Marginal Christianity

“God created us in joy and created us for joy, and in the long run not all the darkness there is in the world and in ourselves can separate us finally from that joy, because whatever else it means to say that God created us in his image, I think it means that even when we cannot believe in him, even when we feel most spiritually bankrupt and deserted by him, his mark is deep within us. We have God’s joy in our blood.” (Frederick Buechner, “The Great Dance” in Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons , 240) So far we have seen Karl Barth suggest the joy is the chief attribute of God, evoked by his glory. That joy is a chief mark of God’s people and that the New Testament makes some rather startling, intimidating claims about the place of joy in a Christian’s or church’s life. My focus in this series is to try and make sense of joy impacts or should impact my life with God. I suppose the place to start is to distinguish between happiness and joy. Simply put, happines

Notes -Last in a series of five laments after the two introductory sins (Pss.1 & 2) -theme of refuge ties this psalm back to 2:12. “ Taking refuge in the Lord or making the Lord one’s refuge is a favorite and frequent metaphor in the psalms for the religious act of trusting one’s life to the care of God in uncertain or threatening situations. . . . The prayer itself is a way of taking shelter in the providence and salvation of God.” (Mays, James Luther.  The Lord Reigns: A Theological Handbook to the Psalms.  Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994, 63) -God the judge (vv.6, 11) is highlighted here. -Again, we do not know the specificities of attack here. Gerstenberger writes: “ Psalm 7 . . . as well as the other laments, does not report a single incident, for instance, of somebody being accused of theft. Rather, the complaint represents an accumulation of the agonies of generations of supplicants facing unfounded charges of various types.” (Gerstenberger, Erhard S.  Psalm

James 1:17-27 17 Every good gift, every perfect gift, comes from above. These gifts come down from the Father, the creator of the heavenly lights, in whose character there is no change at all. 18 He chose to give us birth by his true word, and here is the result: we are like the first crop from the harvest of everything he created. 19 Know this, my dear brothers and sisters: everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to grow angry. 20 This is because an angry person doesn’t produce God’s righteousness. 21 Therefore, with humility, set aside all moral filth and the growth of wickedness, and welcome the word planted deep inside you—the very word that is able to save you. 22 You must be doers of the word and not only hearers who mislead themselves. 23 Those who hear but don’t do the word are like those who look at their faces in a mirror. 24 They look at themselves, walk away, and immediately forget what they were like. 25 But there are those who study the perfect law