Quick-reveiw: Out of the Silent Planet

Sadly far less well-known than Narnia, CS Lewis' SF trilogy was one of earliest forays I had into both SF and Christian literature.  And when I say 'Christian Literature' I don't mean a conventional story where someone gets converted; I mean it's part of the weave - if you took the theological thinking out, the story would collapse.

Drawing on his knowledge of medieval cosmology, scientific understanding of the time (late 1930s) and his ability to reimagine Christian thinking in an alien context (as with Narnia) he spins an exciting, page turning and very thought provoking novel.

I enjoyed reading it for the first time in, probably, 30years.  And as he writes elsewhere, on second reading it isn't simply the story you notice but also (in reference to Last of the Mohicans) this time you get the feathers, the details.

Peterson: apocalyptic patience

The grass is not greener in the next committee, or parish, or state.  All that matters is worshiping God, dealing with evil, and developing faithfulness.  Apocalypse ignites a sense of urgency, but it quenches shortcuts and hurry, for the times are in God's hands. Providence, not the newspaper, accounts for the times in which we live.
Impatience, the refusal to endure, is to pastoral character what strip mining is to the land - a greedy rape of what can be gotten at the least cost, and then abandonment in search of another place to loot.  Something like fidelity comes out of apocalyptic: fidelity to God, to be sure, but also to people, to parish - to place. 

The Contemplative Pastor, p48-49

Peterson: pastor poet

The poet is the person who uses words not primarily to convey information but to make a relationship, shape beauty,  form  truth.  this is St John's work; it is every pastor's work...
The pastor's task is to shape the praying imagination before the gospel. This revelation of God is a fact so large and full of energy, and our capacities to believe and love and hope are so atrophied, that we need help to hear the words in their power, see the images in their energy...
Communication is a good, but a minor good.  Knowing about things never has seemed to improve our lives a great deal.  The pastoral task with words is not communication but communion - the healing and restoration and creation of love relationships between God and His fighting children and our fought-over creation...

The Contemplative Pastor, pp44-46

Sophisticated people

I well remember a conversation I had with an elder in our church when I was a young pastor. "It's rather frightening," I said, "to preach to a congregation of people who are much better educated and far smarter than I am. Sometimes I feel intimidated." His response has remained with me throughout the years.
"You'll soon discover, Gordon, that many of these people can help put a man on the moon and build the most sophisticated computers, but they struggle to love their spouses, relate to their kids, and build solid friendships. Smart? Yes. But wise? Not really. Spiritually discerning? Don't bet on it! That's where you can make a contribution. Teach us to be wise and godly. Smartness isn't getting us that far."

Gordon MacDonald

Leadership

Peterson: garden makeovers & apocalyptic prayer

Most pastoral work actually erodes prayer.  The reason is obvious: most people are not comfortable with God in their lives... 

And so pastors, instead of practicing prayer, which brings people into the presence of God, enter into the practice of messiah: we will do the work of God for God, fix people up, tell them what to do, conspire in finding the shortcuts by which the long journey to the cross can be bypassed since we all have such crowded schedules right now.  People love us when we do this... 

If we have even an inkling of apocalypse, it will be impossible to act like the jaunty foreman of a home-improvement work crew that is going to re-landscape moral (or immoral) garden spots. We must pray. The world has been invaded by God, and it is with God we have to do.

The Contemplative Pastor, p43

Peterson: apocalyptic pastor & obese religion

Early church Christians believed that the resurrection of Jesus inaugurated a new age.  they were in fact - but against appearances - living in God's kingdom, a kingdom of healing and truth and grace.  This was all actually present but hidden from unbelieving eyes and inaudible to unbelieving ears.
Pastors are persons in the church communities who repeat and insist on these kingdom realities against the world appearances, and who therefore must be apocalyptic.  In its dictionary meaning "apocalypse" is simply "revelation", the uncovering of what was covered up so that we can see what is there.  But the context in which the word arrives adds colour to the black-and-white dictionary meaning, colours bright and dark - crimson urgency and purple crisis.  Under the crisis of persecution and under the urgency of an imminent end, reality is revealed suddenly for what it is.  We had supposed our lives were so utterly ordinary. Sin-habits dull our free faith into stodgy moralism and respectable boredom; then crisis rips the veneer of cliche off everyday routines and reveals the side-by-side splendours and terrors of heaven and hell.  Apocalypse is arson - it secretly sets a fire in the imagination that boils the fat out of an obese culture-religion and renders a clear gospel love, a pure gospel hope, a purged gospel faith.

The Contemplative Pastor, p40-41

Packer: peace

...God's peace brings us two things: both power to face and live with our own badness and failings, and also contentment under 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' (for which the Christian name is  God's wise providence)...the basic ingredient, without which the rest cannot be, is pardon and acceptance into covenant - that is adoption into God's family.  But where this change of relationship with God - out of hostility into friendship  out of wrath into the fullness of love, out of condemnation into justification - is not set forth, the gospel of peace is not truly set forth either.
The peace of God is first and foremost peace with God;  it is the state of affairs in which God, instead of being against us, is for us.  No account of God's peace that does not start here can do other than mislead....
The peace of God, then, primarily and fundamentally, is a new relationship of forgiveness and acceptance - and the source from which it flows is propitiation.  When Jesus came to His disciples in the upper room on his resurrection day, he said, "Peace be with you"; and when he had said that, "he showed unto them his hands and side" (John 20:18-20 Phillips)...

In My Place Condemned He Stood, p48-49