"...church...a place of welcome and laughter, of healing and hope, of friends and family and justice and new life. It's where the homeless drop in for a bowl of soup and the elderly stop by for a chat. It's where one group is working to help the drug addicts and another is campaigning for global justice. It's where you'll find people learning to pray, coming to faith, struggling with temptation, finding new purpose, and getting in touch with a new power to carry that purpose out. It's where people bring their own small faith and discover, in getting together with others to worship the one true God, that the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. No church is like this all the time. But a remarkable number of churches are partly like that for quite a lot of the time.

Nor must we forget that it was the church in South Africa which worked and prayed and suffered and struggled so that, when major change happened and apartheid was overthrown and a new freedom came to that land, it came without the massive bloodshed we were all expecting. It was the church which stayed alive at the heart of the old Communist eastern Europe, and which at the end, with processions of candles and crosses, made it clear that enough was enough. It is the church which, despite all its follies and failings, is there when it counts in hospitals, schools, prisons, and many other places..." NT Wright, Simply Christian, p. 123

"Right from the beginning we run into the problem that will haunt the narrative throughout: What happens when the lifeboat which sets off to rescue the wrecked ship is itself trapped between the rocks and the waves, itself in need of rescue? What happens when the people through whom God wants to mount his rescue operation, the people through whom he intends to set the world to rights, themselves need rescuing, themselves need putting to rights? What happens when Israel becomes part of the problem, not just the bearer of the solution?...

... the story of Israel [as told throughout the Bible] carries at its heart a single theme... It is the story of going away and coming back home again" of slavery and exodus, of exile and restoration. It is the story which Jesus of Nazareth consciously told in his words, in his actions, and supremely in his death and resurrection." NT Wright, p.75,Simply Christian

I loved this movie. It's been a few years since I saw it, but it left an impression and BEAUTY is a major theme in it. I thought back to the movie briefly as I read the following quote from Simply Christian (again, you should really read the whole book):

"Beauty, in other words, is another echo of a voice - a voice which (from the evidence before us) might be saying one of several different things, but which, were we to hear it in all its fullness, would make sense of what we presently see and hear and know and love and call "beautiful." ...

Heaven and earth are full of a glory, a glory which stubbornly refuses to be reduced to terms of the senses of the humans who perceive it." - NT Wright, Simply Christian, Chapter 4

"I had a dream the other night, a powerful and interesting dream. And the really frustrating thing about it is that I can't remember what it was about. I had a flash of it as I woke up, enough to make me think how extraordinary and meaningful it was; and then it was gone. And so, to misquote TS Eliot, I had the meaning but missed the experience.

Our passion for justice often seems like that. We dream the dream of justice. We glimpse, for a moment, a world at one, a world put to rights, a world where things work out, where societies function fairly and efficiently, where we not only know what we ought to do but actually do it. And then we wake up and come back to reality. But what are we hearing when we're dreaming that dream?

It's as though we can hear, not perhaps a voice itself, but the echo of a voice: a voice speaking with calm, healing authority, speaking about justice, about things being put to rights, about peace and hope an prosperity for all. The voice continues to echo in our imagination, our subconscious. We want to go back and listen to it again, but having woken up we can't get back into the dream. Other people sometimes tell us it was just a fantasy, and we're half-inclined to believe them, even though that condemns us to cynicism.

But the voice goes on, calling us, beckoning us, luring us to think that there might be such a things as justice, as the world being put to rights, even though we find it so elusive. We're like moths trying to fly to the moon. We all know there's something called justice, but we can't quite get to it." NT Wright, Simply Christian, Chapter 1 "Putting the World to Rights"

By the way, great, great book!!!

"There are two sorts of traveler. The first sets off in the general direction of the destination and is quite happy to figure things out on the way, to read the signposts, ask directions, and muddle through. The second wants to know in advance what the road will be like, where it changes from a country road to a busy multilane highway, how long it will take to complete the different sections and so on.

Concertgoers are often like that, too. Some listeners prefer to allow the music to make its own impact, carrying them along from movement to movement without their knowing where it will go next. Others find great enjoyment by reading a program note in advance so that they can anticipate whtat is to come and have a mental picture of hte whole while listening to the parts as they unfold..." NT Wright, Simply Christian, Introduction

As is generally the case when I get excited about a book, I have just begun. I am 25 pages into NT Wright's book, "Justification" and am thoroughly enjoying it as I have other NT Wright books I have read. I'll probably add some more excerpts and maybe some additional comments as I continue. Although all that said, it may be a bit before I finish as I am babysitting at a friend's house and trying to quickly read through this book, knowing that they have yet to finish, so if I don't finish tonight I'll have to wait a bit.

"But the real point is, I believe, that the salvation of human beings, though of course extremely important for those human beings, is part of a larger purpose. God is rescuing us from the shipwreck of the world, not so that we can sit back and put our feet up in his company, but so that we can be part of his plan to remake the world. We are in orbit around God and his purposes not the other way around." NT Wright, p. 24, Justification