Uncommon Courage

I picked up a Readers Digest Books published in 1941 that for some reason was in a stack near my couch.  As I paged through it I came across a title of a condensation "Reaching for the Stars" by Nora Waln (p.157) written in 1939 about her travels through Germany.  The following passage kind of blew me away and made me wonder what ever happened to this kind of character.  Sadly, it seems in very short supply today.

We drove to Kessel, where we went to find a stranger, of whom we had been asked to bring news to England. She was at her home, with her five children. Her husband, a pastor, was in a concentration camp. She was grateful for the invitation for some of her children to come to England, but thought Germans ought to stay in the Fatherland. The "cause" would be lost in Germany if those with eyes that saw the decline of morals, hearts that felt it, and tongues that dared rebuke it, went into exile.

"Father could come out at any time," a six year old told me. "God gives him courage to stay in."

"To come out," explained the daughter of eleven, "he has to sign a promise to support everything the Nazis do. He has to take the oath of blind obedience to Adolf Hitler. Our father is a Christian. A Christian cannot approve or be quiet in the face of the things the Nazis do."

"Christianity is a religion of love," offered the tiniest solemnly. "Love and sorrow for all whom the Nazis hurt; and love and sorrow for the Nazis, too."

The suffering of Christ

My Madeleine L'Engle devotional book this morning:  George MacDonald gives me renewed strength during times of trouble -- times when I have seen people tempted to deny God -- when he says, "The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their suffering might be like his."

Mockingbird article: Axl Rose and Michael Jackson attend a Christian music festival -

In one of the most beautiful sections of the book, Sullivan recalls his own “Jesus phase.” But, as he writes, “a phase is supposed to end—or at least give way to other phases—not simply expand into a long preoccupation.” That is, he doesn’t harbor the usual emotional baggage or resentment. “It isn’t that I feel psychologically harmed. It isn’t even that I feel like a sucker for having bought it all. It’s that I love Jesus Christ…. [Christ's] breakthrough was the aestheticization of weakness. Not in what conquers, not in glory, but in what’s fragile and what suffers—there lies sanity. And salvation.” Amen!

The Universe is God's

A while ago when I was at Berea College in Kentucky I was asked the usual earnest questions about creationism vs. evolution.

I laughed and said that I really couldn't get very excited about it. The only question worth asking is whether or not the universe is God's. If the answer is YES! then why get so excited about how? The important thing is that we are God's, created in love. And what about those seven days? In whose time are they? Eastern Standard Time? My daughter in San Francisco lives in a time zone three hours earlier than mine. In Australia, what time is it? Did God create in human time? Solar time? Galactic time? What about God's time? What matter if the first day took a few billennia of our time, and the second day a few billennia more?

I told the student at Berea that some form of evolution seems consistent with our present knowledge, and that I didn't think that God put the fossil skeletons of fish on the mountains of Nepal to test our faith, as some creationists teach.  But if I should find out tomorrow that God's method of creation was something quite different from either creationism or evolution, that would in no way shake my faith, because that is not where my faith is centered.

Madeleine L'Engle; Glimpses of Grace; October 24; pp. 282-283

Happiness and Service

"The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve." -- Albert Schweitzer

John Stott sums it up

For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. 

--- (John Stott)

 From Pr. Phil Ressler's Facebook post today

Truth - John Hus

I have chosen the way of truth;
   I have set my heart on your laws. -- Psalm 119:30

Seek the truth
Listen to the truth
Teach the truth
Love the truth
Abide by the truth
And defend the truth
Unto death.

John Hus, selected

Promises to Keep; Sept. 23; p. 305

He got it right!

