Comments on: The Glory of God is Man Fully Alive http://tenthousandplaces.org/2009/04/25/the-glory-of-god-is-man-fully-alive/ Tue, 29 May 2012 02:22:33 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: tenthousandplaces http://tenthousandplaces.org/2009/04/25/the-glory-of-god-is-man-fully-alive/#comment-404 Tue, 12 Jul 2011 03:26:13 +0000 http://tenthousandplaces.wordpress.com/?p=279#comment-404 Thanks for the comment, Reg! It makes me happy that the little prince (or the thought of him) brought someone to my blog.

]]> By: Reg Bradley http://tenthousandplaces.org/2009/04/25/the-glory-of-god-is-man-fully-alive/#comment-403 Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:44:08 +0000 http://tenthousandplaces.wordpress.com/?p=279#comment-403 Hi Jessica
I found your note while searching for the quotation: The glory of God is man fully human. My wife had it turned around a bit and thought it was in the psalms. I clicked on the picture that looked like it came from “The Little Prince” and up came your bio-reflection. I found it quite insightful and very human. Having been a “doer” all my long life, learning to breathe ‘being” is forever the challenge.

Reg Bradley

]]> By: JOnathan de la Crusz http://tenthousandplaces.org/2009/04/25/the-glory-of-god-is-man-fully-alive/#comment-331 Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:58:06 +0000 http://tenthousandplaces.wordpress.com/?p=279#comment-331 A few years ago, during a seminar on the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, Fr John McDade, SJ, the then Principal of Heythrop College, London was asked the question, “Is it not human to sin?” His answer is an eye-opener for all of us: “No, not at all because we were not created to sin, but to worship”.

The word worship is a much misunderstod by a great many. Often it is perceived as an act of abject submission akin to what people in a despotic regime may offer to teh tyrant. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Worship is an invitation to live in a loving and fulfilling relationship with teh very God who is both our Creator and Father! Or it may also be understood as an invitation to a mariatal relationship as existing between a husband and a wife.

It is, then, in such an intimate, loving and open relationship that the fullness of humanity can and will be restored thus revealing the glory of God. And it is here that true freedom, as expressed by Zechariah in the Benedictus, comes into play.
“Free to worship Him without fear all the days of our life.”
In Jesus we are indeed set free by His love, which Paul tells us has been ppoured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. (Romans 5:5). “If the Son sets you free, you are free indeed”. (John 8:36)
And, “Perfect love casts out fear.” (I John 4:18)

It is this life of divine love that God offers us through Jesus Christ by His Holy Spirit to all who shall desire it.

]]> By: swisswiss http://tenthousandplaces.org/2009/04/25/the-glory-of-god-is-man-fully-alive/#comment-330 Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:38:41 +0000 http://tenthousandplaces.wordpress.com/?p=279#comment-330 Great meditations! Thus the Canticle of Zechariah is a celebration of freedom … “for he has come to set his people free” … “free to worship him without fear.” That freedom presents the opportunity to become fully alive through union with Christ. Yet, it is possible to choose the absence of God to prevail. This latter course is represented by Nietzsche’s protege, the “free-woman” Lou Andreas-Salomé, who, in her godless quest to be authentically human, reaches her hour of death and says: “If I let my thoughts roam I find no one. The best, after all, is death.”

Compare that with: “In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.” Shalom!

]]> By: Jonathan de la Crusz http://tenthousandplaces.org/2009/04/25/the-glory-of-god-is-man-fully-alive/#comment-279 Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:50:09 +0000 http://tenthousandplaces.wordpress.com/?p=279#comment-279 Would it be more accurate to say: To the extent a person rejects the grace of God, the image of God in him is vitiated and his humanity shrinks? He may not necessarily act in an “inhuman” manner; but the absence of the True Life of God, which is in Jesus Christ (John 1:4-5) enables that very absence to continue and prevail in him: It’s only by the presence of that Life the absence can be removed! (For the grace of God = Jesus Christ as grace is not a celestial commodity dispensd by God but God’s giving of Himself to us in Jesus).

A person ever ceasing to be HUMAN, to my reckoning, is impossible. In a strict sense, we all live “partially human” lives as we no longer possess the fullnesss of the image of God (Humanity) in us. But the good news is that the Holy Spirit living in us is restoring that image!

By giving us the Holy Spirit to indwell us, God has granted us to share in His divinity, and in sharing in His divinity, we are becoming fully human (Restoration of the divine image)!

]]> By: t clair http://tenthousandplaces.org/2009/04/25/the-glory-of-god-is-man-fully-alive/#comment-170 Tue, 05 May 2009 14:08:38 +0000 http://tenthousandplaces.wordpress.com/?p=279#comment-170 gorgeous. gorgeous. gorgeous.

“The Glory of God is man fully alive.”

I once read NT Wright desperately trying to understand the horrors of hell in light of the God he loves. Personally I think he did an abysmal job, but what the hell do I know? Anyway, eventually he decides that there must come a point when some human beings refuse God’s grace over and over and over until finally God rejects them. So crippled by their choice against God, they cannot be recognized as the creatures God created them to be, all vestiges of the imago dei suffocated by rebellion. For all intents and purposes, he says, they cease to be HUMAN.

Of course I don’t really follow his logic quite as far as he does, but he is on to something. Man fully alive is man in reception of God’s free grace, bestowed on whosoever will.

Will we?

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