Welcome to …first light…

It’s commonly thought that getting more “spiritual” is needed more than ever.  We get wrapped up in daily life and are suddenly jolted by the thought that “…I haven’t thought about God in weeks…or I need to work to think more about the ideals of goodness, truth, and beauty more.”  We feel we need to get spiritual.  Otherworldly.  This is why spirituality, of late, is so popular.

Biblical faith nudges us in another direction.  The movement in the Bible isn’t up into the clouds.  It’s down towards the tasks and peoples of the concrete world.  The Bible would direct our gaze toward Creation.  Think of Jesus.  He was about as spiritual as we could imagine.  He lived with the Father high beyond the earth.   But then he made a journey into this world.  The Christ-event was a move away from divine bliss and effortless power into the grit and drama of the Earth and the peoples who populated this planet.

The idea that threads through these writings is that spirituality is a move not away from this world but toward it. Each essay works to answer the question, “How then shall we live?”

Hopefully, the ideas expressed here will cast …fresh light…upon our calling to live as elegantly and honestly as we were intended to live given our image-of-God essence and the situation into which God has placed us.

Welcome to …first light…