The Wisdom of Guigo

Affluence conceals and increases wretchedness. It does not take it away.
Prefer to be taught rather than to teach.
Your burden is not nearly as heavy as the Lord's.
Flee from your own faults. The flaws of others will not hurt you.
Be angry with the sinner only if you think it will do him good.
It is your lack of interior pleasures that makes you go looking for exterior ones.
Your purpose is not to be seen or known or loved or admired or praised. Your purpose is to see, know, love, admire and praise God.
We quickly accept an obtuse thought when an important person speaks it.
Never rejoice if you are better than others. Be sorry they are not better, and accept responsibility for it.
If you need to hate someone, hate yourself. No one else has hurt you more.
It is a mistake to love things that will inevitably decay, and to be annoyed when they do.
If it is for your own advantage that you do something for someone else, you are doing it for yourself.

Guigo I: Meditations
Near to the Heart of God: December 28

Faith in faith?

Wow, two days in a row....

A Unitarian Universalist student student said once that what he believed in was faith, and when I asked him faith in what, his answer was faith in faith. I don't mean to disparage him -- he was doing the best he could -- but it struck me that having faith in faith was as barren as being in love with love or having money that you spend only on the accumulation of more money.

Listening to Your Life: Frederick Buechner; December 18; p. 327

In Memory of Christopher Hitchens

I've always kind of liked Hitchens... Is it just me or is it ironic that people are wishing him to Rest In Peace? I thought today's C.S. Lewis reading is particularly appropriate...

If what you want is an argument against Christianity (and I well remember how eagerly I looked for such arguments when I began to be afraid it was true) you can easily find some stupid and unsatisfactory Christian and say, 'So there's your boasted new man! Give me the old kind.' But if once you have begun to see that Christianity is on other grounds probable, you will know in your heart that this is only evading the issue. What can you ever really know of other people's souls -- of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you  do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbors or memories of what you have read in books. What will all that chatter and hearsay count (will you even be able to remember it?) when the anesthetic fog which we call 'nature' or 'the real world' fades away and the Presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable?
The Business of Heaven -- December 17; p. 311

Prayer and the Kingdom of God....

These two from this morning were too good not to get on the blog. -- drs

'God', said Pascal, 'instituted prayer in order to lend to his creatures the dignity of causality.'
He seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye.

The Business of Heaven -- November 17

If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand, we would know that the Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, beauty is as close to breathing and crying out to born both within ourselves and within the world; we would know that the Kingdom of God is what we all of us hunger for above all other things even when we don't know its name or realize that it's what we're starving to death for. The Kingdom of God is where our best dreams come from and our truest prayers. We glimpse at those moments when we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know. We catch sight of it when at some moment of crisis a strength seems to come to us that is greater than our own strength. The Kingdom of God is where we belong. It is home, and whether we realize it or not, I think we are all of us homesick for it. 
Listening to Your Life -- November 17 pp.303-4

Serving Others

Time to get  back at it...

Faith takes us away from love for the present with its honors, fortunes, and pleasures. These things hinder true love and service. They are a burden...
Only the word of God makes us wholesome and blessed. The divine Word brings faith. Faith brings love. Love results in good deeds.   
---- Martin Bucer : Instruction in Christian Love
Near to the Heart of God: November 10

God

It is as impossible to prove or disprove that God exists beyond the various conflicting ideas people have dreamed up about him as it is to prove or disprove that Goodness exists beyond the various conflicting ideas people have dreamed up about what is good.

It is as impossible for man to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even Sherlock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle.

All-wise. All-powerful. All-loving. All-knowing. We bore to death both God and ourselves with our chatter. God cannot be expressed but only experienced.

Listening to Your Life: October 6; p. 268

God is Busy Everywhere

 I've been thinking about faith lately and this devotion came up... it seems to me that without faith, that atheists are essentially right. -- drs


Faith is God's interpreter. Without faith, all we hear is a noisy babbling. Faith identifies God at work. In the same way that Moses heard the voice of God in the burning bush, we, with faith to guide us, are able to perceive him in what appears to be clutter and confusion. Faith will transform our perception. In this life, faith is our light. With it we can know what we can't see, we can touch what we can't feel, we can strip the world of everything superficial. Faith is the combination to God's vault.

-- Near to the Heart of God; Oct.4 --- Jean-Pierre de Caussade: Abandonment to Divine Providence

God's Megaphone - Pain

Sorry for not posting.... this is one of the great C.S. Lewis classics.

The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it. Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim suspects their existence; they are masked evil. Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil; every man knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt... And pain is not only immediately recognizable evil, but evil impossible to ignore. We can rest contentedly in our sins and our stupidities; and anyone who has watched gluttons shoveling down the most exquisite foods as if they did not know what they were eating, will admit that we can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

The Business of Heaven; September 25, p. 242

Doubt and Faith

"I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"
  Mark 9:24 TNIV

I think it is healthy to be uncertain every now and then. Frederick Buechner wrote, "Every morning you should wake up in your bed and ask yourself: 'Can I believe it all again today?' ... At least five times out of 10, the answer should be 'No' because the 'No' is as important as the 'Yes,' maybe more so."

We should not be ashamed if we are drawn like magnets to the uncertainties and questions inherent in faith. Faith is not supposed to come naturally. Faith is the venture of human consideration and divine illumination. Only in a world where faith is difficult can faith exist.

This is taken from today's Relevant Magazine daily devotional written by Ed Gungor.  I liked the Buechner quote. -- drs

The Doom of Satan

I'm winding down on Stott's Through the Bible: Through the Year devotional.  I thought this one from last Saturday did a nice job of boiling a lot of theology down.

... now that the dragon, the two beasts, and the prostitute have all been destroyed, the time has come for the judgement of individuals before the great white throne. John writes, "The dead are judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books" (Revelation 20:12). Most emphatically he is not saying that sinners are justified by their good works. No, we sinners are justified by God's grace alone through faith in Christ crucified alone. At the same time we will be judged by our works, for judgement day will be a public occasion, and good works will be the only public and visible evidence that can be produced to attest the authenticity of our faith. "Faith without deeds is dead" (James 2:26). True believers have their names written in the Lamb's Book of Life (Rev. 13:8; 20:15).  p. 424

C.S. Lewis on Originality

I love how C.S. Lewis talks about the structure of the church being the place where we can truly become our own unique individual selves.  -- drs

No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work's sake, and what men call originality will come unsought.  Business of Heaven; August 23, p.215

Surely God saves different souls in different ways? To preach instantaneous conversion and eternal security as if they must be the experiences of all who are saved, seems to me very dangerous; the very way to drive some into presumption and others into despair. How very different were the callings of the disciples. I don't agree that if anyone were completely a new creature, you and I would necessarily recognize him as such. It takes holiness to detect holiness.
Business of Heaven; August 24, p. 216
 

Laziness

The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing: But the soul of the diligent shall be made fat. Proverbs 13:4 KJV

Laziness is a poison that will spread through all the faculties of the soul. It infects the will by making work undesirable. it blinds the understanding so that the best of resolutions has no effect. We put off doing anything about slothfulness.

