Lyrics for today’s song. If you don’t see the song, please hover over “Lyrics” and click to launch YouTube video:
God’s resplendent glory full
On display for all to see
God creator, God of hope
Beautiful redeeming grace
Healer of the broken down
Of the orphans and oppressed
Find Him dining with the poor
Find Him here surrounding
Hallelujah, God is near
Hallelujah, God is near
From oceans depth to cedar trees
Fields of wheat along the plains
Praise to God from all the earth
Praise Him from the mountaintops
Hallelujah, God is near
Hallelujah, God is near
Hallelujah, God is near
Hallelujah, God is near
His radiance is greater than
Anything on earth and sky
Stars and moon will guard the night
Shining to the God on high
Tuesday, April 14, 2026
CAC faculty members Carmen Acevedo Butcher and Brian McLaren opened the CAC’s Fall 2025 ReVision conference by asking: “What do you do with Christianity when it has become enmeshed with authoritarian politics and corrupted by violence?” While the question may sound contemporary, they turned to earlier models of contemplative response in times of political crisis, reflecting on the lives of Benedict of Nursia (ca. 480–547) and the philosopher Boethius (ca. 480–524). Today, we share some of their reflections on Benedict. McLaren begins:
It’s not hard to imagine a world that seems to be falling apart with political division and corruption, economic instability, and different ethnic groups clashing for power and resenting one another. It’s not hard to imagine a world where religious leaders make deals with political leaders and vice versa, for mutual benefit. It’s not just our world; it was the world Benedict of Nursia lived in.
Benedict saw what the Christian religion was becoming, and he recalled Jesus’s life of simplicity, love, and nonviolence. And something deep within him called him to do something new. Benedict believed that it was possible to live by the path of Jesus, rather than by the standards and norms of the crazy system that was operating around him. I can imagine him thinking:
I’m going to leave the city and my privilege. I’m going to go out and establish an alternative community, a little island of sanity in a world that seems to be going nuts. I’m going to try to create a place where we seek to live by the law of love in the kingdom, kin-dom, or sacred ecosystem, of God. We will care for the sick and the dying. We will welcome the stranger and create an order of life that has dignity. We will preserve learning, writing down ancient wisdom. Every day, all day, we will enter into deep listening with God and with one another to keep Jesus’s wisdom alive.
Carmen Acevedo Butcher describes the fruit of Benedict’s contemplative withdrawal as an active renewal of community:
Benedict’s world was on fire. There was a war, invaders, cruelty, a volcanic winter, people were homeless and starving. In the midst of that, Benedict felt a sole desiring to please God alone, so he gave up his privileged way of life and headed out to a cave for three years, where his food was lowered to him on rope. People heard about this holy hermit and would go to him for spiritual advice, seeking a “word” in the tradition of the desert mystics.
If I had been Benedict, I might have waited a few years to set out, just until things calmed down a little bit. But instead of staying in his cave, Benedict decides he needs to house the people who have been coming to him. He builds thirteen monasteries near Subiaco, becoming the superior of the last one to stay close to the brothers who need extra attention.
Those monasteries, as Dr. Mike Petrow says, were the bomb shelters, time capsules, laboratories, and protected cultivators of the contemplative tradition in a world falling apart.
Sarah Young – Jesus Calling
“Beloved, there are indeed many measures of success in the world, and most of them are meaningless. To avoid confusion, you need a rule of thumb: Seek to please Me.” – Matthew 22:37-38
“Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.'”