The second order of business comes from the pen of Dr. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and frontline fighter of the culture wars. He quotes from a letter sent to Washington Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax.
“I am a stay-at-home mother of four who has tried to raise my family under the same strong Christian values that I grew up with,” the woman writes. “Therefore I was shocked when my oldest daughter, ‘Emily,’ suddenly announced she had ‘given up believing in God’ and decided to ‘come out’ as an atheist.”
Did you catch it? I thought for sure Al would miss this one. I thought he would put up a fight for the “strong Christian values” that should permeate every home in America. But I was wrong. Al got it. He says,
Christian values are the problem. Hell will be filled with people who were avidly committed to Christian values. Christian values cannot save anyone and never will. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not a Christian value, and a comfortability with Christian values can blind sinners to their need for the gospel.
Wow. That needs to be preached from every Baptist pulpit this Sunday. And Methodist. And Lutheran. And Catholic. Can we please drop “Christian values” and refocus on the good news that Jesus bore our sins and our shame?

-- Guest Author, Internet Monk, September 20^th post.

Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise

 Madeleine often makes me think and challenges my spiritual box.  This reading totally fit a conversation I had with a student today. --- drs

I seek for God that he may find me because I have learned, empirically, that this is how it works. I seek: he finds. The continual seeking is the expression of the hope for a creator great enough to care for every particular atom and sub-atom of his creation, from the greatest galaxy to the smallest farandolae. Because of my particular background I see the coming together of  macrocosm and microcosm in the Eucharist, and I call this Creator: God, Father; but no human being has ever called him by his real name, which is great and terrible and unknown, and not to be uttered by mortal man. If inadvertently my lips framed the mighty syllables, entire galaxies might explode.

As I read the Old and New Testaments I am struck by the awareness therein of our lives being connected with cosmic powers, angels and archangels, heavenly principalities and powers, and the groaning of creation. It's too radical, too uncontrolled for many of us, so we build churches which are the safest possible places in which to escape God. We pin him down, far more painfully than he was nailed to the cross, so that he is rational and comprehensible and like us, and even more unreal.

And that won't do. That will not get me through death and danger and pain, nor life and freedom and joy.

Glimpses of Grace Madeline L'Engle; Sept 21; pp. 246-7

Above the Horizon: Buechner

Another moment I have always remembered was walking out on deck one night after supper and finding a young red-haired officer peering into the dark through binoculars. He told me he was scanning the horizon for signs of other ships, and the way to do that, he explained, was to look not at the horizon but just above it. He said you could see better that way than by looking straight on, and I have found it to be an invaluable truth in many ways. Listen not just to the words being spoken but to the silences between the words, and watch not just the drama unfolding but the faces of all around you watching it unfold. Years later when preaching a sermon about Noah, it was less the great flood that I tried to describe than the calloused palm of Noah’s hand as he reached out to take the returning dove, less the resurrection itself than the moment, a day or so afterward, when Jesus stood on the beach cooking fish on a charcoal fire and called out to the disciples in their boat, “Come and have breakfast.”

- Frederick Buechner via the internetmonk.com

Chesterton on the reality of Atheism

A man who has lived and loved falls down dead and the worms eat him. That is Materialism if you like. That is Atheism if you like.

-- Quoted in Battling For the Modern Mind by Thomas Peters; p. 105  from "Science and Religion" in All Things Considered, p. 147.

The habit of turning to God...

And perhaps, as those who do not turn to God in petty trials will have no habit or such resort to help them when the great trials come, so those who have not learned to ask Him for childish things will have less readiness to ask Him for the great ones. We must not be too high-minded. I fancy we may sometimes be deterred from small prayers by a sense of our own dignity rather than of God’s.

This was from a Mockingbird (March 7,2012) quote of C.S. Lewis' Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer.

Understanding the Brevity of Life

All this is temporary...

One of my best friends in college died when he was twenty-five, just a few years after we had finished Mississippi State University. I as in law school, and he called me one day and wanted to get together. So we had lunch, and he told me that he had terminal cancer.

I couldn't believe it. I asked him, "What do you do when you realize that you are about to die?"

He said, "It's real simple. You get things right with God, and you spend as much time with those you love as you can. Then you settle up with everybody else."

That left an impression on me.

