I recall as an undergraduate being asked to read H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture (1951).Niebuhr had set out five options of how one should understand this relationship, with “Christ versus culture” and “Christ in culture” as the two opposite extremes, the former representing a cr

“Guide me, O thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land.” So begins William Williams’ hymn in which Christian life is a pilgrimage along which the believer’s weakness is exposed, and God’s provision abounds. Pilgrimage is a deeply embedded description of the Christian life.

Many people in ministry and others could sympathize with the declaration of Rev. John Newton (1725-1807), author of the famous hymn, Amazing Grace, that he had:

“Providence” sounds such a heavy word. Portentous. If someone uses it a lot in conversation, we might think of them as self-important and smug, as if they are claiming that God is on their side.