Teenager

So Google is thirteen today!

And yet it is so hard to remember life without Google.  Was there a time when a whole day passed and nobody, nobody in the wide world said, "Just google it"?  How did you find the Stagecoach timetable?  How did people find Luther's 95 theses?  Is it possible that Alexander the Great conquered the world and it wasn't mentioned on Google?  Could Methuselah have lived 969 years and not used Google even once?

The preposterous thought that Google has become what it is in such short order is a solemn sign I think.  Could one entity rise to prominence in a world of billions of people as the Biblical prophecies suggest?  Can the whole world really be part of anything when there are billions of us that will never meet each other?

Google is, methinks, not the Beast!  But perhaps it reminds me how plausible the previously implausible has become.  In no time we could be at the end of time. 

Expensive

Dietrich Bonhoeffer died at the end of World War II in a Nazi Concentration Camp after his willingness to challenge the Nazis.  He wrote

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.



Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake of one will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him. 

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "you were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. . . 
         

Book Review - Love One Another

Love One Another

Becoming the church Jesus longs for

By Gerald L. Sittser

IVP 188 pp £8.99

This is a reworked version of Sittser’s 1994 book Loving Across Our Differences. Sittser’s book deserves respect because its original version was born out of immense family tragedy in which he lost his wife, daughter and mother in a car accident. The pastoral care that he and his remaining family received from his church gave him the passion for the subject of this work.

Sittser has written a straightforward, readable and useful book on pastoral and fellowship issues in the local church. There is much illustrative material but the chapters of the book are built around the ‘one another’ sayings in the New Testament. From these sayings he is able to address areas such as Comforting One Another, Being Subject to One Another, Forgiving One Another, Encouraging One Another and even, though with understandable difficulty, Admonishing One Another.

Sittser’s expositions of Paul’s pastoral thinking are often insightful and almost always helpful. It might form a supporting text for a local church studying what the Bible says about Christian fellowship or pastoral care. It would also provide encourage warmth and breadth for the thinking of Pastors, Elders or Deacons, possibly on a retreat.