On the other hand, simply being fast has little to commend it. Things must be done at the proper time, and in the best manner possible. Speedy carelessness is only an artful, refined laziness.

This disorder results from a failure to consider the value of something done at the right time and in the right way . God gradually withdraws his graces from those who neglect them.

God has granted you the morning, but he does not promise the evening. Spend each day as if it were your last.   ---- Lawrence Scupoli: The Siritual Combat

A personal response: I have never considered the fact that laziness is an indicator of the condition of a soul. Let me understand O God, the difference between being still in order to know you, and being still because I am not inclined to work.

Near to the Heart of God: August 23 

Diversity of the Spiritual Body

The sacrifice of the selfish privacy which is daily demanded of us is daily repaid a hundredfold in the true growth of personality which the life of the Body encourages. Those who are members of one another become as diverse as the hand and the ear. That is why the worldlings are so monotonously alike compared with the almost fantastic variety of the saints. Obedience is the road to freedom, humility the road to pleasure, unity the road to personality. -- C.S. Lewis
The Business of Heaven; August 20; p.212

Unbelief

Unbelief is as much of a choice as belief is. What makes it in many ways more appealing is that whereas to believe in something requires some measure of understanding and effort, not to believe doesn't require much of anything at all.
--Frederick Buechner   Listening to Your Life: August 19; p. 218

The Difference Between Law and Gospel

The law points to sin; the gospel remedies it.
The law condemns; the gospel redeems.
The law is a word of wrath; the gospel is a word of grace.
The law fills us with despair; the gospel comforts.
The law says, "Pay the debt!" The gospel says "Christ paid it."
The law says, "You are a sinner!" The gospel says, "Your sins are forgiven."
The law says, "Make amends!" The gospel says, "Christ has made amends for you."
The law says, "God is angry with you!" The gospel says, "God loves you."
-- Patrick Hamiltion: Treatise on the Law and the Gospel

Near to the Heart of God;  August 18

Lewis in the Purpose of the Secular Community

The secular community, since it exists for our natural good and not for our supernatural, has no higher end than to facilitate and safeguard the family, and friendship, and solitude. To be happy at home, said  Johnson, is the end of all human endeavour. As long as we are thinking only of natural values we must say that the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests him; and that all economics, politics, laws, armies, and institutions, save in so far as they prolong and multiply such scenes, are a mere ploughing the sand and sowing the ocean, a meaningless vanity and vexation of spirit.
The Business of Heaven: August 16, p. 208

The Origin of Evil

Yesterday's reading from Near to the Heart of God had some good things to say about the concept of evil.
All qualities that are in God are good. If they are in God they are infinitely perfect. It is absolutely impossible that they could have any evil defect.
Good things can be used in an evil way. There is only one explanation for the existence of evil, guilt, and deformity in the natural and moral world. These things have been separated from God.
Don't blame God for evil. It would make more sense to blame the sun for darkness! We have free will. We make choices between right and wrong. Every quality is equally good. It becomes an evil when we, of our own free will, separate it from God. The same thing can be both evil and good depending upon whether it is used by a devil or an angel. -- William Law: Mystical Writings

R.I.P. John Stott

I'm still processing the death of John Stott, one of my favorite theologians.  What an amazing guy and a true inspiration.  Sunday's section from Through the Bible: Through the Year P. 402 ends with the following.


Without love everything is nothing.

The Painter of Lite™

 I happened upon an old card from Square Halo books.  Upon exploring the site a bit I found this article about Thomas Kinkade and sentimentality by Gregory Wolfe.  I'm mainly quoting the end of the article but thought it was interesting. -- drs

The word sentimentality is now a term of opprobrium, but it is notoriously hard to define. Of course, that hasn’t prevented it from being the source of a few witty epigrams. The Zen scholar R. H. Blyth once noted: “We are being sentimental when we give to a thing more tenderness than God gives to it.” That’s good, but as usual Oscar Wilde hits closer to the mark: “a sentimentalist is one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.”

There are times when criticizing sentimentality seems like overkill. But it would be wrong simply to dismiss the phenomenon— and the specific instance I’ve been discussing, religious kitsch—as nothing more than examples of harmless mediocrity. The great theologian, Cardinal Henri de Lubac, once wrote: “There is nothing more demanding than the taste for mediocrity. Beneath its ever moderate appearance there is nothing more intemperate; nothing surer in its instinct; nothing more pitiless in its refusals. It suffers no greatness, shows beauty no mercy.”

Perhaps, at its best, sentimentality strives for something approximating the theological virtues of hope and love. But in refusing to see the world as it is, sentimentality reduces hope to nostalgia. And in seeking to escape ambiguity and the consequences of the Fall, it denies the heart of love, which is compassion. Unless compassion means the act of suffering with the other in their otherness, it becomes meaningless. Well-intentioned as the purveyors and consumers of sentiment may be, they still want the luxury of an emotion without having to pay the price for it.

Faith Defined and Illustrated

Stott puts  H.L. Mencken in his place : )


It comes therefore as a shock that these two spheres of human uncertainty (the future and the unseen) are precisely those in which faith specializes and even flourishes! It is the function of faith to apprehend both the unseen present and the unrealized future. Put simply, faith is the assurance that the future we anticipate will take place and that the present we cannot see is nevertheless real.

Of course, unbelievers scoff at Christian faith. According to H.L. Mencken, the so-called sage of Baltimore, "Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." It is witty but inaccurate. Faith is not a synonym for credulity or superstition.  It is neither irrational nor illogical. No, faith and reason are never placed in antithesis to one another in Scripture. Faith and sight are contrasted, but not faith and reason. On the contrary, "Those who know your name put their trust in you" (Ps. 9:10 NRSV). They trust because they know. The reasonableness of trust arises from the trustworthiness of its object, and nobody is more trustworthy than God.

Through the Bible: Through the Year; p. 391

Screwtape Explains the Disadvantages of War

Remember that Screwtape is the demon and his perspective is pretty much coming from "the dark side."

