Tim Keel's Blog

Life and how to live it

I'm on sabbatical. I began last Sunday and will remain away through August. I've been weighing out whether or not I should blog while gone. One part tells me I should as a way to record and share what I'm doing as I'm away. The other tells me that if I do then I'm not really away.

I just read last week that my favorite columnist, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, is on sabbatical as well. His last column? A declaration that he will write no columns for three months. So I'm taking him as my lead. No writing, at least in this format. Some of you might suggest that based on past performance you won't be able to tell the difference between me being on sabbatical or not, at least as far as blogging goes.

So until the fall, a last check-in: I'm in London with my friend Jason. I've been here for a couple of days. I visited a fabulous store yesterday, a theological bookshop called "Mowbury's," located in the basement of a Waterstone's. Then found the best book on leadership I've read thus far above in Waterstone's: The Leadership Mystique by Kets de Vries. I don't know if there is much to compare to walking around London a pied by one's self for a day.

In an hour Jason and I climb into his car and drive 100 miles north. We are going to a conference co-hosted by a number of ministries. It is called "The Future of the People of God" and it features N. T. Wright. I am just a little bit excited.

Blessings to you all. And great love. Tim.

A Little Yellowstone Right Here

I went to pick up my kids from my parents' place this morning. Coming up over a hill on the way home I saw a plume of water spraying into the sky that seemed awfully high. As we drew closer, it resolved into a broken underground waterpipe (or something under extraordinary pressure) jetting water into the air upwards of fifty feet. Broken tarmac littered the ground in every direction, and the poor home-owner on whose property this line exploded, well...let's just say he now owns lake-front property. I would imagine it could have only been worse for him if he had been in the shower when that baby blew.

On the Santification Curve

This may sound extreme, perhaps even like I'm being flippant and irresponsible, but if so, it's not intentional.

I'm tired of hearing about "justification". I'm tired of justification being tantamount to salvation. It's just not enough for me anymore.

I am aching to work out my salvation. Fear and trembling, these are good things. Assurance of salvation, I'm not so sure. And honestly, I don't think as a "doctrine" justification was ever meant to be seen as the simple judicial/transactional handshake (however much it is lubricated by that weird, mystery word "faith") that it has become for most popularized versions of the evangelical gospel. It seems elevated beyond what seems to be the scriptural scope of salvation history. It is in our water.

Descriptors are missing.

I want Presence. I want transformation. I want Christ in me, the hope of glory. I want to be disturbed. I want mystery. I want confusion. I want crisis. I want to be lead away. I want to interact with a centurion. I want Jesus. I want Jesus over a life-time. I want Jesus as the rhythm and cadence of my life. I want to sit under my rabbi and be still. I want year-to-year agonizing discipleship. I want season-to-season joyful engagement. I want month-to-month invitations to death. I want week-to-week laughter and friendship amongst the people of Jesus. I want day-to-day servanthood. I want moment-to-moment submission. I want more....

I'm not even getting close.

Do we hear God? Can we affirm the voice of Christ speaking to us? Can we read John's record of Jesus's simple declaration, "My sheep hear my voice," and take it, take him at face value. Can we stop going through the motions of a dead life in God and instead listen and hope for him?

Read the words of Aldous Huxley and see if you can't hear the hunger, the life, the...the....the invitation.

Every moment of our human life is a moment of crisis; for at every moment we are called upon to make an all-important decision � to choose between the way that leads to death and spiritual darkness and the way that leads towards light and life; between interests exclusively temporal and the eternal order; between our personal will, or the will of some projection of our personality, and the will of God�Here the aim is primarily to bring human beings to a state in which, because there are no longer any God-eclipsing obstacles between themselves and Reality, they are able to be aware continuously of the divine Ground of their own and all other beings; secondarily, as a means to this end, to meet all, even the most trivial circumstance of daily living without malice, greed, self-assertion, or voluntary ignorance, but consistently with love and understanding�For the lover of God, every moment is a moment of crisis.