Life with God: Reading the Bible for Spiritual Transformation Book

A few favorite quotes from the book:


It was this…intention that made the primitive Chris-
tians such eminent instances of piety, that made
the goodly fellowship of the Saints and all the glo-
rious army of martyrs and confessors. And if you
will here stop and ask yourself why you are not as
pious as the primitive Christians were, your own
heart will tell you that it is neither through igno-
rance nor inability, but purely because you never
thoroughly intended it.
 
'William
Law,
A Serious Call
to a Devout
and Holy Life

"Any fool can know; the point is to understand," Albert
Einstein is reported to have said.

When Jesus is asked to name the greatest command-
ment, he responds, "You shall love the LORD your God
with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Matt. 22:37). Jesus is quoting from Deuteronomy 
6:5, but he changes it ever so slightly, adding "mind" in
place of "might." Hebrew tradition has always placed high
value on the right use of the mind, and Jesus is here
underscoring that reality.
 Material reality is not the opposite of spiritual
reality, but the vehicle through which that reality becomes
visible. 


We can see the centrality of fasting
and prayer, for example, in Luke's portrayal of the prophet
Anna, who is widowed early in her marriage and spends
the rest of her life at the Temple, praying and fasting "night
and day" (Luke 2:37). We know nothing about her life ex-
cept for her role in the climactic event of the presentation
of the infant Jesus at the Temple....Now is the moment when Anna, whose life to this point remains obscure to us, steps forth onto the stage of
redemption. Perhaps all her years of giving herself to God
in body and mind and spirit have prepared her to recog-
nize the Christ child. We don't know that with certainty,
but we do know that the woman who has spent a lifetime being with God is now the one who proclaims the reality of God with us: "At that moment she came, and began to
praise God and to speak about the child to all who were
looking for the redemption of Jerusalem" (2:38).
our definition of discipline? The abil-
ity to do the right thing at the right time for the right reason.


Traveling Light:  The Discipline of celebration is a bracing antidote to
religious solemnity. It loosens our grip on self-
consciousness and brings us back down to earth on the
level playing field of our common humanity. We can laugh
at ourselves and with others, free of a judgmental spirit
that is constantly sizing up one against the other. We are
all in this together.

Kierkegaard:  "If I were to define Chris-
tian perfection, I should not say that it is a perfection of
striving but specifically that it is the deep recognition of
the imperfection of one's striving, and precisely because
of this a deeper and deeper consciousness of the need for
grace, not grace for this or that, but the infinite need infin-
itely for grace."³⁹



Scripture identifies two kinds of life: bios, the physical,
created life; and zoë, the spiritual, eternal life. Likewise,
Scripture identifies two kinds of death: teleute, physical
death; and thanatos, spiritual death. So it is entirely pos-
sible to be physically alive but spiritually dead. God's zoë
floods our lives with Christ's life, forming us into radical
communities of his disciples who are empowered to ex-
press his life and love through our own lives, individually
and corporately....
This is the life to which Jesus refers when he an-
nounces that he came so we might have "life, and have it
abundantly" (John 10:10). It is the life announced by John,
as he testifies, "God gave us eternal life, and this life is in
his Son" (1 John 5:11). It is the life that saves us: "For if
while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God
through the death of his Son," says Paul, "much more
surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life"
(Rom. 5:10). It is the life that in all its fullness awaited
Bonhoeffer as he crossed over from this one, leading him
to whisper to his friends his final words, "This is the end,
for me a beginning."In much the same way, this zoë that we receive from 
God will accomplish its work'we can count on it. God in-
vites us'indeed, commands us'to seek this life out, to
pursue it, to turn into it, because there is also within us
the principle of death, stemming from the Fall. It is not
nearly as powerful as zoë, but it wars against the principle
of life with an all-out attack, prowling around like a roaring
lion, looking for someone to devour (see 1 Pet. 5:6). It is
ferocious, and therefore we must constantly be saying yes
to life and no to death. We must always be discerning life-
giving actions and attitudes from those that are death-
giving. We must forever be "turning, turning, turning, 'til
we come round right," as the old Shaker hymn puts it.