Of course war is entertaining... But, if we are not careful, we shall see thousands turning in this tribulation to the enemy [God], while tens of thousands who do not go so far as that will nevertheless have their attention diverted from themselves to values and causes which they believe to be higher than the self.

Consider too what undesirable deaths occur in wartime. Men are killed in places where they knew they might be killed and to which they go, if they are at all of the Enemy's party, prepared. How much better for us if all humans died in costly nursing homes amid doctors who lie, nurses who lie, friends who lie, as we have trained them, promising life to the dying, encouraging the belief that sickness excuses every indulgence...

How disastrous for us is the continual remembrance of death which war enforces. One of our best weapons, contented worldliness, is rendered useless. In wartime not even a human can believe that he is going to live forever.

The Business of Heaven: July 28, p. 192

Your Reputation

Whoa, being "on vacation" has really set me back a bit.... well here we go.  I actually think the following passage is really good advice for the issue of bullying. 


Ignoring a negative comment about yourself is a better remedy than becoming resentful and planning revenge. Contempt for injuries makes them vanish. If we become angry we tacitly admit the truth of the accusation. Fear of losing our good name is the result of not trusting its foundation -- a good life. Souls firmly anchored on Christian virtue can pay little attention to the torrent of a critical tongue.
   Reputation is like a sign. It points to virtue. If your reputation is taken away by wagging tongues, don't be disturbed. Like a beard, it will grow out again. If God permits it to be taken from us, he will either give us a better one or help us with holy humility. -- Francis de Sales: The Devout Life

Near to the Heart of God: July 27

Catching up on some Lewis quotes...

I'm catching up on some Lewis quotes that I'll just put in some short quotes that I liked. -- drs

The longer I looked into it the more I came to suspect that I was perceiving a universal law. ['One converses better when one does not say "Let us converse"'].

Every preference of a small good to a great, or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made.

You can't get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first.
-- The Business of Heaven; July 17

The infinite value of each human soul is not a Christian doctrine. God did not die for man because of some value He perceived in him. The value of each human soul considered simply in itself, out of relation to God, is zero. -- The Business of heaven; July 20   Yeah, that really isn't the stuff of our current, feel good, look for the goodness within, pop psych, nonsense.... -- drs

Vocation - perhaps Buechner's most famous quote

Yes, this may be Frederick Buechner's most famous quote. I was nice to see it in it's whole context. Whoa, I just checked the original in Wishful Thinking and Listening to Your Life has changed the original "cigarette ads" to "TV deodorant commercials"... kind of interesting. -- drs

It comes from the latin vocare, to call, and means the work a man is called to by God.
There are different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Super-ego, or Self-Interest.
By and large a good rule for finding out is this. The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you've presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials [cigarette ads], the chances are you've missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you're bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren't helping your patients much either.
Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

The Goal of Maturity

If Christian maturity is maturity in our relation to Christ, then the clearer our vision of Christ, the more convinced we are that he is worthy of our commitment.... The truth is that there are many Jesuses on offer in the world's religous supermarkets, caricatures of the authentic Jesus. There is Jesus the ascetic, Jesus the clown of Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar, Jesus the capitalist and Jesus the socialist, Jesus the founder of modern business, and Jesus the urban guerilla.  All these images are defective; none of them is calculated to win our wholehearted allegiance.

Jesus Christ has double supremacy as head of the universe and head of the church. He is the Lord of both creations. When we see him thus, our place is on our faces, prostrate before him. Away, then, with our petty, puny, pygmy Jesuses! Away with our Jesus clowns and Jesus pop stars, our political messiahs and revolutionaries. If this is how we think of Christ, no wonder our immaturities persist. If only the veil could be taken from our eyes and we could see Jesus as he is in the fullness of his divine-human person of saving work. Then we would give him the honor that is due to his name, and we would grow into a mature relationship with him.

Through the Bible:Through the Year; p. 375

Time off.... Before You Eat

OK, not to rant or anything but I'm away from home this week and I'm trying to log into my account at my wonderful brother-in-law's place and it took me about 1/2 an hour to log in because I can never remember my correct password for one thing and I can't read those goofy squiggly letter password protectors for another.... grrrrrr.  My BOL suggested I write about this frustrating experience and relate it to somehow getting into heaven...I'm sure there is some kind of humorous connection there somewhere.  Also I picked up a Madeline L'Engle devotional for using in the future... probably a worthy successor to Buechner.


When you sit down to eat, pray:   This is a wonderful mystery of your work, O Maker and Governor of the world. You sustain life with food!  How great a thing it is that you sustain so many creatures. "The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing" (Psalm 145:15-16)

I ask you to continue life in my body through this food.
You are a liberal distributor of your gifts. You give us all kinds of good things to use. Because you are pure, the things you give are pure. Grant that I may not misuse them. Don't let what you have given for the preservation of my body become the poison of my soul.
   The meat and drink before me is for my use and not for me to abuse. You have given them to help me and not to hurt me.
-- John Bradford: Daily Meditations
Near to the Heart of God: July 12

Who Do You Say That I Am?

 Relevant Magazine is a really nice resource for keeping up with the Christian world of the 20-somethings.  Their devotional resource is another one I take in every day.
Deeper Walk Devotionals

Today, popular thought holds that Jesus was simply a good man, a gifted teacher, or one of many prophets to grace the earth. Yet, as the commentator Matthew Henry aptly observed, "It is possible for men to have good thoughts of Christ, and yet not right ones, a high opinion of him, and yet not high enough."

Monday, July 11 Deeper Walk Devotional from Relevant Magazine

No Insurance against Heartbreak

This is one of those classic Lewis quotes about the risks of love.


To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket -- safe, dark, motionless, airless -- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

The Business of Heaven; July 9, p. 176

Morning Prayer

Wow, two in a row from Near to the Heart of God; July 7. This one is kind of on the practical side. -- drs

Look for chances to serve God today. Are there possible temptations lying in wait? Do you think something might make you angry or vain?  Resolve to make the best of every opportunity to serve God and increase devotion that comes your way. Prepare carefully to avoid, resist, and overcome harmful things. It is not enough simply to resolve to do this. Make a plan of action. For instance, if I know I will have a conference with an emotional, angry person today, I will resolve to avoid offending him. But then I will try to think of gentle words to speak to him, or try to find someone who can help me by keeping him in good humor...

Then, be humble before God. Admit that you can't do any of this on your own. Offer all your good intentions to God, as though you were holding out your heart in your hands. Ask him to be involved in your plans for the day.

