Empire Remixed

by Andrew Stephens-Rennie
a reflection on Isaiah 25:6-9

It’s a feast today – and oh what a feast it will be. A feast of rich food, and of well-matured wines will be served, and all are invited to this table. Rich and poor, young and old, from every tribe and tongue and nation. All are invited to this table.

This ain’t no ordinary feast. This isn’t your run of the mill celebration. With this feast, on this day, we rejoice at the greatest victory ever witnessed. We rejoice in our very hearts - for the pall of death, the shroud cast over all peoples, the sheet spread over all nations – all of it has been destroyed.

Done away with forever. Death has been swallowed up, and all tears will be wiped away. Read the rest of this entry »

Republished with permission from Byron Borger at Hearts & Minds Books in Dallastown, PA. Byron has a longer review to follow, which we’ll be sure to post

Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement by Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian J. Walsh (Eerdmans; $24.00) is a book that I can safely say will be one of the most important works of the year, a major contribution to Christian social analysis and cultural reformation. I’ve followed these friends a bit as they’ve worked out this material. I’ve had an early draft and have been awaiting this published copy for a year; I couldn’t be more excited that it has arrived. Thanks be to God, the ever-faithful home-making and Earth-restoring God who comes to us in Jesus not, as they ably show, to take us away to heaven only to leave behind a burning planet, but to help us image the God of creation here, now, in creation-caring stewardship, until that great day when Christ returns to consummate his covenantal ways in a new Earth. Read the rest of this entry »