Randy Ridenour

I was excited to see an excerpt from Neil Gaiman’s new book recently in USA Today, explaining why he chose “Trigger Warning” as the title.

God of Grace and Wholeness, All around us, we see pain and heartache, the effects of fragmented and broken systems, communities, and families.

Mother’s Day can be an awkward time in the life of the church.

Was creation in despair on that single day in history when Nietzsche’s word rang true?

Tiny gold crosses hang from sparkling gold chains, signs of wealth, affluence, and good taste, compared to a large wooden cross covered in blood, an instrument of torture, a symbol designed to bring terror to enemies of the state.

Lord, How would you have us known to the world?

With praise and palm branches, the people celebrated their new freedom from their Greek overlords.

So far, this has been the most challenging and difficult chapter for me.

It is telling that the cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling focuses on Abraham, an example of what Kierkegaard calls a “Knight of Faith.”

Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything.

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.

A prayer for reconciliation.

I struggled with the second chapter of Hauerwas’ book, The Cross-Shattered Christ1, not because the chapter was particularly hard to follow, but because it forced me to reflect on my life as a teacher and minister.

Lawyer (n.)

I see a man sleeping on a bench in the cold, And I say, “Thank you, Lord, for I am not like him.”

Reflections on Cross-Shattered Christ: Meditations on the Seven Last Words by Stanley Hauerwas, Chapter 1.

Father, In the blindness of our arrogance, we think that we are free, yet, so often, we are in chains, slaves to the satisfaction of our own desires, and to the pursuit of our own selfish ends.

Some people tell me that I look through rose colored glasses, because life can’t be that good.

Therefore I beg you, reader, not to rejoice too greatly if you have read much, but if you have understood much.

There’s a fine line between genius and insanity.

Jesus, You found a man living in a cemetery, bound by chains that he did not forge, forced on him by people who were afraid.

Gracious God, I resolve to laugh, to listen, and to love like one whose eyes have just been opened in joy and wonder.

You can’t fix stupid with duct tape, but you can sure muffle the sound.

If you’re going to care about the fall of the sparrow you can’t pick and choose who’s going to be the sparrow.

I just received a call from the National Rifle Association today.

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.

The Bible is very easy to understand.

John Gruber recently posted this interesting quote from Penn Jillette, of Penn and Teller fame: There is no god and that’s the simple truth.

Jekyll was remarkably simple, much more than I expected.

Same Old Story It must be that time of year again — the time that I do something new with the blog.

Bayes’ Theorem Pr ⁡ ( A | B ) = Pr ⁡ ( A ) × Pr ⁡ ( B | A ) Pr ⁡ ( B ) = Pr ⁡ ( A ) × Pr ⁡ ( B | A ) Pr ⁡ ( A ) × Pr ⁡ ( B | A ) + Pr ⁡ ( ¬ A ) × Pr ⁡ ( B | ¬ A ) Pr conditional 𝐴 𝐵 Pr 𝐴 Pr conditional 𝐵 𝐴 Pr 𝐵 Pr 𝐴 Pr conditional 𝐵 𝐴 Pr 𝐴 Pr conditional 𝐵

God of grace, We live in a word of concrete barricades, wooden fences, and stone walls that we have built to protect, separate, control, and hide; some hastily thrown up in hours, others carefully built in weeks or months.

God of grace and love, History is filled With names like Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Napoleon; Men who took up arms, And with violence, Bent the world to their will.

Sometimes it seems like the world is filled with a darkness that threatens to shatter our lives and destroy all hope, but as our eyes are opened in worship we see that this darkness is but a shadow that flees as the light of Christ comes into the world.

Here I am, Lord, asking for just one more chance.

Even though I fear the answer, I must still ask the question that was posed by the one who betrayed the Lord.

The one who had already shed all the privileges of God, also shed his outer robe.

Brian Partridge’s sermon this past Sunday was a perfect antidote to our annual festival of accumulation thinly disguised as a celebration of the birth of Christ.

We missed worship at NorthHaven this past Sunday, although I hear that there was an exceptional sermon by Bryan Partridge.

Mitch Randall always seems to have some clever and interesting themes to use for his sermon series.

Mitch opened his sermon at NorthHaven on Christ the King Sunday recounting the scene at the end of The Return of the King in which Aragorn, the newly crowned king, bows down to the hobbits.

So calm down and smile and loosen up your judgy pants because I can see your muffin top of hate and it’s so not flattering.

I was having some trouble with BBEdit on one of my machines, so I decided to delete and reinstall the application.

Rousseau’s Social Contract opens with “Man is born to be free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

I wrote the post that follows below so that I could remember how to use regular expressions for search and replace operations in Sublime Text.

An Apple education representative recommended the iOS app “Explain Everything.”

A few days ago, Casie Trotter sent me this quote from George Saunders: “I think that art is a form of paying attention and, for me, attention is love.”

Jesus saw the lame man at the pool, and asked, “Do you want to be made well?”

We should have much peace if we would not busy ourselves with the sayings and doings of others.