Accepted Tenderness, cont'd

Having finished The Wisdom of Tenderness in all of 2 days, I am compelled to continued excavating its gold mine by plagiarizing the daylights out of it on my blog, until you no longer even have to read the book...

"The notion of unmerited mercy is quaint but unintelligible to most of us, since it has no prototype in our human experience. The dramatic surprise that comes in the stories of the searching shepherd, the searching woman, and the searching father[Luke 15] is that being found by a searching God is more important than anything we do." Consistent with this notion of the initiative of God, followed by a response of joyful worship on our part, Manning has put things in their correct order for Christians to see. The tearful ecstasy of charismatic worship, the well-ordered processional entry of high liturgy, the tossing of our tithe into the offering plate, the Biblical devotion of a believer in solitude, the reading of Psalms of praise, even the confession of a Christian hunted by his sin, all are second in line to the thunderous pursuit of God, out of heaven and into a sin-scarred world, to win back his beloved. God likes us. And so we run back to him.

Central to our answer to this pursuit is spiritual poverty. "When we deny our spiritual poverty, danger lurks...The spiritually poor--like the economically poor--experience genuine gratitude and appreciate the slightest gift. Ironically, the more we grow in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the poorer we become. The more we realize that everything is gift, the more the tenor of our life becomes humble, joyful thanksgiving."

"Times of worship can no longer be evaluated by the felt effects they produce in us; the quality of the eucharistic meal can't be measured by the number of chairs at the table, the nature of the appetizers, or the tangible, visible results on a diner's psyche. The poor are bewildered that mercy has even bothered to show up, nonplussed that God and man at table are sat down."

In contrast, "The rich in spirit are often as downcast, guilt-ridden, anxious, and dissatisfied as their unbelieving neighbors, while the poor cry, 'It is right to give God thanks and praise!...how do we get from the poverty of spiritual wealth to the wealth of spiritual poverty?...attention to the attentiveness of Jesus." Living in the wisdom of accepted tenderness. The knowledge that God likes you, as well as loves you.

Why blog, when you can let Brennan Manning do it for you? By the way, please read this book. After all it will only take you 2 days!