The Weekly, January 15, 2024
Hi all,
"It's a radical discovery that prayer is a real thing." That's something Paul Kingsnorth said in his interview with Justin Brierly that you'll find linked below.
The sentence helped put a name to something I have noted during my Bible reading this year. (I'm using the McCheyne plan so I've been in Genesis, Ezra, Matthew, and Acts.) What's striking in these readings is how persistently odd and unlikely things happen to bring about the work God is doing: animals congregating and boarding a ship, kings voluntarily giving government funds to rebuild a temple and a city that once rebelled against them, demons being cast out, the dead being raised, God speaking to people in dreams...
I'm trying to find the way to say what I want to say here: When we say that prayer is real, we are saying that there are factors driving events in the world that we can't see. So we are also saying that things unexplainable in material terms alone will sometimes, perhaps even frequently, happen.
One application, then, is that I wonder if sometimes we overvalue our relative agency in the world. Now, there is certainly an opposite danger which is that in our current economic regime most people feel virtually no agency over much of their life. That's a problem. But the problem I'm thinking about now is what happens when we overstate our ability to change things and undervalue or ignore the invisible workings of God that we can't see or know about?
Minimally, this would seem to counsel us toward a much closer attentiveness to Jesus's words not to worry and to consider the flowers and birds whenever we are tempted to do so. More assertively, I think it calls us back Psalm 2, toward a recognition that the kings of the earth make their plans—and, frankly, a great many people today have technological and economic means that make them more powerful in material terms than the kings of David's day—God holds them in derision, laughing at their lofty ambitions.
The reality that prayer is a real thing, therefore, inherently calls us toward a greater modesty about our own powers and abilities.
Reading
Books
I'm trying to get back into reading more historic theology in the new year. I used to have a good habit here but it has lapsed in the past year or so. Toward that end, I'm making my way through the Summa using the reading plan we shared recently and I am also trying to read one sermon a week from Bullinger's Decades.
In more contemporary reading, I'm immensely enjoying Matt's recent book and am also reading, as mentioned above, Matthew Rose's A World After Liberalism.
Articles
Faith Hill on the loss of cousins
Ari Schulman on AI
Hannah Anderson on Church as Resistance
Leah Sargeant on performing sexuality
Bethel McGrew on CS Lewis and Mrs Moore
Peter Behrens on Richard Scarry
David French on shared sorrow
Justin Brierly interviews Paul Kingsnorth and Martin Shaw about their conversions
Elsewhere
If you're looking for a way to mix up your winter cocktails, some of these eggnogs sound super fun. I used birthday money to restock my bar and add a few new bottles, including a bottle of Fernet, and I made the Green Man nog. Really, really cool drink.
For a special meal that will be perfect during the winter months, try this leg of lamb.
Also, if you're looking for book recommendations for the new year, we have you covered at Mere O.
Under the Mercy,
~Jake