Wisdom From the Margins: Daily Readings

Why this book?

This ‘Christian thing’ doesn’t really work for me. That’s what I said to my church friend fifteen years ago. I think it made him uncomfortable, so he dismissed my comment with, Bill, you’re doing fine. Little did he know–and little did I know, just how short I was of doing fine.

It took crashing and burning in ministry, losing almost everything near and dear to me, and finally hitting bottom, to become desperate enough and determined enough to figure out what was wrong. Eventually I did, and things began to change. First I discovered Christians outside my usual circle of interest who were writing about what to me was a really different approach to spirituality. Then, I started keeping track of what I was finding so I could routinely review the insights. After all, in most cases, these writers had paid dearly to acquire them. Eventually, I discovered that what was helping me was of help to others too, and the dream of a book came to be. The book that you’re holding is that book. 

God used the insights in this book to save me–to save me from continuing to be the person, the husband, the father, the friend, the pastor that I had always been–the person who wasn’t very useful to God or to others–the person whose tombstone was likely to read, He didn’t finish well. All that needed to change–and did.

My prayer is that through these daily readings–these powerful seeds–God will save you as well. My prayer is that God will guide you into new ways of thinking and helpful new practices. Not that the truth or the practices are new! No, they’re as old as Jewish saints like Abraham and David, and Christian saints like Paul and Peter. They have been practiced by innumerable saints, monks, preachers, mystics, and prophets down through the centuries. We see them illustrated in the ancient life of Saint Francis, the modern life of Pope Francis–and most powerfully, in the life of Jesus Himself.

What’s here is wisdom from the margins. The book could almost be called what you should hear in church–but often don’t or the most important things you need to know to live the spiritual life–but were never told. For many readers what’s here may often seem unfamiliar or counterintuitive. It’s definitely countercultural. The men and women I’m quoting advocate for those on the margins in our world (the poor, powerless, overlooked, disenfranchised), and they themselves work from the margins. They may very well strike you as unknown, dubious, fringe, unpopular, strange–or even dangerous–guides. But the ideas and practices they’re championing were commonplace and appreciated for much of church history–just not now. (It’s starting to get better. There is an alt movement afoot, and this book is part of it.)

If my contributors are experts that most people ignore, or guides with suspicious credentials, that should be no surprise, since God chose a man from a family of idolaters to be the father of his people (Abraham), a murderer to lead Israel out of slavery in Egypt (Moses), and a wandering mendicant–a rabble-rousing, obscure member of a despised race, who lived in an mostly unknown village, in an unimportant country, and who died a criminal’s death, to be the Savior of our world. God works in the margins. We find God in the margins. We hear God from the margins–and from the marginalized. We learn from the marginalized what we need to know for ourselves and others–what we would never know otherwise. You could say wisdom from the margins is the key to our salvation. I hope in this brief exposure to time-tested spiritual truth, you will come to agree with me, and find salvation–salvation worthy of the name–salvation that works.   

January 1 — July 1

Outsiders and the Conversion of the Church

"The movement of Jesus is always from the outside-in: welcoming, inviting, including. Jesus was always including people, bringing them in from the outside. As James Alison has noted, for Jesus there was no ‘other.’ All were welcome members of his community. By speaking to ‘outsiders,’ healing those who were not part of the Jewish community, as well as his ‘table fellowship’ with the outcasts, Jesus was embodying God’s hospitality. Jesus’s hospitality was the foundation of later patterns of Christian hospitality. In the Middle Ages, St. Benedict, in his set of rules for his religious order gave his monks the dictum, Hospes venit, Christus venit. ‘The guest comes, Christ comes.’ That is, for the Benedictines all guests were to be welcomed as Christ. In the 17th century, St. Alphonsus Rodríguez, a humble Jesuit brother, worked as a porter, or doorkeeper, at the Jesuit college of Majorca, in Spain. His job was to greet all the students, faculty and visitors who rapped on the great wooden door. The humble Jesuit brother had a wonderful way of reminding himself to be cheerful and hospitable to all visitors, and . . . welcome them as if they were Jesus himself. Upon hearing someone knocking on the door, he would say, ‘I’m coming, Lord!’"³

—James Martin

Those at the edge, ironically, always hold the secret for the conversion of every age and culture. They always hold the projected and denied parts of our soul. Only as the People of God receive the stranger and the leper, those who don’t play our game, do we discover not only the hidden and hated parts of our own souls, but the Lord Jesus himself. In letting go, we make room for the Other. The Church is always converted when the outcasts are re-invited into the temple.⁴

—Richard Rohr

I was a stranger and you invited me inMatthew

25

:

35

b NIV

• Who are the foreigners and strangers in your world? Do you think of them as treasured and loved by Jesus?

