How You Can Support Cerulean Sanctum

Standard

Dan Edelen thanks you for your support!Cerulean Sanctum exists as a help for Christians who are seeking to experience the 1st century Church in 21st century America. From its inception in September of 2003, this blog has provided thousands of readers with support for their walk with Christ, comforting words in tough times, challenging essays on issues facing the American Church, and answers to difficult questions few are willing to ask. The number of Christian blogs today is an order of magnitude larger than when Cerulean Sanctum began, yet many blog readers continue to come here to find content rarely discussed elsewhere.

One of the unique aspects of Cerulean Sanctum is the readership. People from nearly every denomination in Christendom read this blog. Because the readers demand more than easy answers and bring a wealth of experience to every comment they leave, the discourse here remains unusual, insightful, high quality, and civil. The community of readers at Cerulean Sanctum is one of the best out there. Readers bless each other and bless me. I even have a few readers who have been with me since this blog’s inception. Whether a recent drop-in or a veteran of the dialog here, I thank you.

Over the years, I have received many private e-mails from grateful readers who inquired how they could support this blog financially. I have always thanked them for their offer, but requested instead that they use their gift to help someone in their local body of believers who is hurting. If you’ve read some of the posts here, you well know my views on this issue.

Today’s post exists because this past year has been a difficult one for my family and me. Myriad challenges continue to rise up, including ones I could never have anticipated. But God is faithful and good. I’ve considered my options and discussed them with some of my faithful readers. They all agree on the course of action I’m taking.

At the top of the blog you’ll see a tab labeled “Support Cerulean Sanctum.” If you click on the tab you’ll now have the option to financially support the writing that makes Cerulean Sanctum what it is. If you’ve been blessed by the content of this blog or have wanted to support it financially in the past, I’m making that option available to you as of today.

Thank you. I can’t tell you how much your support means to my family and me.

Most of all, I ask for your continued prayers. My family has been through a series of ordeals in the last few months and the end is not yet in sight. I know that many others are struggling in these times, too. If you have a prayer request you wish to share, please leave it in the comment section of this post or e-mail me. I pray for every person who writes me with a need.

I’ve written dozens of posts on how we in the Body need to support each other. I think the time is near when we’ll have to lean on each other like never before. I hope and pray that Cerulean Sanctum will continue to be a blessing to you and a place where you can find deeper truths in Christ to meet the challenges of days to come.

Blessings,

Dan Edelen

Speed Kills the Christian Soul–Part 1

Standard

If you’ve been a longtime reader, you know that one of my pet peeves is the speed at which our lives today fly by us. Too many Christians are caught in a perpetual hamster wheel of activity. None of that benefits us, the Church, or the Lord.

But what to do about it?

Al Mohler asked the same question earlier this week, lamenting the “sound byte-ing” of classical music. Even on a classical music station, you can’t hear an entire symphony anymore, just its best passages. As a classical music fan myself, I know exactly what he means. Speed KillsStations have ratcheted up the speed to fit leisurely classical music pieces into hectic schedules. Next thing you know, they’ll be time compressing the “Moonlight Sonata.” You can read his post here.

I blow hot and cold with Mohler, though. While he’s a big name in the Reformed Baptist camp, his posts and writings usually tell people what they should be doing, but without the means or info needed to do those things. Again, consistent readers know that I loathe that kind of “do this, but don’t ask me to help you do it” mentality in so many parts of the church.

But Mohler, usually quick with an answer, has no response to fixing the blatant hurriedness quagmire we find ourselves in. That’s also pretty typical of large swaths of the Church in America—recognize the problem, but offer no way to deal with it other than to say that we need to slow down.

Part of the problem here is that the Church, at least in this country, may have created the problem—or at least abetted it.

I’ve long contended the way to fix our issues with time is to correct the way we work. Ten hour days with additional two hour commutes is a good place to start repairing. People can’t have normal lives devoting twelve hours a day to work far away from home. Sadly, the very Protestant work ethic this country was founded on powers our work ethic today.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the Protestant work ethic that arose from the Reformation’s freeing of workers to know that their work honors God. Where it goes astray is when it is removed from local economies and translated into the typical “drive downtown to the office” kind of work we grew used to working during the Industrial Revolution. If you’ve read my series on “The Christian & the Business World“, you’ve got the basis for understanding the depths of the problem. (Read the series—you won’t read anything like it anywhere else in the Godblogosphere.)

