I've been kind of lagging lately in my reading. Books that I've been reading are long and challenging (a good thing) and I've gotten a bit bogged down. But yesterday while I had my kids reorganizing my commentaries (bet you wish you were a pastor's kid) I came across a great little book on the Lord's Prayer by N.T. Wright. It was just the right size (89 pages) to jump start my reading engine.
Here's a great quote on Deeper from N.T. Wright:
Jesus' own life and work and teaching, then was not simply about a timeless new vision of God. Jesus didn't come simply to offer a new pattern, or even a new depth, of spirituality. Spiritual depth and renewal come, as and when they come, as part of the larger package. But the package itself is about being delivered from evil; about return from exile; about having enough bread; about God's kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven. It's the Advent-package. Jesus was taking the enormous risk of saying that this package was about to come through his own work.
This is an important check to our Deeper series. Depth is never an end in itself. That kind of Deeper usually just means weirder. True depth is reflected in fuller, more true humanity. The kind of humanity that reflects the kingdom of God on this earth.
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