church

Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone's very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food.

Perhaps, too, in the "shift-the-blame" society we live in, we have forgotten how to weep over our sins. David, the psalm writer, said, "When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long" (Psalm 32:3). I wonder if so many of us rush off to self-help groups because we have lost the ability to be real in our churches.

Let your body be your holy temple.

Every Sunday behind bibles, virgins,soldiers tight against me, longing,and my pelvis rubbing gods'to the big black woman voices.Soldiers tight against me, longing,all that rising, sitting, kneelingto the big black woman voices,spirits warming, tensing, folding, thenall that rising, sitting, kneelinglike some kind of dance, a mating,spirits warming, tensing, folding andgod went __hhhhh_ between my thighs _

A worshiping community should be the fountain from which life flows and the ocean into which your efforts are merged. That is where identity is defined, refined, and consolidated and where continuity remains.

In fact, the Bible tells us that the union of man and woman in marriage points to the climatic final scene - when Christ returns for His church, the bride He died to save (Ephesians 5:31-32).

On Marie's eight visit, Raymond met her at the airport with a skinny woman he said was his wife. She had dark-blond hair and one of those unset permanents, all corkscrews. Marie looked at her, and looked away. Raymond explained that he had moved back to Hollywood North. Marie said she didn't care, as long as she had somewhere to lay her head.They left the terminal in silence. Outside, she said, "What's this car? Japanese? Your father liked a Buick.""It belongs to Mimi," he said.Marie got in front, next to Raymond, and the skinny woman climbed in behind. Marie said to Raymond, in French, "You haven't told me her name.""Well, I have, of course. I introduced you. Mimi.""Mimi isn't a name.""It's her's," he said."It can't be. It's always short for something - for Michele. Did you ever hear of a Saint Mimi? She's not a divorced woman, is she? You were married in church?""In a kind of church," he said. "She belongs to a Christian movement."Marie knew what that meant: pagan rites.

Husbands and wives, recognize that in marriage you have become one flesh. If you live for your private pleasure at the expense of your spouse, you are living against yourself and destroying your joy. But if you devote yourself with all your heart to the holy joy of your spouse, you will also be living for your joy and making a marriage after the image of Christ and His church.

The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church - read on - and give his life for her (Eph. V, 25). This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is - in her own mere nature - least lovable. For the Church has not beauty but what the Bride-groom gives her; he does not find, but makes her, lovely. The chrism of this terrible coronation is to be seen not in the joys of any man's marriage but in its sorrows, in the sickness and sufferings of a good wife or the faults of a bad one, in his unwearying (never paraded) care or his inexhaustible forgiveness: forgiveness, not acquiescence. As Christ sees in the flawed, proud, fanatical or lukewarm Church on earth that Bride who will one day be without spot or wrinkle, and labours to produce the latter, so the husband whose headship is Christ-like (and he is allowed no other sort) never despairs. He is a King Cophetua who after twenty years still hopes that the beggar-girl will one day learn to speak the truth and wash behind her ears.

If God really valued loyalty, He would have blessed every single believer before He even considered blessing a single nonbeliever.

Don't give your money to the church. They should be giving their money to you.

The glorious presence of God is with us. Let us rise in mighty strength to build the nation.

A blessed deed is saying hello with a smile to someone you meet on the street, in the shop, in the bus, in the office, in the church, in the holy places, in the mosque, at the park, at the school, at the university_.._ This is the greatest action of belonging to one another.

The Church really does not know what [peace and justice] mean apart from the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. After all, Pilate permitted the killing of Jesus in order to secure both peace and justice (Roman style) in Judea.

The way to preserve the peace of the church is to preserve its purity.

All churches are an echo of this__he Cathedral of Nature.

The places of quiet are going away, the churches, the woods, the libraries. And it is only in silence we can hear the voice inside of us which gives us true peace.

Holiness is as much about what you do on a Monday morning on the factory floor as it is about what you do on a Sunday morning in a church gathering. Holiness is as much about the kind of neighbour you are as it is about the kind of church member you are. It is as much about who you are when you are holding a steering wheel as who you are when you are holding a Bible.