Theology Over Thrice Rewarmed Coffee

Chapel Message—Holy Week 2016 Gen 15:9-18a   The   Lord   told [Abram], “Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10  So Abram presented all these to him and killed them. Then he cut each animal down the middle and laid the halves side by side; he did not, however, cut the birds in half.   11  Some vultures swooped down to eat the carcasses, but Abram chased them away. 12  As the sun was going down, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a terrifying darkness came down over him.   13  Then the   Lord   said to Abram, “You can be sure that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign land, where they will be oppressed as slaves for 400 years.   14  But I will punish the nation that enslaves them, and in the end they will come away with great wealth.   15  (As for you, you will die in peace and be buried at a ...

"All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it--tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest--if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself--you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say 'Here at last is the thing I was made for'.  We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want... While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all."   -C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain She became aware again and knew immediately where she was. It wasn't a surprise, but she didn't know what to expect. The first thing she noticed was the silence. A silence that made her realize that she'd never truly known silence before. There was no ringing in her ears, no pop when she swallowed. No rustling in th...