My Best Thinking Times

I enjoy walking to work in the morning. Interestingly, it has nothing to do with saving money or resisting our dependence on oil, foreign or domestic, though those are nice bonuses. It's a great time to prepare for the day. A time to talk on the phone, to pray to sing or take pictures in my mind or on my camera. You notice so much more when you're walking. My friend Justin says that driving in cars is like watching the world happen on television, but when you walk or ride your bike, you're a part of the story.

There's a new garden a block from my house with a mulched walk through with some beautiful purple flowers. I like walking through it, especially since I know that Urban Tree Connection established the garden and I know many of the kids that put work into the garden. Speaking of, today I was talking to someone from Urban Tree Connection about my trip to Mexico and Guatemala. Who would have thought that in the sixties he would be arrested twice in Mexico City while he was running a fake teeth factory? You can't make that up. We were working to plan a new garden next to AchieveAbility's computer center. I'm pretty excited about it. I love gardens and working in them with kids and watching them learn about nature and being good stewards of the environment.

My favorite part of the day is my run. Right after work, it's my time to clear my mind, connect to God, enjoy the beautiful nature in my neighborhood, and push and challenge myself. I'm slowly getting faster and stronger and can run farther. I do some of my best thinking while I'm out on the trail. I've been thinking a lot about forgiveness and giving lately. Partly because of the season I'm in, partly because of this amazing book I've read a few times lately, and partly because of the lessons that God wants me to learn right now.

I'm reading Miroslav Volf's "Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace" The book has really opened my eyes and changed my mind about a lot of things. I'm going to write some of my favorite quotes later, but I found a few on the web. I need to get my reading in before bedtime, so it'll have to wait!

Revenge multiples evil. Retributive justice contains evil - and threatens the world with destruction. Forgiveness overcomes evil with good. Forgiveness mirrors the generosity of God whose ultimate goal is neither to satisfy injured pride nor to justly apportion reward and punishment, but to free sinful humanity from evil and thereby reestablish communion with us. This is the gospel in its stark simplicity - as radically countercultural and at the same time as beautifully human as anything one can imagine.

If forgiveness is unconditional, does that dispense with repentance? No: forgiveness is social; it isn’t simply about making the offended party feel better. The offended party forgives, but the gift of forgiveness is only truly received by repentance. Otherwise it gets stuck in the middle. Repentance is not a condition but a consequence of forgiveness. When we have done wrong we find it hard to admit our fault, but the fact of unconditional forgiveness makes repentance possible.

Evil just inexplicably is. God didn’t create it. It’s a twisting of God’s creation, a negation of its original goodness, and therefore an assault on God. In the end, God will finally and definitively overcome evil. And even now God is engaged in countering it. Just as God was mysteriously in the Crucified One, God is in the midst of humanity’s suffering, listening to every sigh, collecting every tear, resonating with the trembling with every fear-stricken heart. Just as God was in the Resurrected One, God is in each helping hand, in each act of self-sacrifice, in each life laid down for another, and God occasionally even heals and protects without any human mediation. God suffers and God helps