These prayerful thoughts should be taken care of quickly in the morning, before you leave your bedroom. God will bless your day.
-- Francis  de Sales: The Devout Life  

A personal response
Lord, here is my wretched heart. With your inspiration it has made some good plans. It is too weak to accomplish what it wants. Give your blessing through Christ, in whose honor I dedicate today and all the remaining days of my life.

God is Far and Near

Today's devotion talks about two concepts: of God's transcendence and His immanence. I've always found the distinction helpful. -- drs

Even though God is glorious, he is still intimate. God is high and yet low, enormous and yet within us, awesome and yet loveable. Will we ever cease being ignorant of God? When we advise people to look for God in their own hearts, they are as mystified as if we had told them to look in some unexplored territory in a distant land.
A personal response
Command me, Forbid me. What do you want me to do? What do you want me to refrain from doing? Whether I am lifted up or cast down, comforted or suffering, working for you or doing nothing worthwhile, I continue to love you. I yield my will to you. With Mary I say, "May it be to me as you have said." (Luke 1:38)
Francois de Fenelon: Meditations and Devotions

Near to the Heart of God: July 6

Crux of the Matter

Back from the Cornerstone Festival. No rain and hot but very worthwhile as always.  The following meditations (through July 12) are drawn from a 200th anniversary sermon at the Congregational church in Rupert, Vermont.

[What all the people who have attended this church over the years] had in common was that, like us, they believed (or sometimes believed and sometimes didn't believe; or wanted to believe; or liked to think they believed) that the universe, that everything there is, didn't come about by chance but was created by God. Like us they believed, on their best days anyway, that all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, this God was a God like Jesus, which is to say a God of love. That, I think, is the crux of the matter... In the beginning it was not some vast cosmic explosion that made the heavens and the earth.  It was a loving God who did. That is our faith and the faith of all the ones who came before us.

The Heschel Series - A Universal Perception

The sense of the ineffable is not an esoteric faculty but an ability with which all men are endowed; it is potentially as common as sight or as the ability to form syllogisms. For just as man is endowed with the ability to know certain aspects of reality, he is endowed with the ability to know that there is more than what he knows.

Man is Not Alone; pp. 19-20

The Heschel Series - Experience Without Expression

Always we are chasing words, and always words recede. But the greatest experiences are those for which we have no expression. To live only on that which we can say is to wallow in the dust, instead of digging up the soil.

Man is Not Alone; p. 15-16

The Heschel Series - Philosophy begins in Wonder 2

What fills us with radical amazement is not the relations in which everything is embedded but the fact that even the minimum of perception is a maximum of enigma. The most incomprehensible fact is the fact that we comprehend at all.

Man is Not Alone; p. 14

The Heschel Series - Philosophy begins in Wonder

We may doubt anything, except that we are struck with amazement. When in doubt, we raise questions; when in wonder, we do not even know the question. Doubts may be resolved, radical amazement can never be erased. There is no answer in the world to man's radical wonder. Under the running sea of our theories and scientific explanations lies the aboriginal abyss of radical amazement.

Man is Not Alone; p. 13

The Heschel Series - Radical Amazement 2

Wonder is a state of mind in which we do not look at reality through the latticework of our memorized knowledge; in which nothing is taken for granted. Spiritually we cannot live my merely reiterating borrowed or inherited knowledge. Inquire of your soul what does it know, what does it take for granted. It will tell you only no-thing is taken for granted; each thing is a surprise, being is unbelievable.

Man is Not Alone; p. 12

The Heschel Series - Radical Amazement

Wonder rather than doubt is the root of knowledge.

Wonder goes beyond knowledge. We do not doubt that we doubt, but we are amazed at our ability to doubt, amazed at our ability to wonder. He who is sluggish will berate doubt; he who is blind will berate wonder. Doubt may come to an end,  wonder lasts forever. 

Man is Not Alone; p. 12

The Heschel Series - The Disparity of Soul and Reason

The awareness of the unknown is earlier than the awareness of the known.  The tree of knowledge grows upon the soil of mystery... We should not expect thoughts to give us more than what they contain. Soul and reason are not the same.

Just as the simple-minded equates appearance with reality, so does the overwise equate the expressible with the ineffable, the logical with the metalogical, concepts with things.

The awareness of the ineffable is that with which our search must begin... The search of reason ends at the shore of the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide.

Man is Not Alone; pp. 7-8

The Heschel Series - The Ineffable part 2

What smites us with unquenchable amazement is not that which we grasp and are able to convey but that which lies within our reach but beyond our grasp; not the quantitative aspect of nature but something qualitative; not what is beyond our range in time and space but the true meaning, source and end of being, in other words, the ineffable.

Man is Not Alone; pp. 4-5

The Heschel Series - The Ineffable

I'm pre-posting since I'm at Cornerstone this week.  I'm following Abraham Joshua Heschel's book Man is Not Alone... it's best read in small bites.  Can be kind of overwhelming but full of rich quotes.... drs

 The attempt to convey what we see and cannot say is the everlasting theme of mankind's unfinished symphony, a venture in which adequacy is never achieved. Only those who live on borrowed words believe in their gift of expression. A sensitive person knows that the intrinsic, the most essential is never expressed.

Man is Not alone; p. 4

John Wesley -- you can quote

Strangely I came across this quote in two different books today.  It sounds like a famous one but I wasn't familiar with it so here it is:

Do all the good you can
By all the means you can
In all the ways you can
In all the places you can
At all the times you can
To all the people you can
As long as ever you can.
-- John Wesley

Making College Count by Derek Melleby p. 36   and Patches of Godlight by Jan Karon
Make College Count and Patches of Godlight 
 

Friendship and a crazy "coincidence?"

So on Wednesday the 22nd I got up and read my Business of Heaven devotion which included the following quote: "Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create)."   I had been having some problems with my car that my local mechanic wasn't able to fix so I went online looking for Honda repair shop ratings. In the comments section for Mike's Automobile Repair shop was a very positive review, the shop responded with the above quote.  It was an unbelievable coincidence as this isn't exactly one of Lewis' more well known quotes and was posted a few months ago.  Needless to say I had to give them a call.  They had openings and yesterday I took a 40 mile trip and got my car fixed.  Friendship may be unnecessary, but a well running car is kind of a necessity.
-- Thanks Brandon, Mike and other technician guy, yesterday was a really good day. -- drs

Placarding Christ Crucified

But his preaching of the cross,... is a stumbling block to human pride, for it insists that we cannot achieve our salvation by anything we do.  Indeed, we cannot even contribute to it. Salvation is a totally noncontributory gift of God. As Archbishop William Temple put it, "The only thing of my very own which I contribute to my redemption is the sin from which I need to be redeemed."
Through the Bible: Through the Year; p. 349

Something Dimly Seen

This one goes out to my mother-in-law MariLu who I know is a person who would appreciate this particular experience related by Buechner.  -- drs
 
I remember a spring or so walking with a friend through a stand of maple trees at sugaring time. The sap buckets were hung from the trees, and if you were quiet, you could hear the sap dripping into them: all through the woods, if you kept still, you could hear the hushed drip-droppings of the sap into a thousand buckets or more hung out in the early spring woods with the sun coming down in long shafts through the trees. The sap of a maple is like rainwater, very soft, and almost without taste except for the faintest tinge of sweetness to it, and when my friend said he'd never tried it, I offered to give him a taste. I had to unhook the bucket from the tap to hold it for him, and when he bent his head to drink from it, I tipped the bucket down to his lips, and just as he was about to take a sip, he looked up at me and said, "I have a feeling you ought to be saying some words."

