“Stand in the pass behind us, we pray,
And lower Your spear against their pursuit.
Turn them all back from their wicked attacks.
Rout them, we pray, and scatter them all.
Chase them like chaff in a hard and stiff wind.”
21 Prayers, p. 26
At the Bottom
“You chastise us, Father, for all of our sins,
But that is not why the evil attack us—
They attack because we love what is good,
And because at the bottom our trust is in You.”
21 Prayers, p. 25
Drunk and Sober
“His adultery with Bathsheba, and his murder of Uriah, were the two great twin sins of his life, but one of the things that made the murder of Uriah so grotesque was the fact that Uriah was Hittite, doggedly loyal to David. Even when David got him drunk to help cover up his sin, Uriah stayed true to his cause—and in that moment, better to be Uriah drunk than David sober.”
American Milk and Honey, pp. 104-105
Indeed, Saving Them
“Not only would we be saved from their treachery
And from all of their lies and crafty deceits,
But we also ask You to be gracious to them,
Saving them from their treachery, lies, and deceit.”
21 Prayers, p. 22
A Very Important Question
“The single biggest controversy in the New Testament church was over whether a person could become a Christian without becoming a Jew first, and so the first great ecumenical council was held to respond to the question.”
American Milk and Honey, p. 101
Jesus ben David
“Antisemitism is abut the most anti-gospel frame of mind that can be imagined. And among professed worshipers of Jesus ben David, it is also the silliest. Christ is the Lord of Israel, and this is why He is the Lord of the new Israel as well.”
American Milk and Honey, p. 99
Grace and Imprecation
“And so I pray now that You would protect us,
With all such prayers being based on the fact
That You require them and gave us the psalms—
Psalms that we know we do not deserve praying,
Much less in this way, which is part of the point.
We therefore offer them in Jesus’ name.”
21 Prayers, p. 19
Great Death
“I ask that our service would be potent and powerful
In administering death—the kind of great death
That is followed by grace, by great resurrections.”
21 Prayers, p. 17
The Whole Class Watching
“The Jews were the chosen nation, not in the sense of election to Heaven, but in the sense of a chosen pupil, selected to come to the front to show the rest of the class how the problem was to be solved. When that student does well, he is blessed. He is the class hero. When he messes up, he messes up in front of everybody. But the whole class is always involved.”
American Milk and Honey, p. 98
A Bloody Crew
“They are carnal, of the flesh, worldly. They are of their father the devil. And the number that belongs in this category is too great to itemize, although we can mention a few—Caiaphas and his crew, Tomas de Torquemada, Saul before his conversion, Bloody Mary, numerous medieval managers of pogroms, Himmler as the architect of the Final Solution, the incipient totalitarianism of Herbert Marcuse and his doctrine of repressive tolerance, and of course, Stalin. There is a long chain of other names, but to mention them all would soon become morbid.”
American Milk and Honey, p. 87