But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that an men are created equal ..." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. We we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremist for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime---the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists. --------------Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail (April 16, 1963)

There is a place I visit you where no one else can enter. It's ours, and in this secret place the innumerable chaotic fireflies that fill my day fade off into oblivion as I watch the trail of their light disappear from my mind. Here I am, standing before a King who came off His throne to present to me love wrapped with encounters and deliverances—tied with a promise to one day reside with you.Here, in this place, there's no need to utter Your Name between every sentence because you and I both know you've won my affection.

You are the One who ravishes my heart.

The world wouldn't understand my passion created for a Stranger who wraps me in His arms every night the world leaves me empty handed.The crescendo of the chorus plays in my Spirit every time we meet. You're always waiting there— waiting for me to say I love you; and I can say it, with all truth, with every fiber of my being, with every scream that can come from my scratchy lungs, every tear that can pour from my weary eyes, every sway that can bend out of this body you made. You . . . You . . . You, the Son of man and yet the Son of God, you are the one I love. Every confusion that has clouded my mind and every feeble attempt to be fulfilled by ghostly things this side of heaven is destroyed. Clarity—as if the veil between us was torn in two—comes crashing in.

I see You, and I bow at the feet that walked the same dirt roads that I’ve stumbled on—the feet that were heroic and unfailing; the feet that stood before accusers that failed to see the love you held could turn mountains into wax and shatter every kingdom made by man.At these feet I bow, crying out as I finally understand what you've done for me, what you saved me from, who You chose me to be—though I know I’ve slapped your face more times than both my hands can hold. You pull me up from the ground and look at me.And that's when I understand all that lies behind me doesn't compare to the knowledge of this man who picks up all the shattered pieces in my heart by just a look.

This Man is why I am alive.This Man is the motivation for every move I make.This Man is the answer.And in this moment everything changes. This is the moment when all that was before will never be again. And the course I was walking forever changes. This isn't just salvation, this isn't surrendering; this is extravagance.In this secret place where I'm somehow standing before the most captivating man ever to live,I take the alabaster box that holds all I was and all I am and all I could ever be.Inside is every dream and every promise from you, every will and desire, every calling I have, and I break it before you.And give it to you.Because only you can fulfill each one of these precious things abiding in my heart only you deserve them, and each of these are second to the knowledge of you, my Bridegroom.And in this I say, have your way in me. Show me more of whom you are. Break open every bolted door in my heart and make me a lover of you.

Thoughts on Mercy

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.---Matthew 5:7

Whoever lives in love lives in God.------------I John 4:10

I am bound to reach the point where the want, infirmities, and sins of my neighbor afflict me as if they were my own, just as Christ was afflicted by our sins..."Bear one another's burdens" (Galatians 6:2).---Dietrich Bonhoeffer

You must take other people's wants and infirmities to heart as if they were your own, and offer them your means as if they were theirs, just as Christ does for you in the sacrament...(This is) being transformed into one another through love.-------------Martin Luther

Like the Three-in-One,
Know you must become
What you want to save...
-------------Derek Webb

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels; I, myself, become the wounded person.----Walt Whitman

Learn to do good; Seek justice, rebuke the oppressor; Defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.-------------Isaiah 1:17

The Hebrew word for "mercy" is "chesedh"; and it is an untranslatable word. It does not mean only to sympathize with a person...it does not mean simply to feel sorry for someone in trouble. "Chesedh", "mercy", means the ability to get right inside other people until we can see things with their eyes, think things with their minds, and feel things with their feelings...This is just what God did; He came to us, not as the remote, detached, isolated, majestic God, but as a man. The supreme instance of "mercy", "chesedh", is the coming of God in Jesus Christ.-----William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew

God created the world out of nothing. When I realize that I am nothing, perhaps God can create something out of me, too.-------------Martin Luther

Hate evil, love good.------------Amos 5:15

Jesus sees His disciples. They have publicly left the crowd to follow Him. He has called them, every one, and they have renounced everything at His call. Now they are living in want and privation, the poorest of the poor, the sorest afflicted, the hungriest of the hungry. They have only Him, and with Him they have nothing in the world, but everything with and through God.-------Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Take your everyday, ordinary life---Your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life---and place it before God as an offering.--------------------Romans 12:1, The Message

Go on up to the mountain of mercy
To the crimson perpetual tide
Kneel down on the shore
Be thirsty no more
Go under and be purified

Follow Christ to the holy mountain
Sinner, sorry and wrecked by the fall
Cleanse your heart and your soul
In the fountain that flows
For you and for me and for all

At the wonderful tragic mysterious tree
On that beautiful scandalous night you and me
Were atoned by His blood and forever washed white
On that beautiful scandalous night

On the hillside you will be delivered
At the foot of the cross justified
And your spirit restored
By the river that pours
From our blessed Savior’s side

At the wonderful tragic mysterious tree…

Go on up to the mountain of mercy
To the crimson perpetual tide
Kneel down on the shore be thirsty no more
Go under and be purified

At the wonderful tragic mysterious tree
On that beautiful scandalous night you and me
Were atoned by his blood and forever washed white
On that beautiful scandalous night…

Miraculous night

Lyrics by S. Hindalong
Performed by Smalltown Poets

My life is worth nothing unless I use it for doing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus---the work of telling others the good news about God's wonderful kindness and love.---Acts 20:24

Stand

To go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.---Martin Luther

There's no point in having a platform to stand on if you're not saying things that are probably going to get you knocked off.---------------Derek Webb

The days of kumbayah, pat each other on the back, "bless your heart" Christianity are gone...This is war. The cross of Christ is the dividing line of a great battlefield...The Father against the bully that threatens His child...The Lion against the snake...The Lover against the holder of hate...The Stone the Builders Rejected versus the poison men love and loathe...Good versus evil.

It's as simple as that. We must not be satisfied with keeping Jesus inside the four walls of the church. We must take up our crosses, and follow Him into battle. Our weapons? Our words, our hands, and our hearts. Our objective? Rescue. Rescue of the hurting and helpless. Our goal? Justice. Justice for all who are held in the bondage and strongholds of poverty, disease, homelessness, hunger, hurt, abandonment, anger, addiction, pain and abuse. Our passion? It must be His passion---to love God, and love people. Our mission? To change everything. Our heart? To love with reckless abandon.

Our King?

Jesus.

We must set him free. Set free the wild Lion of Judah, let His feet touch the earth outside of the walls of the cage that is "church on Sunday", and watch the very demons in hell quake in fear. If we would let Him out of the cage, we would see the world turned upside down.

"From the days of John the Baptist until now," Jesus said, "the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it."------------Matthew 11:12

Let me say, at the risk of sounding ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by feelings of great love.---------------Che Guevara

I am convinced that Jesus came not simply to make bad people good but to bring dead people to life.-------Shane Claiborne, "The Irresistible Revolution"

If Jesus preached on Wall Street what He preached in Galilee, we'd lay Him in His grave again.---Woodie Guthrie

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly..."My God!", you will say, "If I do that, my whole life will be ruined...How would I ever get on in the world?" Christian scholarship is the church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be "good" Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even more dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.------Soren Kierkegaard

Die to Live

People do not get crucified for charity. People are crucified for living out a love that disrupts the social order, that calls forth a new world.-------Shane Claiborne