Brennan Manning - The Rabbis Heartbeat

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2003 by Brennan Manning

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ISBN 978-1-57683-469-5

Cover and interior design by David Carlson Design
Cover photograph: Deborah Raven/Photonica
Creative Team: Dan Rich, Scharlotte Rich, Greg Clouse

Some of the anecdotal illustrations in this book are true to life and are included with the permission of the persons involved. All other illustrations are composites of real situations, and any resemblance to people living or dead is coincidental.

This book incorporates content originally published in Abbas Child copyright 1994, 2002 by Brennan Manning and published by NavPress.

Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80920.

Unless otherwise identified, all Scripture quotations in this publication are taken from The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB), 1985 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd., and Doubleday & Company, Inc. Other versions used include: the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION (NIV), Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society, used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House, all rights reserved.

Manning, Brennan.

The rabbis heartbeat / Brennan Manning.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-57683-469-7

1. Christian life. 2. Jesus Christ--Person and offices. I. Title.

BV4501.3.M255 2003

248.4--dc21

2003008314

Printed in the United States of America

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 / 15 14 13 12 11 10

The Rabbi doesnt want us to be perfect, just real. Yet at times we try so hard to please God and impress othersdetermined to be perfect Christiansthat were sucked dry of energy and sickened by our own slick surface and inner hypocrisy. It leaves us feeling dangerously brittle, as lifeless and fruitless as a tree in midwinter swoon.

We need a divine transfusion. The Rabbis heartbeat is for us, not against us. Though He will always cut away the counterfeit green and barrenness of our hypocrisy, He will never crush the bruised reed of our broken lives. The hewn branches He leaves along the pathway are never the result of disgust, but always the result of His care-filled pruning.

Come then, with Brennan, and listen to the Rabbis heartbeat; lean in close to the warm reality of what His incarnation and resurrection can mean in the routines of your life. Feel the vitality that returns to your soul when you accept yourself, receive His love, and revel in His grace.

I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish (Ezekiel 17:24).

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us,
that we should be called children of God!

And that is what we are.

1 JOHN 3:1

No thought can contain Him, no word can express Him;
He is beyond anything we can intellectualize or imagine.

B. MANNING

I have come that they might have life, and that they
might have it more abundantly.

JOHN 10:10

he dark riddle of life is illuminated in Jesus; the meaning, purpose, and goal of everything that happens to us, and the way to make it all count can only be learned from the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Nothing that exists can exist beyond the pale of His presence, nothing is irrelevant to it, nothing is without significance in it.

The sorrow of God lies in our fear of Him, our fear of life, and our fear of ourselves. As a father gathers his children into his arms at the end of a long and tiring day, so God longs to draw us into His embrace. No matter what your past or present, come; lean back in the shelter of His love and listen to the Rabbis heartbeat. Let Him teach you about life, death, and eternity as Abbas beloved child. Take an unflinching look at yourself as you really are. Then look at who you are meant to become as you travel this earth as a child of God on the journey called life.