition of a people, until they change their own condition.”

I find an unusual power–let’s call it the power of truth proclaimed–in hearing a blatantly secular voice call out the warning that we of the Western world are senselessly seeking escape when the salvation of our souls and society most needs us to engage in deeper ways than we ever have before.

I’m not certain of the greater context of the quoted Qur’an passage, but it the point is along the same line as the Bible’s, “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you,” then it would be easy for both Adbusters and myself to AMEN it.

If the passage above resonates with you in any regard, head HERE for the full article.

If these thoughts about our persistent quest for distraction has conceived a simple observation or a full-blown rant, birth that baby in the comments section below.