• Do you have elevated expectations of how Jesus would appear, should he appear to you? Would you expect it to be obvious?

• In Sunday morning church, do you have the attitude, The guest comes. Christ comes?

Abba, don’t let me forget when I was a stranger. Don’t ever let me forget that feeling.

For more: Between Heaven and Mirth by James Martin

January 2 — July 2

Try Softer

When you stretch, you don’t make it happen simply by trying harder. You must let go and let gravity do its work. You give permission, opening yourself to another, greater force. This is not just true when it comes to stretching. As a general rule, the harder you work to control things, the more you lose control. The harder you try to hit a fast serve in tennis, the more your muscles tense up. The harder you try to impress someone on a date or while making a sale, the more you force the conversation and come across as pushy. The harder you cling to people, the more apt they are to push you away. . . . But for deeper change, I need a greater power than simply ‘trying harder’ can provide. Imagine someone advising you, ‘Try harder to relax. Try harder to go to sleep. Try harder to be graceful. Try harder to not worry. Try harder to be joyful.’ There are limits on what trying harder can accomplish. Often the people in the Gospels who got into the most trouble with Jesus were the ones who thought they were working hardest on their spiritual life. They were trying so hard to be good that they could not stop thinking about how hard they were trying. That got in the way of their loving other people. . . . here is an alternative: Try softer. Try better. Try different. A river of living water is now available, but the river is the Spirit. It is not you. . . . Don’t push the river.⁵

—John Ortberg

Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing. We are in it.⁶

—Richard Rohr

Rivers of living water will flow from within them. John

7

:

38

b NIV

• Is trying harder your default mode? Are you constantly pushing the river? Is that working?

• What exactly would it look like for you to try softer?

• What might you discover by trying softer?

Abba, help me stop pushing and striving and trust the river to do its work.

For more: The Me I Want To Be by John Ortberg

January 3 — July 3

Training Not Trying

We can become like Christ by doing one thing–following him in the overall style of life he chose for himself.⁷

The way to liberation and rest lies through a decision and a practice.⁸

—Dallas Willard

Someday, in years to come, you’ll be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow, of your life. But the real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long-continued process.

—Phillips Brooks

Any time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. Taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this thing into either a heavenly creature or a hellish creature. That is, either a creature that is in harmony with God, its fellow creatures, and itself, or else into a creature that is in a state of war and hatred with God, its fellow creatures, and itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven, joy, peace, knowledge, and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.⁹

—C.S. Lewis

"Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. 
They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 
Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim;
I box in such a way, as not beating the air; 
but I discipline my body and make it my slave, 
so that, after I have preached to others, 
I myself will not be disqualified." 


1

Corinthians

9

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24–27

 NASV

• Is your approach to the spiritual life characterized by a practice–a training regimen like that of an athlete? . . . an imitative approach like that of an apprentice?

• The Lewis quote is hard to hear but also hard to ignore. What’s your reaction?

• Are you training your body now for success, or just hoping in that future day of testing to win by just trying really hard?

Abba, by practicing may I learn to do the right thing at the right time in the right way with the right spirit.¹⁰ (John Ortberg)

For more: Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

January 4 — July 4

Life as Usual Must Go

"There was a new thing at work in me. And I had learned something about how we do change–and how we do not. In particular, I had learned that intensity is crucial for any progress in spiritual perception and understanding. To dribble a few verses or chapters of scripture on oneself through the week, in church or out, will not reorder one’s mind and spirit–just as one drop of water every five minutes will not get you a shower, no matter how long you keep it up. You need a lot of water at once and for a sufficiently long time. Similarly for the written Word."¹¹

—Dallas Willard

A year or so later I learned a related lesson with regard to prayer. In the tradition in which I was brought up, scripture reading and prayer were the two main religious things one might do, in addition to attending services of the church. But I was not given to understand that these had to be practiced in a certain way if they were to make a real difference in one’s life. In particular I did not understand the intensity with which they must be done, nor that the appropriate intensity required that they be engaged in for lengthy periods of undistracted time on a single occasion. Moreover, one’s life as a whole had to be arranged in such a way that this would be possible. One must not be agitated, hurried, or exhausted when the time of prayer and study came. Hence one cannot tack an effective, life-transforming practice of prayer and study onto ‘life as usual.’ Life as usual must go. It will be replaced by something far better.¹²

—Dallas Willard

Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.

