Marginal Christianity

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 accumulati...

by Jason Fowler on 08/03/2012 (http://sustainabletraditions.com/2012/08/lament-neil-postman-and-a-culture-of-distraction/) In a culture of distraction there is an urgent need to reclaim lament “It is better to go to a house of mourning, Than to go to a house of feasting, Because that is the end of every man, And the living takes it to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter, For when a face is sad a heart may be happy. The mind of the wise is in the house of mourning, While the mind of fools is in the house of pleasure.” – Ecclesiastes 7:2-4 I woke up early this morning before the dawn. It was quiet and dark here on the farm. Everyone was asleep. Over an hour’s time the sky went from darkness to light. Birds began their morning songs. A stillness prevailed in the newness of the day. But though the day started out in peace – my spirit has not been at peace. And so what I have to say may be more in the form of lament rather than encouragement. In the midst of the quiet morning my ...

July 24, 2012 By Christopher Smith Leave a Comment http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slowchurch/2012/07/24/lament-confession-and-the-politics-of-jesus/ This is the third Slow Church post in a short series about Lament and the Aurora Theater Shooting… You can read the previous posts here: [ Part I ] [ Part II ] “To learn to lament is to become people who stay near to the wounds of the world, singing over them and washing them, allowing the unsettling cry of pain to be heard.” — Chris Rice / Emmanuel Katongole RECONCILING ALL THINGS Continuing our reflection on what it means to lament, I want to focus now on locating lament. Generally speaking, where and how does it happen? I want to start with an insightful comment that my friend Gary Lynch left on yesterday’s post: I also believe that lament has to be and must also be something very personal, it is something that we feel in our bones and in our heart, it is each person expressing deep sadness and contrition over a particular ...

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2012/07/17/standing-with-the-afflicted/ July 17, 2012 Lament. Songs of mourning. Plaintive cries to God from a world-gone-wrong. The biblical tradition of lament invites us to take hold of three things at the same time: (1) the world as we experience it is not, in fact, the world as God wants it to be; (2) that God’s commitment to the world is failing at this point of pain, suffering, and death; and (3) that we have a right to expect that our demands for a better world will be met by the God with the power to do something about it. Riffing off of Walter Bruegemann here, lament means that we honor God by agreeing with what he’s told us about what a good world looks like: a world of justice, a world of abundance, a world of peace. Lament means we honor God by coming to God as the one who actually has the power to do something about this world gone awry. And, lament means we honor God’s choosing of us as his people by taking up our place, the people of God...