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Essays

Evangelism and Sacraments: Telling Well the Story

The Story cannot be told without reference to water: The waters of creation, the flood, the Red Sea, water from the rock, Jesus in the Jordan, the pool of Bethsaida, a basin for washing feet, bloody water from Jesus’ side, “the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne.” No, the story cannot be told without water, and all that water issues forth from a life-giving font, the baptismal font. Neither…
Sue A. Rozeboom
October 30, 2014
Poetry

What Is Man that Thou Art Mindful of Him

What do we mean when we say children are God’s artistry as preachers are wont to do during baptisms, deleting from their homilies words like “daughter” and “girl” as they exhort their faithful not to deface her beauty? Her cries, while precious, necessary, compelling her mother from tranquil acceptance to energized aid in the nursery, are hardly melodic like deft little fingers dropped by a pianist on his Steinway, the right hand aware of what the left, separate, is doing,…
Nathaniel A. Schmidt
October 30, 2014
Reviews

Child’s Play

PLAYING BEFORE THE LORD: THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOSEPH HAYDN CALVIN R. STAPERT EERDMANS, 2014 304 pp. $24 In the conventional wisdom about the Classical Era in Western art music, these three abide: Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. And the greatest of these is Beethoven. As practices of music history and music consumption have changed, however, this narrative has been challenged. Music lovers of all levels have questioned its assumptions and values, making for a richer and more complex story.…
Suzanne Bratt
October 28, 2014
Essays

Like the Wideness of the Sea?

I remember the first time that I watched the synod of my (Christian Reformed) church in action. Synod met back then (late 1940s) in the reading room of the old Calvin College library and, since there was no separate gallery for visitors, some of us got to nestle close enough to the delegates to make us feel as if we were right there in the dugout with the real players. The delegates, as they looked to me, were, most of…
Lewis B. Smedes
October 1, 2014
As We See It

Revisiting a Landmark Statement on Homosexuality

The May 1999 issue of Perspectives contained an essay by Lewis Smedes, “Like the Wideness of the Sea?” that was among the most significant articles ever to appear in Perspectives. Like most of Smedes’s work, it is richly pastoral, drawing heavily on his experience in the church. He recalled the impassioned debates about divorce and remarriage in the Christian Reformed Church of the 1950s and then wondered about possible parallels to discussions about covenanted, monogamous same-sex relationships. Smedes met with…
Perspectives Journal
October 1, 2014
Inside Out

Saul Cannot Get a Break

The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul, seeing I have rejected him from being king over Israel?” (1 Samuel 16:1) Poor King Saul. He can’t get a break from God. He didn’t ask to be king – it was God’s idea, not his. He wasn’t cut out for it, not really, not even being head and shoulders above the rest. He didn’t have the knack for it, despite that first success that earned him the…
Daniel Meeter
September 1, 2014
Poetry

Hard Red Spring

The day I stood on the clipped grass of Olds College – after palming Norquay, Chinook, and Neepawa, until my fingers had unlocked their doors, and I could smell the loam and feel the wind, and see three months of rain and heat, in an amber seed of Hard Red Spring wheat – I saw kaleidoscopic rings around the sun. And at the sun-dog-ends of those high-noon rims, were more rings intersecting, and at each intersection, like Ezekiel’s wheels in…
Stephen T. Berg
September 1, 2014
Reviews

Common Ground and a Big Table for All Citizens

EVANGELICALS ON PUBLIC POLICY ISSUES: SUSTAINING A RESPECTFUL POLITICAL CONVERSATION HAROLD HEIE ABILENE CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2014 176 pp. $17.99 At my Christian university, political science majors make up less than 10 percent of the student body. When I talk to other students about voting, politics and faith, they tell me that they lack interest partly because of the nasty arguments. The religious right, Red Letter Christians arguing with the religious right, fighting about gay rights, refusal to take climate…
Julia K. Stronks
September 1, 2014
Poetry

God Likes Hair Salons

I can’t believe God lives outside the house of earth, beyond the lawn of stars, and the fenced-yard universe, out in the timeless cold, his raw breath, his radon brow, ridged, veiling nebular eyes, and his fingers, freezing as he writes down names in a book, for later. Of course God prefers the clamour of pubs, the company of welders and waitresses, the warm feel of a beech wood pool cue, the chatter on wharves and in hair salons, the…
Stephen T. Berg
September 1, 2014