Pow

The old Interpreter's Bible, which is awesome, on 1 Peter 12-19:

"... To be reconciled to God involves one in a life unreconciled with the world. One is called out to be a Christian; he no longer drifts 'along on the stream of this world's ideas of living' (Eph. 2:1). The new life of the Christian is not only at odds with the old life; it is a rebuke to the life that is not centered in God. Strange when Christians are not persecuted! For Christians to be so safely conformed to the world and its course of living that they run into no trouble at all may well be an indication that they have denatured their way of life of its radical, world-judging, and world-changing spirit. They are no longer able to see the difference between what is Christian and what is not. Or perhaps the N.T. conception of the Christ has been conveniently toned down, maybe even lost through a dangerous ignorance of the nature of Christianity. Christ is no serviceable addendum to human life; he is the radical center to which life must be reconciled and conformed. ..." (The Interpreter's Bible, Vol. XII. George Arthur Buttrick, ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1955) 143.)

I once ran into a glass wall in a hotel conference center in Mexico. There was no etching on the glass and no framing along the floor or ceiling, and it had just been cleaned, and I was on a 10-minute break in which I needed to squeeze in email, voice mail and a trip to the boys' room. I was trotting across a hall at about quarter jogging speed, and suddenly I was thrown back almost to the floor. It felt like I had been hit in the nose with an invisible baseball bat. Blood everywhere.

That paragraph hits me with similar force.