• The Crucifix Prayer

    Blessed are you, Lord God,
    Father all-holy,
    for your boundless love
    The tree, once the source of shame
    and death for humankind,
    has become the cross
    of our redemption and life.

    When his hour had come to
    return to you in glory,
    the Lord Jesus,
    Our King, our Priest, and our Teacher,
    freely mounted the scaffold of the cross
    and made it his royal throne,
    his altar of sacrifice, his pulpit of truth.

    On the cross,
    lifted above the earth,
    he triumphed over our age-old enemy.
    Cloaked in his own blood,
    he drew all things to himself.

    On the cross,
    he opened out his arms
    and offered you his life;
    the sacrifice of the New Law
    that gives to the sacraments
    their saving power.

    On the cross,
    he proved what he had prophesied:
    the grain of wheat must die
    to bring forth an abundant harvest.

    Father,
    we honour this cross as the sign
    of our redemption.
    May we reap the harvest of salvation
    planted in pain by Christ Jesus.
    May our sins be nailed to his cross,
    the power of life released,
    pride conquered,
    and weakness turned to strength.

    May the cross be our comfort in trouble,
    our refuge in the face of danger,
    our safeguard on life’s journey
    until you welcome us to
    our heavenly home.

    Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

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  • The Prayer of St. Ephrem

    {Making a prostration}

    O LORD, Master of my life,
    grant that I may not be infected with the
    spirit of slothfulness and inquisitiveness,
    with the spirit of ambition and vain talking.

    {Making a prostration}

    Grant instead to me, your servant,
    the spirit of purity and of humility,
    the spirit of patience and neighborly love.

    {Making a third prostration}

    O Lord and King,
    grant me the grace of being aware of my sins
    and of not thinking evil of those of my brethren.
    For you are blessed, now and ever, and forever.

    Amen.

    Lord Jesus Christ, King of Kings,
    You have power over life and death.
    You know what is secret and hidden,
    and neither our thoughts nor our feelings
    are concealed from You.
    Cure me of duplicity;
    I have done evil before You.
    Now my life declines from day to day
    and my sins increase.
    O Lord, God of souls and bodies,
    You know the extreme frailty of my soul and my flesh.
    Grant me strength in my weakness, O Lord,
    and sustain me in my misery.
    Give me a grateful soul that I may
    never cease to recall Your benefits,
    O Lord most bountiful.
    Be not mindful of my many sins,
    but forgive me all my misdeeds.
    O Lord, disdain not my prayer –
    the prayer of a wretched sinner;
    sustain me with Your grace until the end,
    that it may protect me as in the past.
    It is Your grace which has taught me wisdom;
    blessed are they who follow her ways,
    for they shall receive the crown of glory.
    In spite of my unworthiness,
    I praise You and I glorify You,
    O Lord, for Your mercy to me is without limit.
    You have been my help and my protection.
    May the name of Your majesty be praised forever.
    To you, our God, be glory.
    Amen.

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  • PWJ: S4E103 – Bonus – “Season Finale” (Part 2)

    David, Andrew, and Matt wrap up Season 4 with the Season Finale. This is Part 2 of that Finale. Listener Survey: https://forms.gle/X4zq7Uk69KmYo1v3A

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  • PWJ: S4E102 – Bonus – “Season Finale” (Part 1)

    David, Andrew, and Matt wrap up Season 4 with the Season Finale. This is Part 1…

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  • PWJ: S4E101 – Bonus – “Jack vs Tollers”

    After the previously-planned interview fell through at the last minute, David sat down to record a solo episode to talk about his newborn son, Sidecar Day, blue flowers in Narnia, and also to make his tongue-in-cheek case as to why C.S. Lewis is better than J.R.R. Tolkien.

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  • PWJ: S4E100 – AH – “After Hours” with The Gray Havens

    The Gray Havens are an American Christian folk pop husband and wife duo, David and Licia Radford, from Crystal Lake, Illinois. On October 8th they will be releasing their new album, Blue Flower, so David Radford came on the show to talk to Andrew and David about how C.S. Lewis inspired their recent work.

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  • PWJ: S4E99 – AH – “After Hours” with Mike “Gomer” Gormley

    As we approach the end of Season 4, David is joined on the show by Michael “Gomer” Gormley. Among other things, they discuss Ted Lasso, tea, and the Atonement. Also, find out what Gomer would do if he ever became the Pope!

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  • PWJ: S4E98 – AH – “After Hours” with Patti Callahan

    New York Times bestselling author, Patti Callahan, returns to the show to talk about her forthcoming book, “Once Upon A Wardrobe”, which will be released on October 19th.

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  • PWJ: S4E97 – AH – “After Hours” with The Tolkien Road

    A few months ago, John and Greta from The Tolkien Road podcast did a series of episodes on religion in Tolkien’s Legendarium. David invited him onto the show to talk about those episodes and to encourage the Pints With Jack listeners to listen to them.

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  • PWJ: S4E96 – AH – “After Hours” with Rod Bennett

    Author Rod Bennett joined David to talk about a presentation on he gave at a big Christian rock festival about C.S. Lewis’ relationship to “Pulp Fiction”.