-- John Grisham; Promises to Keep; August 8; p. 255

God Loves Even Us

The glorious message of Scripture is that we do not have to be perfect for our Maker to love us.  All through the great stories, heavenly love is lavished on visibly imperfect people. Scripture asks us to look at Jacob as he really is, to look at ourselves as we really are, and then realize that this is who God loves. God did not love Jacob because he was a cheat, but because he was Jacob. God love us in our complex isness, and when we get stuck on the image of the totally virtuous and morally perfect person we will never be, we are unable to accept this unqualified love, or to love other people in their rich complexity.

If God can love Jacob -- or any single one of us -- as we really are, then it is possible for us to turn in love to those who hurt of confuse us. Those we know and those we do not know. And that makes me take a new look at love.

Madeleine L'Engle: Glimpses of Grace; July 24; pp194-5

Expecting something to happen

 I came across this quote on my computer today and thought it was a good one for the blog. I don't know the source but its from D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, one of my favorites. -- drs 

 
Possibly one of the most devastating things that can happen to us as Christians is that we cease to expect anything to happen. I am not sure but that this is not one of our greatest troubles today. We come to our services and they are orderly, they are nice ‒ we come, we go ‒ and sometimes they are timed almost to the minute, and there it is. But that is not Christianity, my friend. Where is the Lord of glory? Where is the one sitting by the well? Are we expecting him? Do we anticipate this? Are we open to it? Are we aware that we are ever facing this glorious possibility of having the greatest surprise of our life?
Or let me put it like this. You may feel and say ‒ as many do ‒ ‘I was converted and became a Christian. I’ve grown ‒ yes, I’ve grown in knowledge, I’ve been reading books, I’ve been listening to sermons, but I’ve arrived now at a sort of peak and all I do is maintain that. For the rest of my life I will just go on like this.’
Now, my friend, you must get rid of that attitude; you must get rid of it once and for ever. That is ‘religion’, it is not Christianity. This is Christianity: the Lord appears! Suddenly, in the midst of the drudgery and the routine and the sameness and the dullness and the drabness, unexpectedly, surprisingly, he meets with you and he says something to you that changes the whole of your life and your outlook and lifts you to a level that you had never conceived could be possible for you. Oh, if we get nothing else from this story, I hope we will get this. Do not let the devil persuade you that you have got all you are going to get, still less that you received all you were ever going to receive when you were converted. That has been a popular teaching, even among evangelicals. You get everything at your conversion, it is said, including baptism with the Spirit, and nothing further, ever. Oh, do not believe it; it is not true. It is not true to the teaching of the Scriptures, it is not true in the experience of the saints running down the centuries. There is always this glorious possibility of meeting with him in a new and a dynamic way.

Mockingbird quotes Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O’Connor on Emotional Jellyfish and the Repulsiveness of Truth (and Incarnation)

From the collection of her letters, The Habit of Being, pgs 99-100, ht WH:

I can never agree with you that the Incarnation, or any truth, has to satisfy emotionally to be right (and I would not agree that for the natural man the Incarnation does not satisfy emotionally). It does not satisfy emotionally for the person brought up under many forms of false intellectual discipline such as nineteenth century mechanism, for instance. Leaving the Incarnation aside, the very notion of God’s existence is not emotionally satisfactory anymore for great numbers of people, which does not mean the God ceases to exist. M. Jean-Paul Sartre finds God emotionally unsatisfactory in the extreme, as do most of my friends of less stature than he. The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.A higher paradox confounds emotion as well as reason and there are long periods in the lives of all of us, and of the saints, when the truth as revealed by faith is hideous, emotionally disturbing, downright repulsive. Witness the dark night of the soul in individual saints. Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.
There is question whether faith can or is supposed to be emotionally satisfying. I must say the thought of everybody lolling about in an emotionally satisfying faith is repugnant to me. I believe that we are ultimately directed Godward but that this journey is often impeded by emotion. I don’t think you are a jellyfish. But I suspect you of being a Romantic.

-- How rich is that?! : )  drs

Cornerstone Festival... I remember.