Well, my friend is no more or less religious than the next person, and we'd been chattering on about nothing in particular as we walked along until just at that moment as I tipped the bucket to his lips, he said what he said, and said it partly as a joke. He had a feeling I should be saying some words, he said, as I tipped the bucket to his lips so he could taste for the first time the taste of the lifeblood of a tree. And of course for a moment those unsaid words fell through the air of those woods like the shafts of sun, and it was no joke because the whole place became another place or became more deeply the place it truly was; and he and I became different, something happened for a second to the air around us and between us. It was not much and lasted only for a moment before it was gone. Bit it happened -- this glimpse of something dimly seen, dimly heard, this sense of something deeply hidden.

Listening to Your Life; June 21, p-. 163-4

The Fruit of the Spirit

We need to cultivate the things of the Spirit by our wise use of Sundays, our daily disciplined private devotion, our regular public worship and attendance at the Lord's Supper, and our involvement in Christian service. For these are God-given means of grace, that is, channels through which God's grace comes to us, and a major secret of sanctification.

Through the Bible:Through the Year; p.348

The Especial Glory of Affection

Affection ... can 'rub along' with the most unpromising people.  Yet oddly enough this very fact means that it can in the end make appreciations possible which, but for it, might never have existed. We may say, and not quite untruly, that we have chosen our friends and the woman we love for their various excellences -- for beauty, frankness, goodness of heart, wit, intelligence, or what not. but it had to be the particular kind of wit, the particular kind of beauty, the particular kind of goodness that we like, and we have our personal tastes in these matters. That is why friends and lovers feel that they were 'made for one another'. ...

Growing fond of 'old so-and-so', at first simply because he happens to be there, I presently begin to see that there is 'something in him' after all. The moment when one first says, really meaning it, that though he is not 'my sort of man' he is a very good man 'in his own way' is one of liberation. It does not feel like that; we may feel only tolerant and indulgent. But really we have crossed a frontier. The 'in his own way' means that we are getting beyond our own idiosyncrasies, that we are learning to appreciate goodness or intelligence in themselves, not merely goodness or intelligence flavoured and served to suit our own palate.

The Business of Heaven; June 15, pp. 154-5

The Bible Without Tears

Buechner gives some excellent thoughts about how to read the Bible in today's reading.  He gives 7 really good ideas, but I'm only going to share numbers 6 and 7... hey, you really should be getting a copy of this book anyway. --- drs

6. If somebody claims that you have to take the Bible literally, word for word, or not at all, ask him if you have to take John the Baptist literally when he calls Jesus the Lamb of God.

   If somebody claims that no rational person can take a book seriously which assumes that the world was created in six days and man in an afternoon, ask him if he can take Shakespeare seriously whose scientific knowledge would have sent a third-grader into peals of laughter.

7. Finally this. If you look at a window, you see fly-specks, dust, the crack where Juniors Frisbee hit it. If you look through a window, you see the world beyond.

    Something like this is the difference between those who see the Bible as a Holy Bore and those who see it as the Word of God which speaks out of the depths of an almost unimaginable past into the depths of ourselves.
Listening to Your Life;  June 14, p.159

Mockingbird on Friday Night Lights and Glee

This article is an excellent example of comparing and contrasting the Theology of the Cross and the Theology of Glory through current media.

Why don't I have Mockingbird on my list of links????  Soon to be corrected.

Heschel on Knowledge by Appreciation

Abraham Joshua Heschel's prose is more poetic to me than most poetry. -- drs

What is extraordinary appears to us as habit, the dawn of a daily routine of nature. But time and again we awake. In the midst of walking in the never-ending procession of days and nights, we are suddenly filled with a solemn terror, with a feeling of our wisdom being inferior to dust. We cannot endure the heartbreaking splendor of sunsets. Of what avail, then, are opinions, words, dogmas? In the confinement of our study rooms, our knowledge seems to us a pillar of light. But when we stand at the door which opens out to the infinite, we realize that all concepts are but glittering motes that populate a sunbeam.
Man is Not Alone; p. 35

I really liked yesterday's Upper Room devotional..
Thursday's Upper Room Devotional

There are no Ordinary People

This is one of those really famous C.S. Lewis quotes actually from June 7th of The Business of Heaven; p. 147-8

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible  gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare... There are no ordinary people. You have never talked with a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit -- immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

Paul in Athens

It is the comprehensiveness of Paul's message that is impressive. He proclaimed God in his fullness as Creator, Sustainer, Ruler, Father, and Judge.  All this is part of the gospel, or, at least, the necessary prolegomena to the gospel. Many people are rejecting our gospel today, not because they perceive it to be false, but because they perceive it to be trivial. They are looking for an integrated worldview that makes sense of all their experience. We learn from Paul that we cannot preach the gospel of Jesus without the doctrine of God, or the cross without creation, or salvation without judgement, or vice versa. Today's world needs a bigger gospel, the full gospel of Scripture, what Paul later in Ephesus was to call "the entire plan of God" (Acts 20:27 NAB)

 Through the Bible: Through the Year; p. 334

Prayer is Life

I like this thought from an Anonymous Russian: in The Way of the Pilgrim particularly because of the practical nature of what is shared.
 
The truth is: we are aliens to ourselves. We have little desire to know ourselves. We run after many things in this world, and by doing so run away from ourselves...

Prayer is the heart of Christian life. It is essential. Prayer is both the first step and the fulfillment of the devout life. We are directed to pray always. Particular times may be set for other acts of devotion, but for prayer there is no special time. We are to pray constantly.

Sit alone in a quiet place. Take your mind away from every earthy and vain thing. Bow your head to your chest and be attentive, not to your head, but to your heart. Observe your breathing. Let your mind find the place of the heart. At first you will be uncomfortable. If you continue without interruption it will become a joy.

