The Good News means we can stop lying to ourselves. The sweet sound of amazing grace saves us from the necessity of self-deception. It keeps us from denying that though Christ was victorious, the battle with lust, greed and pride still rages within us. As a sinner who has been redeemed, I can acknowledge that I am often unloving, irritable, angry and resentful with those closest to me. When I go to church I can leave my white hat at home and admit I have failed. God not only loves me as I am, but also knows me as I am... I can accept ownership of my poverty and powerlessness and neediness. (Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel, p.23)

This has been one of the most freeing realizations ever, for me.  Without this understanding, the gospel slowly stops being good news, I think.

I remember trying to motivate myself to talk about the gospel with others, while struggling with sin myself, and trying to hide it from myself and from everybody else... It felt horrible, hypocritical...

With this understanding I find in me a freedom to accept that while I am being mended by the grace of God in some broken places, my eyes are also being opened to greater brokenness within me, and the gospel keeps becoming gooder and gooder news by the minute - for me.

Very grateful...

Olympic marathon gold medalist Samuel Wanjiru died early Monday from injuries sustained after jumping from the balcony of his Nyahururu home in central Kenya, a senior police official said.

Wanjiru jumped from the second-floor of his home late Sunday after his wife caught him in the company of another woman, said Jasper Ompati, a police official in Nyahururu.

Wanjirus wife, Tereza Njeri, and another woman were taken to the police station to give statements but were not considered suspects, Ompati said. The death remains under investigation, he said.

Njeri, who lives in Nairobi, returned home unexpectedly to find the two together, Ompati said. Wanjiru is believed to have jumped after his wife locked him inside a bedroom on the second floor, making it impossible for him to leave, he said.

Wanjiru achieved worldwide fame when he became Kenyas first Olympic marathon champion at the Beijing Games in 2008.

via CNN.com.

Barth CD I/2 10:02 am

"our faith in Jesus consists in our recognition & admitting... & accepting ... that everything has actually been done for us in Jesus"

2:37 pm

"It is the characteristically pious element in the pious effort to reconcile Him to us which [is] an abomination to God"

2:53 pm

"sin is always unbelief. And unbelief is always man's faith in himself"

Barth CD I/2 10:45 pm

"religion is unbelief. it is a concern, indeed we must say that it is the one great concern, of godless man"

Edward Tufte occupies a revered and solitary place in the world of graphic design. Over the last three decades, he has become a kind of oracle in the growing field of data visualization—the practice of taking the sprawling, messy universe of information that makes up the quantitative backbone of everyday life and turning it into an understandable story. His four books on the subject have sold almost two million copies, and in his crusade against euphemism and gloss, he casts a shadow over the world of graphs and charts similar to the specter of George Orwell over essay and argument.

Tufte is a philosopher king who reigns over his field largely because he invented it. For years, graphic designers were regarded as decorators, whose primary job was to dress up facts with pretty pictures. Tufte introduced a reverence for math and science to the discipline and, in turn, codified the rules that would create a new one, which has come to be called, alternatively, information design or analytical design. His is often the authoritative word on what makes a good chart or graph, and over the years his influence has changed the way places like the Wall Street Journal and NASA display data.

via The Washington Monthly.

“This,” he said, “is War and Peace as told by a visual Tolstoy.” The map is about the size of a car window, and follows the French invasion of Russia in 1812. It was drawn in 1869 by a French engineer named Charles Joseph Minard. On the left of the map, on the banks of the Niemen River, near Kovno in modern-day Lithuania, a horizontal tan stripe represents the initial invasion force of 420,000 French soldiers. As they march east, toward Moscow—to the right, on the map—they begin to die, and the stripe narrows.

Barth CD I/2 10:47 pm

not suited for the kingdom? strong words: http://goo.gl/5Qvfz

11:08 am

@epaga he's complex. he asserts himself in one direction and then another, without defense or resolution. Favors proof by assertion.

11:14 am

"for us, and therefore against us... the work of the kindness we cannot grasp": http://goo.gl/Tf3qJ

11:10 am

“@epaga: @pavi would love to hear your thoughts on some of the [quotes]” for now immersing, listening... to truly hear. in time...

11:17 am

"It is a great affliction when our right to have our own desires & to pursue them is so radically questioned & finally taken away"

Barth, CD 1/2 p.278

But where the Word of God is master by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, there enters in an interest or concern which does not allow any rivals, for the simple reason that in the Word of God it is always a matter of our own interest and concern. But it is our own interest and concern not as seen from our standpoint, but as seen from the opposite but beneficent standpoint of the wisdom of God, as judged by the righteousness of God, as adopted by the goodness of God.  That is the work of God: the work of God upon us: for us and therefore against us: the work of the kindness which we cannot grasp, which we have outraged, which does good to us, as to those who always do evil.  Where it is heard as such, there is still an active will to assert and help ourselves, to maintain and justify and advertise ourselves, but it has been fundamentally broken and its vital power destroyed... If that means humiliation, it also means comfort. If it means Law, it also means Gospel.  It is a great affliction when our right to have our own desires and to pursue them is so radically questioned and finally taken away. But, of course, it is an even greater help, when the common necessity of worrying about our own situation is so radically relativised and in fact basically set aside.

"For us, and therefore against us" - so much wisdom in six words.