Renewal

Thanks to Greg Taylor's review of it, I have found Richard Foster's The Renovare' Spiritual Formation Bible. Foster, Dallas Willard, Walter Brueggemann, and Eugene Peterson along with dozens of others, collaborated to bring this work forward. I have decided to read it through over the next two years. It is HUGE and includes the Apocryphal writings as well as spiritual exercises and amplifying information about each book, it's writer,etc. Most importantly, the bible begins with God and his overall plan for humankind.

I need this in the worst way. My spiritual life is at best stagnant and in need of real life. I feel wimpish and atrophied. I am looking intensely for God, for who he is and who he would have me become. I am ready to search forever more. I am committed to learning the depths of this walk that is called "following Christ." I do not know what to expect. I suspect it will be an adventure.

Jon

A Quiet Voice

I have been intending to begin a blog for more than two years. Somehow I have begun. I am old enough to be uncomfortable with this medium yet young enough to desire what a blog provides: opportunity for authenticity, openness, vulnerability, even controversy.

I have chosen to call this blog "A Quiet Voice," perhaps, as much as anything, to remind me to keep my voice down as I wander through the labyrinth of life attempting to discover what God intends for me before I leave my earthly consciousness; at the same time, remembering to have a voice and express what I am experiencing in order to relate to those who might be blessed by what God is doing in me.

At a personal level, I've always felt uncomfortable about publishing a blog for three reasons: 1) it feels presumptuous that anyone would want to read what I have to say and 2) who WOULD read what I have to say 3) those who DO read it may find nothing of value. For me, this makes the venture a definite risk, yet a risk worth taking.

So it begins, quietly. It may also finish quietly, the only effect being the expenditure of my time and some kilobits of information storage being used. Whatever comes, let it be.

Jon