The most wonderful result of this kind of mental silence is that sinful thoughts which come knocking at the door of the mind are turned away. Pray and think what you will. Pray and do what you want. Your thoughts and activity will be purified by prayer. 
Near to the Heart of God; June 8

Hell

Very sorry for not updating lately... computer problems.  Today's June 6th reading from The Business of Heaven continues Lewis' clearly thought out defense of the reality of hell.  Apparently there were questions back in the day... there really is nothing new under the sun. -- drs

The demand the God should forgive such a man while he remains what he is, is based on a confusion between condoning and forgiving. To condone an evil is simply to ignore it, to treat it as if it were good. But forgiveness needs to be accepted as well as offered if it is to be complete: and a man who admits no guilt can accept no forgiveness...

I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end, that the doors of Hell are locked on the inside... (The ghosts in Hell) enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved; just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free.

In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of Hell, is itself a question: 'What are you asking God to do?' To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.

Buechner on Life

Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality -- not as we expect it to be but as it is -- is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily: that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love. This is not just the way things ought to be. Most of the time it is not the way we want things to be.  It is the way things are. And not for one instant do I believe that it is by accident that it is the way things are. That would be quite an accident.
Listening to Your Life  May 24, p.133

The world is full of people who seem to have listened to the wrong voice and are now engaged in life-work in which they find no pleasure or purpose and who run the risk of suddenly realizing someday that they have spent the only years that they are ever going to get in this world doing something which could not matter less to themselves or to anyone else...
There is nothing moralistic or sentimental about this truth. It means for us simply that we must be careful with our lives, for Christ's sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously. Everybody knows that. We need no one to tell it to us. Yet in another way perhaps we do always need to be told, because there is always the temptation to believe that we have all the time in the world, whereas the truth of it is that we do not. We have only a life, and the choice of how we are going to live it must be our own choice, not one that we let the world make for us.
Listening to Your Life  May 27, p.137-8

Two Kinds of People in the End

This is one of those brief Lewis quotes that has profoundly affected how I view the issue of Hell.  Kind of interesting in light of the current controversy surrounding Rob Bell.... -- DRS

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done', and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'  All that are in Hell, choose it.  Without that self-choice there would be no Hell.  No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.  Those who seek find.  To those who knock it is opened.

The Business of Heaven  May 31, p. 142

Sorry for not posting as much as I'd like to have lately. I've been really busy with family and end of year activities. My computer was down for a few days as well...I'm going to put out a few 'make up' posts probably tomorrow.  -- DRS

A Vital Principle

We do a great disservice to the church when we refer to the pastorate as "the ministry." The use of the definite article implies that we think the ordained pastorate is the only ministry there is. But diakonai is the generic word for service; it lacks specificity until a descriptive adjective is added -- pastoral, social, political, medical, educational, and many others.  We need to recover this vision of the wide diversity of ministries to which God calls his people.
Through the Bible: Through the Year;  p. 320

Benaiah, congratulations on your graduation and blessings on your recital today. -- love Dad 

Boar's Head Tavern Quote I found amusing

N.T. Wright comments on Stephen Hawking’s latest diss on heaven.

Hawking is working with a very low-grade and sub-biblical view of ‘going to heaven.’ Of course, if faced with the fully Christian two-stage view of what happens after death — first, a time ‘with Christ’ in ‘heaven’ or ‘paradise,’and then, when God renews the whole creation, bodily resurrection — he would no doubt dismiss that as incredible. But I wonder if he has ever even stopped to look properly, with his high-octane intellect, at the evidence for Jesus and the resurrection? I doubt it — most people in England haven’t. Until he has, his opinion about all this is worth about the same as mine on nuclear physics, i.e. not much.

Life is not a river but a tree

C.S. Lewis is kind of on a roll here.  These are some of his thoughts from The Business of Heaven that I have always appreciated.  -- drs

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the center: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those two again, and at each fork you must make a decision. Even on the biological level life is not like a river but like a tree.  It does not move towards unity but away from it and the creatures grow further apart as they increase in perfection.  Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good. -- May 20, p. 133

I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists of being put back on the right road. A wrong sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil cannot 'develop' into good. Time does not heal it. -- May 21, p.134

The Final Judgement

This one's for you guys K.C. and J.E. 

It will be infallible judgement. If it is favorable we shall have no fear, if unfavorable, no hope, that it is wrong. We shall not only believe, we shall know, know beyond doubt in every fiber of our appalled or delighted being that as the Judge has said, so we are: neither more nor less nor other. We shall perhaps even realize that in some dim fashion we could have known it all along.  We shall know and all creation will know too: our ancestors our parents, our wives or husbands, our children. The unanswerable and (by then) self-evident truth about each will be known to all.
The Business of Heaven, May 19, p.132

the Questions...

The other day Buechner discussed the important questions being in the Bible raises... I thought I'd just share his questions and the scriptures they are derived from.  Just more to think about.  -- drs

* What is a man profited if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? (Matthew 16:26)
* Am I my brother's keeper? (Genesis 4:9)
* If God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31)
* What is truth? (John 18:38)
* What does a man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? (Ecclesiastes 1:3)
* Who is my neighbor? (Luke 10:29)
* What shall I do to inherit eternal life? (Luke 10:25)

Questions

On her deathbed, Gertrude Stein is said to have asked, “What is the answer?” Then, after a long silence, “What is the question?” Don’t start looking in the Bible for the answers it gives. Start listening for the questions it asks.

We are much involved, all of us, with questions about things that matter a good deal today but will be forgotten by this time tomorrow – the immediate wheres and whens and hows that face us daily at home and at work – but at the same time we tend to lose track of the questions about things that matter always, life-and-death questions about meaning, purpose and value. To lose track of such deep questions as these is to risk losing track of who we really are in our own depths and where we are really going. There is perhaps no stronger reason for reading the Bible than that somewhere among all those India-paper pages there awaits each reader whoever he is the one question which though for years he may have been pretending not to hear it, is the central question of his own life.

Listening to Your Life, May 17, p.124

The Importance of The Church

I'm recognizing that I've been reading Through The Bible: Through The Year by John Stott for at least a year now.  This is the introduction from Week 37: The Church in Jerusalem and I remember thinking the first time I read it that Stott's getting kind of cranky in his old age.  This might not sit too well with the current spirit of the age but his point is worth considering. -- drs  


Although I believe that my readers come from different churches or denominations,...we are all committed to the church. At least, I hope we are. I hope that none of my readers is that grotesque anomaly -- an unchurched Christian -- for the New Testament knows nothing of such a monster!  No, we are not only committed to Christ, we are committed to the body of Christ. Indeed, we cannot be one without the other. For the church lies at the center of the purpose of God. God's purpose, conceived in a past eternity, being worked out in history, to be perfected in a future eternity, is not just to save isolated individuals and so perpetuate our loneliness, but rather to call out a people for himself and to build his church. Indeed, Christ died for us not only to redeem us from sin but to purify for himself a people who are enthusiastic for good works (Titus 2:14). So, then, the reason we are committed to the church is that God is.