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Qur’an Cover-to-Cover: Day 11 (“Mary”)

mary

Today is a particularly special chapter of the Qur’an, the one dedicated to Mary (“Miriam”), the Mother of Jesus (“Isa”):

Surah 19 – “Mary” (Maryam)
We begin this chapter with the story of Zechariah. As in the Bible, we are told that he and his wife had failed to have children. He is told through an angel that he will have a son named John. However, we soon start seeing a departure from the Biblical narrative…. Zechariah asks Allah to “make for me a sign”. He is then told that the sign will be that he will not be able to speak for “three nights”. However, in the Bible Zechariah cannotspeak until John’s circumcision. An interesting side note is that Allah tells John to “take the Scripture [i.e. adhere to it] with determination”, which shows that, at least in this chapter, the Old Testament is assumed to be preserved without corruption (contrary to the claim of most Muslims with whom I’ve spoken).

We now come to the story of Mary. We’re told that she withdraws from her family, heads eastwards and takes seclusion behind a screen – it’s not clear to me why. At this point, Gabriel visits her to give her “[news of] a pure boy [i.e. son]”. As in Luke’s Gospel, she does not understand how this will happen. There is a conspicuous absence of St. Joseph in this story – he is not mentioned once.

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Reading Restless Pilgrim just got easier…

postmanI post on this blog every day, but not every post is especially substantial.

On Mondays I post a video of Christian music.

On Wednesdays I share a quotation which I feel teaches some truth and is marked by wisdom.

On Fridays I post something light-hearted on the last day of the workweek to sustain good cheer and to usher in the weekend.

On the remaining days, I write some short posts, but I typically aim to write at least one substantial article each week, tagging it with the featured tag.

I was recently chatting with friends and a couple of them said that they come to my blog specifically for the more substantial articles and only visit the site periodically. In light of this, I wanted to explain to all readers how to best consume these articles if this is what you prefer.

Highlights Newsletter

For those who only periodically visit this site, but still want to stay abreast of the more substantial posts, I would recommend subscribing to the monthly newsletter. If you would like to sign-up for the newsletter, simply fill out the form below:

[wysija_form id=”3″]

I will only ever send out one email each month, promise!. In these emails I highlight my favourite posts from the last calendar month:
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Featured Menu

Another way to consume the more substantial articles is to use the menu system at the top of the page. I’ve recently made a couple of changes to menu layout to make this easier:

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The “Featured Articles” menu contains two entries, which allows readers to only view the more substantial articles I’ve written. All other posts, such as the music and quotations, will be filtered out.

How do you read Restless Pilgrim? Is there something else I can do to make it easier for you to consume the content?

Qur’an Cover-to-Cover: Day 10 (“The Angels”)

angel

Today in Atlanta, my friend’s son was baptized and entered into the Body of Christ! However, there’s no rest for the wicked, so here I am writing up today’s text from Qur’an, Surah 35:

Surah 35 – “The Angels” (Fatir)
The chapter begins with a typical set of assertions relating to Allah’s soveignty and the denial of the existence of any other God. 

Some interesting things are said about Satan and evil doers. One phrase I really liked was “[Satan] only invites his party to be among the companions of the Blaze”. This is why Satan’s parties are the worst! Ayah 8 affirms that “Allah sends astray whom He wills”, once again suggesting that Muslims believe in double-predestination.

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Prophet or Messiah?

john

As you will have no doubt noticed, I have been recently working my way through reading the Qur’an. As a result, over the last few days my inbox has begun filling up with messages related to Islam…

I received one such email from a Muslim who asked me about the time when the Jewish leaders questioned John the Baptist about his identity:

And this is the testimony of John [the Baptist], when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed, he did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Eli′jah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” And he answered, “No.”

– John 1:19-21

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Qur’an Cover-to-Cover: Day 9 (“The Criterion”)

muslim

I was on a plane flying to Atlanta today, so I’m a little late, but here are my notes for Surah 25.

Surah 25 – “The Criterion” (Al-Furqan)
The title of this chapter is significant. The “criterion” here is identified as the Qur’an itself. This is principal means by which Muslims “distinguish truth from falsehood and right from wrong”. This definitely is in accordance with my experience of speaking with Muslims: everything is viewed through the lense of the Qur’an.

There are are quite a references to other religions in this surah and, I would say, it identifies Christianity in particular. For example, we are told that “[Allah] has not taken a son and has not had a partner in dominion… But they have taken besides Him [Allah] gods”. This seems to be a fairly clear reference to the Christian belief in the Divine Sonship of Jesus. It is also possibly a reference to His mother, Mary, whom we will encounter in later suwar. A little later we are told that on Judgement Day, those false deities will testify against those who worshipped them, saying that none is worthy of worship but Allah. Those who “commit injustice” in this way are guilty of the sin of Shirk and will therefore “taste a great punishment”.

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Qur’anic Study Tool

During my study of the Qur’an, I came across this website:

I have to say, I’m really rather impressed. The site allows me to compare different Qur’anic translations, which has proved very helpful in discerning the meaning of obscure verses:

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It also has an ontology graph, showing the relationships between different concepts in Islam.

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There’s also a considerable material here on grammar, which I’m sure I’d find useful if I actually spoke Arabic:

screen-shot-2016-12-16-at-8-29-48-am

The only thing it doesn’t have which I’d find really helpful is integration with the hadith, since context is still my #1 issue when reading the Qur’an…

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