New Year's challenge: Ordering your affections
"We always love, but not always properly" Attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux I love New Years day as it is both a time of reflection and a time of hope. It is the recognition of how blessed we have been as well as losses we have incurred. We identify opportunities that we have both seized and ignored. We gather these sentiments together and propel them into the next year, where we hope to keep momentum from the good, and make changes to the bad. Interestingly, New Years Day calls us to make choices and define our values. I have been wrestling for several months with the concept of idolatry. Even writing the word conjures up ideas of bowing to bizarre statues and chanting incantations while smoking hallucinagenic herbs. Yet, idolatry is much more subtle, even sublime. It is so common that we often think of it as normative. I wish I could say that idolatry was foreign experience, but God is dealing with me and the community in which I...