Next week Benaiah and I will be attending our last Cornerstone Festival.  It has been a great run but it's time. Looking back on the years of heat, fellowship, music, seminars, people, mud, joy, deals.... growth and change makes me glad to have had so many Cstone experiences and a longer term perspective. I remember the crazy times back at the Lake County fairgrounds where a massive storm came through and knocked down the mainstage.  Then there was the Norman Geisler / Randall Terry standoff in the exhibition building and the amazing Charlie Peacock concert in the encore stage that was one of those magical evenings that seemed to take us all to a place of the presence of God.  I'm so glad that my son will have been to every Cornerstone in his 19+ years of life. He will always be able to say that he played Cornerstone...his cello on the new band stage when he was about 13. It makes me smile just to think about it and how he'd play it in the gallery stage in the morning while I was having my first cups of coffee in my Cstone mug and doing my morning devotions. There are people there who I know I won't see until we meet again in heaven. I get a lump in my throat just thinking about them.  I remember sitting in a soaked gallery chatting ministry with Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk who within a year went home to be with Jesus.  Meeting Steve Taylor after his sound check by the mainstage and him holding said son who was about 3 and knew most of the lyrics to Steve's songs. I remember seeing "The Call" with my wife and being shocked that it was around 2:00 a.m. when it ended and having them all sign her jeans. Michael Been and Gene Eugene, dudes I wish you had taken better care of yourselves. I remember the shock of hearing that Tom Peters had died of cancer after having taken his seminar class on Chesterton, such a sweet man.  I remember my first seminar with Vernon Grounds at Lake County, and the crazy antics of George Verwer and Mike Yaconelli. Vic will always be the Cornerstone Mainstage MC as far as I'm concerned. I remember the crazy straightline winds that blew through the camp about 5:00 a.m. one morning and then hearing that it hit Rockford and tornadoes had caused massive damage to the city.  I remember the crazy near tornado that hit as we were in line to enter the festival ripping the encore tents up and snapping the ropes like threads. It was a sight I will never forget.  Then we found my brother and family who had just gotten their tent up before the storm and seeing it flat and totally soaked.  Those times with my brother, sister-in-law and nephews was really precious, I think cornerstone is where we spent the most time together since we live so far apart. I remember the time my wife was promised the paper that Timothy Botts was demonstrating calligraphy on and another lady tried to take it, yeah, that wasn't happening. I remember Rosie exploding green beans early one morning while the wife was up at the porta potties and me yelling "DIAPER EMERGENCY!!!!" People in the neighborhood still talked about that a few years later.  I remember the Redeemer Lutheran Youth group Shangrila with their snow cone maker and crazy huge meals. The phantom ice truck and the water sprinkler tractor. Buck, Buck and shower trailers. Brian McClaren, Bradly Hathaway and Brad Culver, Philip Johnson, Oz Guiness, Lou Markos and Steve Matheson. Fred and Troll 2, Greg, Erik, Monte and the Ring of Fire -- SECURITY!!!! Creation Station and Artrageous Kids. Porta Pottie overflows and P.O.D., Lost Dogs, The Alarm with Benaiah and where is M.C. Hammer? Worship with Pastor Wille and A.C. breaks in the nurses' trailer. Long walks down to the beach and doing the labyrinth prayer walk with my whole family. Repeatedly scouring for used books and dusty CDs and waiting for the T-shirts to be marked down before buying the one for the year. Trying to wake Krystal up for the fireworks show. Interrupting Over the Rhine's photo shoot with Jimmy Abegg because our family needed to get our picture taken and we needed to get the kids over to the goodie gallop race in the pasture. I remember having a love / hate relationship with the total lack of structure for the camping spots and vehicle access. I realize that the lack of overcontrolling structure that is the Cornerstone Festival is me.  Cornerstone's sloppiness and lack of mainstream conformity; It's love of the "sinners" and the the grunge.  It's fearlessness, openness and quirky curiosity. It's love of Jesus on His terms and not mine. This is why I love Cornerstone and will miss it deeply. I know that it will always be a part of me and my family. For that I will always be grateful. Thank you Jesus for all those who worked so hard to make the Cornerstone Festival the greatest Christian festival there ever was or ever will be this side of Heaven. R.I.P. Cornerstone Festival. It's time.

