{"id":1005,"date":"2010-12-05T09:30:14","date_gmt":"2010-12-05T09:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/richardlittledale.wordpress.com\/?p=1005"},"modified":"2010-12-05T09:30:14","modified_gmt":"2010-12-05T09:30:14","slug":"preaching-in-stereo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/2010\/12\/05\/preaching-in-stereo\/","title":{"rendered":"Preaching in stereo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Insights\u00a0from Alfred Delp<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

One of the problems about preaching through Advent is that we are constantly\u00a0talking\u00a0about two advents, outlining two hopes, and setting our spiritual compass on two different horizons. On the one hand, we want to preach about the first Advent. We want to pit all our wit, creativity, prayerfulness and speech against the whelming tide of commercialism and nonsense which can sweep Jesus from the heart of his own story. On the other hand, as Bible students, we want to acknowledge the Bible’s own far greater\u00a0concentration\u00a0on the second Advent. On a verse for verse basis,\u00a0the\u00a0bible has far more to say about the return of King Jesus in glory than it does about baby Jesus in the manger.\u00a0\u00a0And yet..<\/p>\n

This morning I found myself reading some words by Father Alfred Delp, a young Roman Catholic priest executed by the Nazi regime in December 1945. Rarely have I read words by \u00a0a man so able to keep the two horizons together – and I pass a small selection\u00a0of them\u00a0onto you now:<\/p>\n

They grey horizons must grow light. It is only the immediate scene that shouts so loudly and\u00a0insistently.\u00a0Beyond these things is a different realm, one that is now in our midst.<\/em><\/p>\n

Advent is the promise denoting the new order of things, of life, of our existence.<\/em><\/p>\n

Just\u00a0beyond\u00a0the horizon the\u00a0eternal\u00a0realities stand silent in their age-old longing.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Photo: www.matthias-kaiser-haus.de<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Insights\u00a0from Alfred Delp One of the problems about preaching through Advent is that we are constantly\u00a0talking\u00a0about two advents, outlining two hopes, and setting our spiritual compass on two different horizons. On the one hand, we want to preach about the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}