1

Corinthians

11

:

1

NIV

• Have you concluded that life as usual must go? If so, what has changed?

• Are you spending enough undistracted time in prayer and study for those practices to be life transforming?

• Have you arranged your life in such a way that this untypical approach to life would be possible? If so, how so?

Abba, help me, in the midst of this confused, distracted world, to renounce the practice of life as usual. Lead me into truly life-transforming practices for my good–and the good of others.

For more: The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard

January 5 — July 5

Jesus and His Convulsive Earthquake

Jesus Christ has irreparably changed the world. When preached purely, His Word exalts, frightens, shocks, and forces us to reassess our whole life. The gospel breaks our train of thought, shatters our comfortable piety, and cracks open our capsule truths. The flashing spirit of Jesus Christ breaks new paths everywhere. His sentences stand like quivering swords of flame because He did not come to bring peace, but a revolution. The gospel is not a children’s fairy tale, but rather a cutting-edge, rolling-thunder, convulsive earthquake in the world of the human spirit. By entering human history, God has demolished all previous conceptions of who God is and what man is supposed to be. We are, suddenly, presented with a God who suffers crucifixion. This is not the God of the philosophers who speak with cool detachment about the Supreme Being. A Supreme Being would never allow spit on his face. It is jarring indeed to learn that what He went through in His passion and death is meant for us too; that the invitation He extends is Don’t weep for Me! Join Me! The life He has planned for Christians is a life much like He lived. He was not poor that we might be rich. He was not mocked that we might be honored. He was not laughed at so that we would be lauded. On the contrary, He revealed a picture meant to include you and me.¹³

—Brennan Manning

"Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth!"Matthew

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34

a NLT

• Is yours a comfortable piety?

• Is the convulsive earthquake of Jesus continuing with you?

• Do you need to reacquaint yourself with the Jesus of the gospels?

Why should I want to be rich, when You were poor? Why should I desire to be famous and powerful in the eyes of men, when the sons of those who exalted the false prophets and stoned the true rejected You and Nailed You to the Cross? . . . Let my trust be in Your mercy, not in myself. Let my hope be in Your love, not in health, or strength, or ability or human resources.¹⁴

—Thomas Merton

For more: The Furious Longing of God by Brennan Manning

January 6 — July 6

Imitating Jesus, Not Just Worshiping Him

One of the earliest accounts of Saint Francis, the ‘Legend of Perugia,’ quotes him as telling the first friars that ‘You only know as much as you do.’ His emphasis on action, practice, and lifestyle was foundational and revolutionary for its time and at the heart of Franciscan alternative orthodoxy (heterodoxy). For Francis and Clare, Jesus became someone to actually imitate and not just to worship as divine. Up to this point, most of Christian spirituality was based in desert asceticism, monastic discipline, theories of prayer, or academic theology, which itself was often founded in ‘correct belief’ or liturgy, but not in a kind of practical Christianity that could be lived in the streets of the world. Many rightly say Francis emphasized an imitation and love of the humanity of Jesus, and not just the worshiping of his divinity. That is a major shift. Those who have analyzed the writings of Francis have noted that he uses the word doing rather than understanding at a ratio of 175 times to 5. Heart is used 42 times to 1 use of mind. Love is used 23 times as opposed to 12 uses of truth. Mercy is used 26 times while intellect is used only 1 time. This is a very new perspective that is clearly different from (and an antidote to) the verbally argumentative Christianity of his time, and from the highly academic theology that would hold sway from then on. . . . Francis and Clare’s approach has been called a ‘performative spirituality’ which means that things are only found to be true in the doing of them. . . . Francis wanted us to know things in an almost ‘cellular’ and energetic way, and not just in our heads. This knowing is a kind of ‘muscle memory’ which only comes from practice.¹⁵

—Richard Rohr

Faith by itself isn’t enough.Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.James

2

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17

NLT

• What’s wrong with verbally argumentative Christianity?