Our Need for Mystery

A Russian priest, Father Anthony, told me, "To say to anyone, 'I love you' is tantamount to saying 'You shall live forever.'"

I am slowly beginning to learn something about immortality.

Our children are hungry for words like Father Anthony's. They have a passionate need for the dimension of transcendence, mysticism, way-outness. We're not offering it to them legitimately. The tendency of the churches to be relevant and more-secular-than-thou does not answer our need for the transcendent. As George Tyrrell wrote about a hundred years ago, "If [man's] craving for the mysterious, the wonderful, the supernatural, be not fed on true religion, it will feed itself on the garbage of any superstition that is offered to it."

Glimpses of Grace; June 12; p. 148

Joyous and Helpful Labor

Lord of my life, whose law I fain would keep, whose fellowship I fain would enjoy, and to whose service I would fain be loyal, I kneel before You as You send me forth to the work of another day.

     This day, O Lord --
     give me courtesy:
     give me meekness of bearing with decision of character:
     give me longsuffering:
     give me chastity:
     give me sincerity of speech:
     give me diligence in my allotted task.

     O You who in the fullness of time raised up our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to enlighten our hearts with the knowledge of Your love, Grant me the grace to be worthy of His name. Amen.

John Baillie; Devotional Classics; p.127

Living Mysteries

"To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist."  -- Emmanuel, Cardinal Suhard; quoted in Glimpses of Grace; pp. 146-7

Literalism to Judgementalism...

If we take the Bible over-literally we may miss the truth of the poetry, the stories, the myths. Literalism can all too easily become judgementalism, and Jesus warned us not to judge, that we might not be judged.

How difficult it is! When I worry about those who castigate me for not agreeing with them, am I in my turn falling into judgementalism? it's hard not to. But not all the way, I hope. I don't want to wipe out those who disagree with me, consigning them to hell for all eternity. We are still God's children, together. At One. Even if I am angry, upset, confused, I must still see Christ and Christ's love in those whose opinions are very different from mine, or I won't find it in those whose view fits more comfortably with mine.

-- Madeleine L'Engle; Glimpses of Grace; p. 144; June 7

The World as an Object

Where man meets the world, not with the tools he has made but with the soul with which he was born; not like a hunter who seeks his prey but like a love to reciprocate love; where man and matter meet as equals before the mystery, both made, maintained and destined to pass away, it is not an object, a thing that is given to his sense, but a state of fellowship that embraces him and all things; not a particular fact but the startling situation that there are facts at all; being; the presence of a universe; the unfolding of time. The sense of the ineffable does not stand between man and mystery; rather than shutting him out of it, it brings him together with it.

Man is Not Alone; Abraham Joshua Heschel; p. 38

Michael Spencer quote from Boarshead Tavern

“… the powerful changes that happen in the life of a disciple never come from the disciple working hard at doing anything. They come from arriving at a place where Jesus is everything, and we are simply overwhelmed with the gift. Sometimes it seems as if God loves us too much. His love goes far beyond our ability to stop being moral, religious, obedient, and victorious, and we just collapse in his arms.  -- Michael Spencer
Quoted on May 4th by Bob Myers from The Boarshead Tavern blog.

Rock Bottom

It's a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It give us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand. It stops us from taking anything for granted.
Glimpses of Grace: April 17 P. 104

The 10 Basic Principles of Good Parenting

1. What You Do Matters
2. You Cannot Be Too Loving
3. Be Involved in your Child's Life
4. Adapt Your Parenting to Fit Your Child
5. Establish Rules and Set Limits
6. Help Foster Your Child's Independence
7. Be Consistent
8. Avoid Harsh Discipline
9. Explain Your Rules and Decisions
10. Treat Your Child with Respect

from The 10 Basic Rules of Good Parenting by Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D.

