The View from the West Mesa

This will be the first of a series of posts looking at Dallas Willard's The Spirit of the Disciplines.  The subtitle of the book is Understanding How God Changes Lives  and it is this that tells us what the book is actually about. Written in 1988, the book emerges from among the seeming coming of age of spiritual formation movements that wanted to tell disciples that if they would just do this or that spiritual behavior, they could progress closer to God. The result was a lot of people doing a lot of stuff and spending a lot of money on "spiritual formation" and not really getting much out of it. Willard understood that there was a "deep longing among Christians and non-Christians alike for the personal purity and power to live as our hearts tell us we should." Even so, much as Willow Creek will eventually learn, a lot of churchiness and discipline use make for short term excitement but finally fizzles out, Willard observed that "faith today is treated as

" A nd just as  it is appointed for man to die once, and  after that comes judgment,   so Christ, having been offered once  to bear the sins of  many, will appear  a second time,  not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly  waiting for him."  Hebrews 9.27-28, ESV The writer of Hebrews introduces the idea of judgment in the context of new covenants or a change in the law. Having done so, he tells his hearers that Christ's return will not be to "deal with sin." This he can say because Jesus has already dealt with sin - there is nothing more anyone can do about it. So judgment isn't about dealing with sin.  If that's true, what is Christ's coming about? Well, it and judgment are about his coming to "save those who are eagerly waiting for him." This coming isn't for you to be quizzed about all the bad stuff you've done, or an opportunity to explain why Jesus should let you into Heaven. If you love Jesus, if you are

It's been eighteen years and the world has changed, in some aspects completely. We have it seems, been actively entangled in the aftermath of that day as a country and even a world ever since. And we will remain in its grip for the foreseeable future; likely for the rest of my life. I wonder if those whose loved ones - whose reasons for living, it must have seemed to some - were incinerated in an instant, whose bodies were obliterated immediately after falling mo re than ninety floors, or who were found mangled in, under, and around the rubble, or in a field - I wonder if they watch the news today? Do they view their newsfeeds? Are the memories still too hard, too raw, too immediate? Does today bring soul-piercing memories not just to their minds, but to their bodies? Do the incredulity, the shock, the panic, the numbness flood back today? Does the confusion return, do their hearts weigh a million pounds, do their guts turn i nside out like they did on that day?