Hate

I've always believed that the real opposite of love isn't hate, it's apathy. Sounds like Buechner has a similar take. -- drs

Hate is as all-absorbing as love, as irrational, and in it's own way as satisfying. As lovers thrive on the presence of the beloved, haters revel in encounters with the one they hate. They confirm him in all his darkest suspicions. They add fuel to all his most burning animosities. The anticipation of them makes the hating heart pound. The memory of them can be as sweet as young love.

The major difference between hating and loving is perhaps that whereas to love somebody is to be fulfilled and enriched by the experience, to hate somebody is to be diminished and drained by it. Lovers, by losing themselves in their loving, find themselves, become themselves. Haters simply lose themselves. Theirs is the ultimately consuming passion.

Listening to Your Life, May 15, p.123

Love and Fear

Don’t you love devotions that catch you with cleverness and make you laugh at the insight? -- drs

Perfect love, we know, casteth out fear. But so do several other things – ignorance, alcohol, passion, presumption, and stupidity.

The Business of Heaven, May 13, p. 127

Conversion of a Saint

How can the conversion of St. Augustine not be the choice bit of the day? It’s amazing to see how God was at work and how this one conversion had such long lasting ramifications.  -- drs

Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Ephesians 5:14

A perverse will produces lust. Lust yielded to becomes a habit. A habit not resisted becomes a necessity. These were like links of a chain hanging one upon the other, and they bound me hand and foot.  I had two wills: one old, and one new; one carnal, one spiritual.  Their conflict wasted my soul. I was like a sleepy man unable to get up.

 

My introspection dredged up all the misery of my soul and piled it up in full view of my heart. A tremendous emotional storm arose and there was a deluge of tears.

And then I heard a voice of a boy or a girl from the nearby house saying, “Take up and read!” Holding back my tears, I got up, interpreting the child’s words as a command from God to open the Bible and read the first passage I should see.  I snatched it up, opened it, and silently read the first thing I saw.  “Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissention and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature” (Romans 13:13-14).

I had no desire, no need to read further. In the instant that sentence ended, it was as if a peaceful light shone in my heart and all the darkness of doubt vanished.   – Augustine: Confessions

A Personal Response

You give us great variety in our religious experiences, Lord God, but this saint’s account inspires me. If you can work in him, you can work in me. Change me. Make me your own.

Near to the Heart of God   May 12

Predictions of the Second Coming

We must never speak to simple, excitable people about 'the Day' without emphasizing again and again the utter impossibility of prediction. We must try to show them that that impossibility is an essential part of the doctrine.  If you do not believe Our Lord's words, why do you believe in his return at all? And if you do believe them must you not put away from you, utterly and forever, any hope of dating that return? His teaching on the subject quite clearly consists of three propositions; (1) That he will certainly return; (2) That we cannot possibly find out when; (3) And that therefore we must always be ready for Him.
The Business of Heaven,  May 11, p. 125

Meddling

How can you think of saying, "Friend, let me help you get rid of the speck in your eye," when you can't see past the log in your own eye?  -- Matthew 7:4, NLT

We are also tempted to be distressed by the sins and failings of others. We try to fix things. This excites us so much that it keeps us from praying. Worst of all, we trick ourselves into believing we are doing the Lord's work! Good intentions have led to terrible mistakes. Spiritual security comes when we stop being anxious about others and begin to watch after ourselves.

Try to focus on the best in others and the worst in ourselves. This will blind us to their defects. Eventually, we may even think of them as better than ourselves.

--Teresa of Avila: The Life of Teresa of Jesus

Near to the Heart of God: May 8

John Stott's daily Trinitarian Prayer

I have myself found it helpful for many years, at the very beginning of each day, to recite the following trinitarian liturgy, which begins with praise and ends in prayer:

Almighty and everlasting God,
Creator and Sustainer of the universe, I worship you.
Lord Jesus Christ,
Savior and Lord of the world, I worship you.
Holy Spirt,
Sanctifier of the people of God, I worship you.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.
Amen.
Heavenly Father, I pray that this day
I may live in your presence and please you more and more.
Lord Jesus Christ, I pray that this day
I may take up my cross and follow you.
Holy Spirit, I pray that this day your fruit may ripen in
my life -- love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Holy, blessed and glorious Trinity, three persons and one God,
Have mercy upon me.
Amen.

Through the Bible: Through the Year  p. 296

The Gospel World -- Buechner

In the world of the fairy tale, the wicked sisters are dressed as if for a Palm Beach wedding, and in the world of the Gospel it is the killjoys, the phonies, the nitpickers, the holier-than-thous, the loveless and cheerless and the irrelevant who more often than not wear the fancy clothes and go riding around in sleek little European jobs marked Pharisee, Corps Diplomatique, Legislature, Clergy. It is the ravening wolves who wear sheep's clothing. And the good ones, the potentially good anyway, the ones who stand a chance of being saved by God because they know they don't stand a chance of being saved by anybody else?  They go around looking like the town whore, the village drunk, the crook from the IRS, because that is who they are.  When Jesus is asked who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, he reaches into the crowd and pulls out a child with a cheek full of bubble gum and eyes full of whatever a child's eyes are full of and says unless you can become like that, don't bother to ask.
Listening to Your Life  May 5, p. 115

Sermon Quotes

"You do more than you have to because God gave you more than you deserved."

"The church is a place of broken people who are recklessly loved by God." -- Richard Foster?

The Resurrection of Our Bodies

At death, matter which has been organic begins to flow away into the inorganic, to be finally scattered and used (some of it) by other organisms.  The resurrection of Lazarus involves the reverse process. The general resurrection involves the reverse process universalized -- a rush of matter towards organization at the call of spirits which require it.  It is presumably a foolish fancy (not justified by the words of Scripture) that each spirit should recover those particular units of matter which he ruled before.  For one thing, the[re] would not be enough to go round: we all live in secondhand suits and there are doubtless atoms in my chin which have served many another man, many a dog, many and eel, many a dinosaur.  Nor does the unity of our bodies, even in this present life, consist in retaining the same particles.  My form remains one, though the matter in it changes continually.  I am, in that respect, like a curve in a waterfall.