The All-Sufficient One

You are holy, Lord, the only God,
    and your deeds are wonderful.
You are strong.
    You are great.
    You are the Most High.
    You are almighty.
    You, holy Father, are
    King of heaven and earth.
You are Three and One,
    Lord God, all good.
    You are Good, all Good, supreme Good
    Lord God, living and true.
You are love,
    You are wisdom.
    You are humility,
    You are endurance.
    You are rest,
    You are peace.
    You are joy and gladness.
    You are justice and moderation.
    You are all our riches,
    And you suffice for us.
You are beauty.
    You are gentleness.
    You are our protector,
    You are our guardian and defender.
    You are courage.
    You are our haven and our hope.
You are our faith,
    Our great consolation.
    You are our eternal life,
    Great and wonderful Lord,
    God almighty,
    Merciful Saviour.

--- St. Francis of Assisi

Promises to Keep; April 17, pp. 125-26

Brother Lawrence: Full of Mercy and Goodness ... 100th Post!

In short, I am assured beyond any doubt that my soul has been with God for nearly thirty years. I have not shared it all so as not to bore you, but I think it is proper that I tell you what manner I imagine myself before God whom I behold as king.

I imagine myself as the most wretched of all, full of sores and sins, and one who has committed all sorts of crimes against his king. Feeling a deep sorrow, I confess to him all of my sins, I ask his forgiveness, and I abandon myself into his hands so that he may do with me what he pleases.

This king, full of mercy and goodness, very far from chastening me, embraces me with love, invites me to feast at his table, serves me with his own hands, and gives me the key to his treasures. He converses with me, and takes delight in me, and treats me as if I were his favorite. This is how I imagine myself from time to time in his holy presence.

Devotional Classics; p.84; Brother Lawrence

God's Part in Salvation

OK, so I finally found something in the "Promises to Keep" Men's Devotional that doesn't cause my stomach to turn.  Let's just say I haven't been all that impressed... lots of theology of glory.... yuck.

Have you ever heard the story of the man who was wonderfully saved and arose in a class meeting to testify to his new found joy? His heart was filled with Christ and his lips spoke of Him and of Him only, as his Redeemer and Lord. The class leader was a legalist and said when the other had finished, "Our brother has told us what the Lord did for him, but he has forgotten to tell us what he did in order to be saved. God does His part when we do ours. Brother, did you not do your part before God saved you?" The man was on his feet in a moment and exclaimed, "I surely did do my part. I ran away from God as fast as my sins could carry me. That was my part. And God chased me till He caught me. That was His part."

Yes, you and I have all done our part, and a dreadfully sad part it was. We did all the sinning and He must do all the saving.   -- Harry Ironside,  Full Assurance

Promises to Keep; March 12; p. 85    

A Dose of Wonder

So I actually grabbed the wrong book this morning but this Madeleine L'Engle quote will work fine.

When I need a dose of wonder I wait for a clear night and go look for the stars. In the city I see only a few, but only a few are needed. In the country the great river of the Milky Way streams across the sky, and I know that our planet is a small part of that river of stars, and my pain of separation is healed.

Dis-aster makes me think of dis-grace. Often the wonder of the stars is enough to return me to God's loving grace.

Glimpses of Grace; p.66 

The Demands of Truth

Whoa, it's been awhile.   Sorry about that, life's been really crazy busy.  No excuses.