So here’s what I recommend to Al Mohler. He’s a big name and has a large readership, far larger than mine. The plea:

Dr. Mohler,

Please use your considerable base of readership to start challenging the entire concept of how Christians should work. Throw out every assumption about work that’s been foisted on us by “The System.” Start asking what a genuine expression of Christian work should look like in the 21st century. Start asking how we can revitalize local economies and restore the simpler joys of working cooperatively with our neighbors. Read a book by Wendell Berry and ask if even a single thing he says makes sense for Christians today. Take the “red pill” and help others break out of the Matrix.

Don’t just concede and say, “It’s a tough problem and I’ve got no answers.” Christians are supposed to have answers. You expect your readers to have answers to the questions you raise and to solve those issues you point out in their own lives. Why not expect it of yourself?

Help us to institute the kind of life God desires of His children from the very first day He placed them in the Garden and gave them the command to work and steward the Earth.

Thank you. May God give you and other Christian leaders the vision to help us break out of the rat race and live life like the human race, the life God intended.

Speed Kills the Christian Soul—Part 2.

The Enigma of the Blog Title Explained in Living Color!

Standard

Cerulean Sanctum in real cerulean blueEver since Cerulean Sanctum debuted back in September of 2003 (after I put to rest my previous blog started in 2001, The Boiled Frog Blog), at least a dozen denizens of the blogging world have attempted to deconstruct the title of this blog. All have gone down to ignominious defeat in their vain efforts to pierce the veil.

So here today, I lay before you all my entire motivation/reasoning/cunning for coming up with the blog name that confounds the great unwashed, Cerulean Sanctum. I will bust myths, teach the ignorant, and astound the gullible, all from the pinnacle upon which my humble hermit’s office rests, and without so much as a square inch of safety net below me.

Look now to the center ring…!

  • The only Latin I know consists of what Noah Webster tells me. I took Ancient Greek in college and French in high school. I wanted to become fluent in Russian, yet both colleges I attended canceled their Russian programs the summers before I arrived on campus, leaving me scrambling to find another class to take instead. Based on my rusty Greek and my comatose French, I can add the two together with my passable English to guess which words are Latin and which are not.
  • Despite the fact that the only Latin sentence I know is “Et tu, Brute?”—how marvelously appropriate—I did score a perfect score on the Test of Standard Written English on the SAT. I was able to use this perfection to no discernible advantage at either Carnegie-Mellon University or Wheaton College. I am fitfully attempting to manipulate it to my ends now.
  • In choosing my blog’s name, I wanted something with a touch of the exotic, something that if listed in a myriad number of links would stand out and make people say, “What the heck is that? I think I’ll click on it to find out!”
  • I wanted to convey a place of respite, of thought, of camaraderie with Christians who are looking around and wondering how we got to the weird place we are now. I wanted a sanctuary. As a charismatic, I also wanted to maintain an aura of the majestic and the mysterious. Sanctuary became Sanctum.
  • Poetry moves me; I love to write it (even though there’s not a dime to be had in doing so.) As a writer, the lyricism of words stirs me. Something had to come before Sanctum and it had to have consonance and rhythm.
  • I’ve always been the square peg in the round hole and as a result have run afoul of many folks who could never put a finger on me without having a figurative fist do the follow-up. I’ve never truly felt the sting of real persecution like that of the underground churches in China or the Soviet-era martyrs, but I’ve felt enough of the American variant—light though it be—to count it a friend. Persecution passages in the Scriptures move me as a result. In the course of thinking where this blog would go and how it would exist to challenge the Western Church’s status quo and American “easy believe-ism,” the Lord laid this passage on my heart:

    …They shall lay their hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues, and into prisons, being brought before kings and rulers for my name’s sake. And it shall turn to you for a testimony. Settle it therefore in your hearts, not to meditate before what ye shall answer: For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist. And ye shall be betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and kinsfolks, and friends; and some of you shall they cause to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake. But there shall not an hair of your head perish. In your patience possess ye your souls. And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto. For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days! for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.
    —Luke 21:12-28 KJV {emphasis added}

    Out of the sky He will come and we will enter our ultimate Sanctum. And what is the actual color of that sky? Cerulean—the official name for the blue that encompasses our world.

And so the ne plus ultra of titles had come.

But there is one more interesting piece of trivia. After I had decided on the name, I surfed around to see if there was anything like it out on the Web and I stumbled upon this astonishing piece of synchronicity. So not only did I have a name, but this blog is destined to be the blog of the new millennium!

Now you know the secrets; the mysterious has been unveiled. I hope none feel diminished for want of one more mystery now gone t0 resolution.

With that—and the lateness of the hour—I bid you till another day, Adieu!

{And yes, the image above is done in pure cerulean, being RGB 155/196/226 and HTML code 9BC4E2.}