Mi1-2 1v5 High places and transgressions. Urbanism according to Jacques Ellul (and Batman's Henri Ducard) sees cities as the highest sins of a nation, and accordingly they should expect capital punishment. So London, so Gotham, so high buildings and high streets, so a whole city getting high on the weaponised hallucinogen of the market economy – a weapon that also trades in fear (Eisenstein: anxiety, scarcity, competition) .. Relatedly, 2v2 Covet. Piper, speaking on gay marriage a few weeks ago observed that, as Christians, we don't generally seek legislation against covetousness. It is interesting then to observe that impeding the regeneration of Vauxhall are the billboards on the roundabout island which earn somebody £1million each year. .. 1v7 All Samaria's wages. For the wages of wages is death? This, again Eisenstein, if you are being compensated for your job by wages, you may already be dead. .. v7 Prostitute. The sin is not so much getting adulterous action, as making a financial transaction, the goods-and-service-ifying of a gift. Flee from that. .. v6 Vineyards. Our God is a reagrifying God, the God of food sovereignty and Wendall Berry. .. 2v12-13 The gospel according to Batman Begins. “You are not beyond saving” “ There are good people in this city” God does not leave his sheep in the madness of the v11 strong drink, he acts to save unto pastures v12, he gathers v12 (=church), and he then sends into battle v13 (=mission). So we, if we have hopes to be Rachels/Gordons in an exciting counter-cultural remnant, must first be inoculated against the mad virus of the market economy. The antidote comes from Morgan Freeman, though his son Bruce, almighty.
Mi3-4 4v3 In heaven there will be plowshares but no swords, there be always be cake at the back of church but no violent car chases or gratuitous explosions. Christ Jesus, fit us for heaven, that we might walk in a manner worthy of this calling. Fit us for the call by showing us how not to be 3v5 Christ's fairweather friends, how not to v2 hate good and love evil, both in ways we are misguided, pursuing the ways of the badie with a misaligned purity, and ways that we compromised and akratically are aligned with evil. Thank you that in dying with you, you are able to make us a new creation. Let us sit, to quietly confidently thankfullyknow it in this moment. Thank you that you are working this salvation in the here and now. Thank you that you are redeeming all of creation, including human beings, the crown of your creation. Thank you that you save us in a way that befits us, that because we are complicated, there is a sense in which you save us in complicated ways. There are so many layers to our lostness, as 3v6 we are dark dark houses, on a dark dark night. Thank you that you peel us back and restore us in such intricate nuanced ways, and that you commission Christian philosophers and psychologists accordingly. Thank you for a right 4v7 liberation theology, that you transgress our boundaries and categories, as our Acts11 reminder, the lame will become the remnant and we are never to be too comfortable. Thank you, Holy Spirit, that you teach us ever-new ways, and we want to tell you that we want to seek your teaching, we want to climb the mountain, to go to the specirfic place where we will be taught. Thank you God, for the richness of the bible and the gift of sacred texting, for the imagery & metaphors (there are so many, israel both 3v8 male and 7v8 female) Thank you God.
Mi3-4 “is it not for you to know justice? ... The sun shall go down on the prophets ... Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins ... and peoples shall flow to it ... nation shall not lift us sword ... I will assemble the lame ... you shall go to Babylon. There you shall be rescued ...” Like Boromir, safe, though stung by many arrows.
Mi5-6 The JWs who visited us on Saturday asked me to read Ps37v9-10 to them. Whatever is aberrant in their faith, speaking the promises of God boldly on the doorsteps of strangers is a good. So Micah promises us the shepherd-King. Promises me a king who cares enough, promises me a shepherd who is strong enough to make good on his promises, strong enough to be our v5 peace of mind and peace on Earth. How is your peace? Who is your peace? Who needs your peace? And what must you do/be so to be made a channel of God's peace for them? The 6v7 'fruit of our body' is given up not to earn forgiveness but because we already are: all of life is a chain of kidney donations, flowing from the one who already gave his body up for us and thus, knowing we have had a shepherd-King, and because He was caring-enough, strong-enough to be our sufficient peace, we can proceed wedwards fretlessly, as Ps37v1,8.
Mic7 If my desire to taste a fuller sense of what it is like to be a new creation comes from anywhere, it comes from knowing v18 in my bones. God's v9 mercy justice is a mercy that triumphs over judgement, pardonning iniquity, passing over transgression, and reducing the old self to rubble in the process..for this mercy leaves nothing to assert over the other in power. My transformed identity comes in remembering the v1 first-ripe fig that my soul desires, my Rev2v4 first love. Knowing that v7 God is my sufficiency, before work home church, God is enough. It is God I will look to. Jesus, you both v8 are light, and you v9 bring us to the light – please be light to our spiritual eyes, that we may see where we do not yet see.
Mi7 Overheard in town yesterday “No-one is selling, the city is in nervous breakdown”. v2 '..they all lie in wait..each hunts the other with a new...' “No-one is selling” v1 'Woe is me! For I have become as when the summer fruit has been gathered' “The city is in nervous breakdown” v3 'Their hands are on what is evil, to do it well' But as for me? v7 'I will look to the Lord' v9 'I will bear the indignationof the Lord' v9 'I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him' v19 'You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea' Headline over there “Shackled Batman suspect”
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