Truth is frightening. Pontius Pilate knew that, and washed his hands of truth when he washed his hands of Jesus. Truth is demanding. it won't let us sit comfortably. It knocks out our cozy smugness and casual condemnation. It makes us move. It? It? For truth we can read Jesus. Jesus is truth. If we accept that Jesus is truth, we accept an enormous demand: Jesus is wholly god, and Jesus is wholly human. Dare we believe that? If we believe in Jesus we must. And immediately that takes truth out of the limited realm of literalism. -- Madeleine L'Engle

Glimpses of Grace: p. 51, March 5

Imprisoned Splendor

Look! Here I am, caught up in the fragment of chronology, in this bit of bone and flesh and water which makes up my mortal body, and yet I am also part of that which is not imprisoned in time or mortality. Partaker simultaneously of the finite and the infinite, I do not find the infinite by repudiating my finiteness, but by being fully in it, in this me who is more than I know. This me like all creation, lives in a glorious dance of communion with all the universe. In isolation we die; in interdependence we live. -- Madeleine L'Engle

Glimpses of Grace: February 11; p. 37

The dividing line between Good and Evil

 An amazing quote from Solzhenitsyn in The Mockingbird web site:

As the enlightened among us demythify the chronicler’s stated justification for the mob’s violence, Sister Lange demythifies the greatest and most dominant myth in all of the world and in all of history: the myth of her own entitlement. This is the beginning of wisdom. I am reminded of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag ephiphany, in which he:
…lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

The Qualifications for God's Work

Slowly I have realized that I do not have to be qualified to do what I am asked to do, that I just have to go ahead and do it, even if I can't do it as well as I think it ought to be done. This is one of the most liberating lessons of my life.
Glimpses of Grace; p. 33; February 5

Spirituality Overview -- Following Jesus

When I speak about spirituality. I do not envisage something extraordinary -- a superior way of being a Christian that is open only to a religious elite or a more advanced stage in the spiritual life. I have in mind what is given to every faithful person. Christian spirituality is, quite simply,  following Jesus. It is the ordinary life of faith in which we receive Baptism, attend the Divine Service, participate in the Holy Supper, read the scriptures, pray for ourselves and others, resist temptation, and work with Jesus in our given location here on earth. By our practice of spirituality we are not raised to a higher plane above the normal, everyday, bodily life, but we receive the Holy Spirit from Christ so that we can live in God's presence each day of our lives as we deal with people and work, sin and abuse, inconvenience and heartbreak, trouble and tragedy. We are not called to become more spiritual by disengaging from our earthly life, but simply to rely on Jesus as we do what is given for us to do, experience what is given for us to experience, and enjoy what is given for us to enjoy.

Grace Upon Grace; p. 23

Our Teacher Pt. 2

But we have no need to climb up to heaven on our own. The triune God has come down to earth for us. His Son has become incarnate for us, embodied for us embodied creatures. He is now available to us through His Word. The Sacred Scriptures not only teach us about eternal life but also bestow it. We also have "the real teacher of the Scriptures," the Holy Spirit, who uses the Scriptures to teach us the things of God.

Grace Upon Grace; p. 16-17

Prayer, Meditation and Temptation

Luther proposed and evangelical pattern of spirituality as reception rather than self-promotion. This involves three things: prayer, meditation, and temptation. All three revolve around ongoing, faithful attention to God's Word. The order of the list is significant, for unlike that traditional pattern of devotion, the spiritual life begins and ends here on earth. These three terms describe the life of faith as a cycle that begins with prayer for the gift of the Holy Spirit, concentrates on the reception of the Holy Spirit through meditation on God's Word, and results in spiritual attack. This, in turn, leads a person back to further prayer and intensified meditation. Luther, therefore, does not envisage the spiritual life as a process of self-development, but as a process of reception from the triune God. This process of reception turns proud, self-sufficient individuals into humble beggars before God.

Grace Upon Grace: p. 16

Our Teacher pt.1

Christian spirituality presupposes that we have been given the gift of eternal life and enjoy it now here on earth. No human teacher can teach us about that because no human teacher can give us eternal life. Nor can we gain eternal life for ourselves merely be reflecting on our experience of God, or even by interpreting the Scriptures in the light of our personal experience. In fact, if we attempt to gain eternal life with God through rational speculation and spiritual self-development, we will commit spiritual suicide. Those who use their reason and intellect to make a ladder for their devotional assent into heaven will, like Lucifer, plunge themselves into hell instead.
Grace upon Grace: p. 16

Jonathan Edwards: Holy Affection

If we are not earnest in our religion, and if our wills and inclinations are not strongly exercised, we are nothing. The importance of religion is so great that no halfhearted exercise will suffice. In nothing is the state of our heart so crucial as in religion, and in nothing is lukewarmness so odious.

