You have to find a place to break up the prayer, which some translations already do. Here's a shot of the NIV with the suggested "bridge chapter" material highlighted. If I knocked it around and gave it a heading, the raised/co-raised coherence would be even more striking.

A thought that has stayed w/me since @nelson_hsieh7's lecture on ancient text divisions in Ephesians: one witness carves a new "chapter" out of 1:19b to 2:11. Big advantage to keeping "raised & seated" in the same unit as "co-raised & co-seated." I like it.

Every July since 2010 our @torreyhonors @biolau students have visited Tyndale House for a tour & a talk. I didn't expect it to happen this summer since they are tearing down the library as we speak! But the staff worked it out for us. Thanks! Check out their exciting progress.

Fantastic intro lecture on a technical topic by @nelson_hsieh7 at @Tyndale_House last week. My undergrads (drawn from all academic majors, but all currently immersed in Ephesians) ate it up, took notes, asked questions, & have been using the info in our 3-week class.

(Left "chopological sophisters" on the shelf this time; I'm no Tyndale.).

Just got to use the phrases "self-important gasbags" and "logic-chopping chatterboxes" in the same paragraph. And I'm not even attacking anybody. But I might be a bit overcaffeinated.

Great gospel sermon this morning at Eden Baptist in Cambridge, linking Jesus' admiration of the Centurion's faith (Mt 8:11, "many will come from east & west") w/Ps 107:3, those "whom He has gathered from the lands, from east & west, from north & south.".

"The possibility of praying in a more Trinitarian way is all promise and no threat, all invitation and no danger. Christian prayer is already thoroughly, pervasively, structurally Trinitarian whether you have been noticing it or not.".

Decorative bit from Waterland's Discourse of Fundamentals, 1735. (Waterland was one dude who knew how to FUND the MENTAL FUN of FUNDAMENTALS, knowwhatimean?)

C.S. Lewis on how his way of writing about Christian doctrine for a general audience is "just a technique," adding "I’m desperately anxious to see it widely learned." Oct 1945 letter (Letters Vol 2)

If you had a bunch of them they were in a stack: Not a suuuubstack. If you want more explanations, you have to send me a self-addressed stamped envelope. Inside another envelope, of course. 2 week reply time.

Back in the 90s we didn't have memes, we had zines, dadgummit. When we wanted to make fun of bad ideas, we had to draw scenarios by hand, print them out, and then mail them to people. Here's one about evangelism, which I printed the size of a Chick tract.

A few details. Works, 1:284

"Read all the other prayers of Paul (as Col 1:10, Phil 1:9), and they all fall short of the prayer here, Eph 1:17." -Goodwin.

Detailed and encouraging profile of David Watson @dfwatson3, the new president at @AsburySeminary.

All I'm saying is, if you're one of those dudes who tries to magnify by a concave mirror the sidereal hemisphere, give it a rest. You're not helping the sidereal hemisphere or the people who'd like to have a look at it.

Samuel Johnson on the uneasy fit between theology and poetry: "The ideas of Christian theology are too simple for eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament; to recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror the.sidereal hemisphere.".

I guess you're never too old for a plain old "I somehow forgot to prepare anything at all for this Major Occasion and in fact I'm not sure why I'm here or who all you people are" anxiety dream. Good grief.

Some reasons to praise God, selected at random from Christopher Smart's Jubilate Agno:

The most transformative Protestant treatment of nature & grace is Spenser's Fowre Hymnes. Well under 1500 lines of iambic pentameter, but it's written to repel the merely curious, who won't submit to being instructed by it.