The Business of Heaven May, 4   p. 109

Precious Friendship

Friendship has value in this life and the next. Almost no happiness can exist without friendship. To be human we need someone with whom we can laugh and express our thoughts.  We need to share our concerns and insights. "If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!" (Ecclesiastes 4:10)

Friendship increases the joys of well-being and lessens the sorrows of misfortune by dividing and sharing them. Tullius said that friends are present even when they are absent, rich though poor, strong though weak, and even alive when dead.

Friendship is on the edge of love and knowledge of God.  It is a simple step from true friendship with another person to friendship with God.  Jesus said, "I no longer call you servants.... I have called you friends" (John 15:15).  All the best qualities of friendship begin in Christ, advance through Christ, and are perfected in Christ.  -- Aelred of Rievaulx: Spiritual Friendship

Near to the Heart of God,  May 3 

The Promise of the Spirit

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses... to the ends of the earth. -- Acts 1:8

... in asking about a restoration of the kingdom, it is clear that the apostles were still dreaming of a political liberation from Rome.  But in his reply Jesus spoke of the Holy Spirit giving them power to witness.  The kingdom of God is his rule in the lives of  his people.  It is spread by witnesses, not soldiers, through the gospel of peace, not a declaration of war.

Through the Bible Through the Year  p. 291

'Good Works'

This one made my wife laugh out loud when I read it to her. Congratulations on your confirmation day Rosie... I love you. -- Dad

'Good Works' in the plural is an expression much more familiar to modern Christendom than 'good work'. Good works are chiefly alms-giving or 'helping' in the parish. They are quite separate from one's 'work'. And good works need not be good work, as anyone can see by inspecting some of the objects made to be sold at bazaars for charitable purposes.

The Buisness of Heaven  May 1, p. 116

All Knowledge is a Particle

There is no true thinker who does not possess an awareness that his thought is a part of an endless context, that his ideas are not taken from the air.

The rich in spirit do not know how to be proud of what they grasp, for they sense that the things which they comprehend are outbursts of inconceivable significance, that there are no lonely ideas roaming about in a void, to be seized and appropriated.

The world's mystery is either chaos without value of any kind, or is replete with an infinite significance beyond the reach of finite minds; in other words, it is either absolutely meaningless or absolutely meaningful, either too inferior or too superior to be an object of human comprehension.

Man is Not Alone  pp. 31-32

Catching by Surprise

What is the kingdom of God? Jesus does not speak of a reorganization of society as a political possibility or of the doctrine of salvation as a doctrine.  He speaks of what it is like to find a diamond ring that you thought you'd lost forever.  He speaks of what it is like to win the Irish Sweepstakes.  He suggest rather than spells out. He evokes rather than explains. He catches by surprise. He doesn't let the homiletic seams show. He is sometimes cryptic, sometimes obscure, sometimes irreverent, always provocative.  He tells stories.  He speaks in parables, and though we have approached these parables reverentially all these many years and have heard them expounded as grave and reverent vehicles of holy truth, I suspect that many if not all of them were originally not grave at all but were antic, comic, often more than just a little shocking.
Listening to Your Life p. 107

The Resurrection of the Body

To sum up, what we are looking forward to is neither a resuscitation (in which we are raised but not changed) nor a survival (in which we are changed into a ghost but not raised bodily) but a resurrection (in which we are both raised and changed, transfigured and glorified simultaneously).
Through the Bible: Through the Year p. 284

Prayer in a Busy Life

We will not often be too busy to turn aside to God for an instant. In fact, we can present our souls to him a thousand times a day.  Sprinkle a seasoning of short prayers on your daily living.  If you see something beautiful, thank God for it.  If you are aware of someone's need, ask God to help.  Saint Francis looked at a stream of water and prayed, "God's grace flows just as gently and sweetly as this brook." You can toss up many such prayers all day long. They will help you in your meditation and in your secular employment as well. Make a habit of it.  -- Francis de Sales: The Devout Life

Near to the Hear of God

A Radical Event

We are always in danger of trivializing the gospel, of minimizing what God is able to do for us and in us.  We speak of becoming a Christian as if it were no more than turning over a new leaf and making a few superficial adjustments to an otherwise secular life. But no, becoming a Christian, according to the New Testament, is an event so radical that no language can do it justice except death and resurrection -- death to the old life of self-centeredness and resurrection to a new life of love. 

Through the Bible: Through the Year  P. 282

True Friendship

I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends.  John 15:15
 
"Friendships are easily dissolved when they are make-believe.  But genuine friendship is not affected by poverty, mistakes, or distortions. This friendship, if it has been shaped by the grace of God and is made whole in God, brings everything back to God. This is holy friendship.

There is no explanation for why a faithful friend is so hard to find today.  Everyone seems selfish. Few have a friend of whom it can be said, "That person is to me a part of myself." -- Richard Rolle: The Fire of Love

Near to the Heart of God: April 25

All Is Well

The proclamation of Easter Day is that all is well.  And as a Christian, I say this not with the easy optimism of one who has never known a time when all was not well but as one who has faced the Cross in all its obscenity as well as in all its glory, who has known one way or another what it is like to live separated from God.  In the end, his will, not ours, is done.  Love is the victor. Death is not the end. The end is life. His life and our lives through him, in him. Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared to dream. Christ our Lord has risen.

Listening to Your Life * April 22  pp. 102-103

We find it in the pattern of the first Christian sermons every preached: "You killed him. God raised him. We are witnesses." It expresses the first and most basic significance of the resurrection, namely that by raising Jesus, God decisively reversed the verdict passed on him by human beings and validated him as truly the Son of God and Savior.

Through the Bible: Through the Year   p. 280

C.S. Lewis on "scary children's literature"

... those who say children must not be frightened may mean two things. they may mean (1) that they must not do anything.... to give the child phobias... Or they may mean (2) that we must try to keep out of his mind the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil.  If they mean the first I agree with them but not if they mean the second... Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage...

The Business of Heaven - April 23, pp.108-109

Welcome to my devotional "choice bits"

So here's the deal.  I read around six different devotionals every day so I was thinking I'll just post the most interesting thought or insight and put it out particularly for the Kindle and let people subscribe to it. I'm not really about sharing my own insights but sharing the wisdom of those who inspire me.


Today is Good Friday and the other day in "Through the Bible Through the Year" by John Stott I read something that was pretty cool.

When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished."  John 19:30

"One could perhaps claim that the words of the sixth cry ("It is finished") are the most momentous ever spoken." p. 261