True religion is a powerful thing. The power of it appears, first, in the inward exercises of the heart (which is the seat of all religion). Therefore, true religion is called "the power of godliness," in contrast to the external appearances of it i.e., the mere "form":"Having the form of godliness but denying the power of it" (2 Tim. 3:5). The Spirit of God is a spirit of powerful holy affection in the lives of those who have a sound and solid religion. This is why it is written that God has given his people the spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind (2 Tim. 1:7).

When we receive the Spirit of God, we receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost who is like "fire," and along with it the sanctifying and saving influences of God. When this happens, when grace is at work within us, it sometimes "burns" within us, as it was for Jesus' disciples (Luke 24:32).

Devotional Classics: pp. 19-20

Called to Co-create

God created, and it was joy: time, space, matter. There is, and we are part of that is-ness, part of that becoming. That is our calling: co-creation. Every single one of us, without exception, is called to co-create with God. No one is too unimportant to have a share in the making or unmaking of the final showing-forth. Everything that we do either draws the Kingdom of love closer, or pushes it further off. That is a fearful responsibility, but when God made "man in our image, male and female," responsibility went with it. Too often we want to let somebody else do it, the preacher, or the teacher, or the government agency. But if we are to continue to grow in God's image, then we have to accept the responsibility.

God's image! How much of God may be seen in me, may I see in others? Try as we may, we cannot hide it completely.

Glimpses of Grace: Madeline L'Engle; Jan. 15; pp. 12-13

Dallas Willard on the costs of nondiscipleship

Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God's overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10).  -- Dallas Willard

Devotional Classics: p. 16

A Glimpse of Glory

Madeleine L'Engle wrote the following to give an example of an experience she calls an "intimation" of a life beyond this one.
  Josephine and I began to sing to the little girls, trying to lull them to sleep, taking turns in singing the old nursery and folk songs, many of which had come to us from my mother.
  Then suddenly, the world unfolded, and I moved into an indescribable place of many dimensions where colors were more brilliant and more varied than those of the everyday world.  The unfolding continued; everything deepened and opened, and I glimpsed relationships in which the truth of love was fully revealed.
   It was ineffably glorious, and then it became frightening because I knew that unless I returned to the self which was still singing to the sleeping baby it would be -- at the least -- madness, and for Josephine and Alan's sake I had to come back from the radiance...
   Was this no more than a hallucination caused by fatigue and hunger? That may have been part of it, but only a part. I offer no explanation for this vision of something far more beautiful and strange than any of the great beauties I have seen on earth. I only know that it happened to me, and I am grateful.
Glimpses of Grace: January 8, pp. 7-8

Where does Spirituality come from?

However, spiritual life does not come to us haphazardly. The Holy Spirit -- and the life the Holy Spirit brings -- is available to us only in Christ. And He gives this life to us through His Word and through faith in His Word. This means that our spirituality does not come from having spiritual powers or from our spiritual self-development but depends on our faith in Him. Because we are joined to Christ we continually receive our life from Him.
John W. Kleinig: Grace Upon Grace; pp. 10-11

Starting out in 2012 : The New Devotionals

This year I'm putting away Buechner and replacing him with Madeline L'Engle's Glimpses of Grace.  Near to the Heart of God is being replaced by Devotional Classics by Richard Foster. C.S. Lewis' Business of Heaven is being switched with Promises to Keep, a compilation by Nick Harrison.  Finally, I want to re-read Grace Upon Grace by John W. Kleinig, one of the best books on practical spirituality I've ever read.

I kind of like what I wrote on my facebook page for New Year's Eve: 

Wishing everyone a blessed new year. May we all be faithful, grateful, joyful and helpful; Understanding, honest and kind; Happy 2012.