• Does your faith require you to imitate Jesus in specific ways? How so?

• In reality is your Christian life more about ideas and words (right doctrine), or actually imitating Jesus (loving practices)?

• If you only know as much as you do, how much do you know?

Abba, help me practice daily what I believe.

For more: Eager to Love by Richard Rohr

January 7 — July 7

Persistent Immaturity in the Church

Seventeen years of ministerial efforts in a wide range of denominational settings had made it clear to me that what Christians were normally told to do, the standard advice to churchgoers, was not advancing them spiritually. Of course, most Christians had been told by me as by others to attend the services of the church, give of time and money, pray, read the Bible, do good to others, and witness to their faith. And certainly they should do these things. But just as certainly, something more was needed. It was painfully clear to me that, with rare and beautiful exceptions, Christians were not able to do even these few necessary things in a way that was really good for them, as things that would be an avenue to life filled and possessed of God. All pleasing and doctrinally sound schemes of Christian education, church growth, and spiritual renewal came around at last to this disappointing result. But whose fault was this failure? Try as I might, I was unable to pass this outcome off as a lack of effort on the Christians’ part. . . . Leave the irregular, the half-hearted, and the novices aside for the moment. If the steady longtime faithful devotees to our ministries are not transformed in the substance of their life to the full range of Christlikeness, they are being failed by what we are teaching them.¹⁶

—Dallas Willard

The average church-going Christian has a headful of vital truths about God and a body unable to fend off sin.¹⁷

—Dallas Willard

Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people. I had to talk as though . . . you were infants in the Christian life.

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Corinthians

3

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1

NLT

• Have you ever felt like you couldn’t get the Christian life to work? If so, did you assume somehow it was your fault?

• Listen to Willard: It’s not your fault. You could hardly have done better. No one told you what to do. Can you dare to believe that?

• If you were told of new practices that could lead you into a life filled and possessed of God would you be willing to give it a try?

Abba, help me make a new, better, wiser start.

For more: The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard

January 8 — July 8

Only Stopping Will Do

"It’s not enough to believe in silence, solitude and stillness. These things must be experienced and practiced. And practiced often enough to be routine, to create new habits. And so I come to a full stop. I sit quietly. I don’t petition God, give thanks, or meditate on some divine attribute. I don’t look out the window in wonder. Good things to do, but not first–not yet. Because unless I can first remember that it doesn’t depend on me, that I can’t do what needs to be done, then all is lost. And until I do this numerous times a day, every day, there’s a slim chance I’ll ever remember that. Everything argues against stopping–against remembering: the to-do list, the desire to be productive, the expectations of others, ego, habit. And therefore, ruthlessness is required in establishing this essential practice. I have the potential to be used by God in important ways–but I squander that by flitting from one thing to the next without stopping to ‘recollect’ myself. These are the most important moments of my day. Nothing else I do will be so informative–and formative. Nothing else will save me from myself. Nothing else will prepare me to attend to God and others, and to what’s going on with me. Would it be more important to take these moments to love my spouse, feed a homeless child, memorize Scripture, or engage in worship? No, for unless I first submit to utter inactivity–unless my activity flows from my practiced inactivity before God, I cannot trust that my activity will be anything but smoke and noise. No one needs my hurried self–the one that to me seems so indispensable–the one in such a rush to help. Something must be done, but first–only stopping will do."

—William Britton

God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which he must work. Only to know this is to quiet our spirits and relax our nerves.

—A. W. Tozer

He who believes will not be in haste. Isaiah

28

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16

RSV

• What’s driving you? What does that say about you?

• Are you in haste? If so, why?

• Have you established practices to insure that you stop as you should?

Abba, may my stillness make a space for your divine action.

For more: The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer

January 9 — July 9

Held Fast By the Bonds of Love

Therefore, banish from your heart the distractions of earth. Turn your eyes to spiritual joys so that you may learn at last to rest in the light of the contemplation of God. Indeed, the soul’s true life and repose are to abide in God, held fast by love and refreshed by divine consolations. . . . Little by little as you abandon baser things to rest in the one true and unchangeable Good, you will dwell there, held fast by the bonds of love.¹⁸

—Albert the Great

"Monasticism aims at the cultivation of a certain quality of life, a level of awareness, a depth of consciousness, an area of transcendence and of adoration which are not usually possible in an active secular existence. This does not . . .