The Christian Quotation of the Day

Owen: first obedience, then peace

2010-02-09T02:00:00.001-06:00

Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Meditation:
    If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins,
        O Lord, who could stand?
    But with you there is forgiveness;
        therefore you are feared.
    —Psalm 130:3-4 (NIV)
Quotation:
    See in the meantime that your faith bringeth forth obedience, and God in due time will cause it to bring forth peace.
    ... John Owen (1616-1683), An Exposition upon Psalm CXXX [1668], in Works of John Owen, v. VI, New York: R. Carter & Bros., 1851, p. 563 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Keep my footsteps in the right path, Lord, that I may receive Your peace. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Erasmus: a better monument

2010-02-08T02:00:00.001-06:00

Monday, February 8, 2010
Meditation:
    Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, as it is written: “He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little.”
    —2 Corinthians 8:13-15 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Rich men now-a-days will have their monuments in churches... But if I were a priest or a bishop, I would put it into the heads of those thick-skulled courtiers or merchants, that if they would atone for their sins to Almighty God, they should privately bestow their liberality upon the relief of the poor.
    ... Desiderius Erasmus (1466?-1536), The Colloquies of Erasmus, v. I, tr. N. Bailey & ed. E. Johnson, London: Reeves & Turner, 1878, p. 190 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I acknowledge that all I have is as a stewardship for You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Cate: a future religion or now?

2010-02-07T02:00:00.000-06:00

Sunday, February 7, 2010
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.”
    —Matthew 7:15 (NIV)
Quotation:
    In the “dynamic” religion that we are being promised for tomorrow, no ascetic discipline or special humbleness will any longer be required. It will be a hot-water bottle kind of piety with none of that gritty old morality it in. It will be a brand of faith that has been synthetized, vitaminized, homogenized, and capsulized, and it will be as ready-made for effortless consumption as that magically bleached, cottony, crustless, already sliced white bread which is the symbol of the modern American’s massive superiority over the pagan bushwhacker.
    ... Curtis Cate (1924-2006), “God and Success”, in The Atlantic Monthly, January/June 1957, p. 76 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, send Your Spirit to guard and defend Your church. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Mott: incapable of evangelism

2010-02-06T02:00:00.001-06:00

Saturday, February 6, 2010
Meditation:
    Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
    —Romans 12:2 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The invasion of the Church by the world is a menace to the extension of Christ’s Kingdom. In all ages conformity to the world by Christians has resulted in lack of spiritual life and a consequent lack of spiritual vision and enterprise. A secularized or self-centered Church can never evangelize the world.
    ... John R. Mott (1865-1955), The Evangelization of the World in this Generation, New York: Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 1905, p. 44 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, reverse the decline of the church by the power of Your Spirit. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Denney: the obstacle of inspiration

2010-02-05T02:00:00.001-06:00

Friday, February 5, 2010
    Commemoration of Martyrs of Japan, 1597
Meditation:
    [The LORD] said, “Go and tell this people: ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”
    —Isaiah 6:9-10 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The intelligence which has learned to be a law to itself, criticising, rejecting, appropriating, assimilating, cannot deny its nature and suspend its functions when it opens the New Testament. It cannot make itself the slave of men, not even though the men are Peter and Paul and John; no, not even though it were the Son of Man Himself. It resents dictation, not willfully nor wantonly, but because it must; and it resents it all the more when it claims to be inspired. If, therefore, the Atonement can only be received by those who are prepared from the threshold to acknowledge the inspiration and the consequent authority of Scripture, it can never be received by modern men at all.
    ... James Denney (1856-1917), The Atonement and the Modern Mind, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1903, p. 6 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Open the people’s ears, Lord, that they may receive Your word. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Lewis: the danger of religion

2010-02-04T02:00:00.001-06:00

Thursday, February 4, 2010
    Commemoration of Gilbert of Sempringham, Founder of the Gilbertine Order, 1189
Meditation:
    There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
    When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.”
    “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”
    —Exodus 3:2-5 (NIV)
Quotation:
    It is well to have specifically holy places, and things, and days, for, without these focal points or reminders, the belief that all is holy and “big with God” will soon dwindle into a mere sentiment. But if these holy places, things, and days cease to remind us, if they obliterate our awareness that all ground is holy and every bush (could we but perceive it) a Burning Bush, then the hallows begin to do harm. Hence both the necessity, and the perennial danger, of “religion.”
    ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1964, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002, p. 75 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Your whole creation is a holy place to You, Lord. Grant that I may never despise it. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Owen: profit in worship

2010-02-03T02:00:00.000-06:00

Wednesday, February 3, 2010
    Feast of Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, 865
Meditation:
    And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.
    —1 John 5:11 (NIV)
Quotation:
    No one uses instituted ways or forms of worship profitably, but such as find communion with God in them, or are seriously humbled because they do not.
    ... John Owen (1616-1683), Works of John Owen, v. IX, London: Johnson & Hunter, 1851, Sermons X-XIII, p. 170 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, bless my time in worship with Your presence. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Tozer on worship

2010-02-02T02:00:00.001-06:00

Tuesday, February 2, 2010
    THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE
Meditation:
    But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
    —1 John 1:7 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshippers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become ‘unity’ conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified. The body becomes stronger as its members become healthier. The whole church of God gains when the members that compose it begin to seek a better and a higher life.
    ... A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), The Pursuit of God [1948], Christian Publications, 1982, p. 90 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, perfect my heart, that I may know true fellowship. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Gossip: God can be trusted

2010-02-01T02:00:00.001-06:00

Monday, February 1, 2010
    Commemoration of Brigid, Abbess of Kildare, c.525
Meditation:
    It was the third hour when they crucified him. The written notice of the charge against him read: THE KING OF THE JEWS. They crucified two robbers with him, one on his right and one on his left.
    —Mark 15:25-27 (NIV)
Quotation:
    After Calvary, God has the right to be trusted; to be believed that He means what He says; and that His love is dependable.
    ... A. J. Gossip (1873-1954), In the Secret Place of the Most High, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You showed Your love first. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Owen: the beginnings of apostasy

2010-01-31T02:00:00.001-06:00

Sunday, January 31, 2010
    Commemoration of John Bosco, Priest, Founder of the Salesian Teaching Order, 1888
Meditation:
    All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.
    —Romans 2:12-13 (NIV)
Quotation:
    “Secret sins,” such as are not known to be sins, it may be, to ourselves, make way for those that are “presumptuous.” Thus pride may seem to be nothing but a frame of mind belonging unto our wealth and dignity, or our ... abilities; sensuality may seem to be but a lawful participation of the good things of this life; passion and peevishness, but a due sense of the want of respect that we must suppose owing unto us; covetousness, a necessary care of ourselves and of our families. If the seeds of sin are covered with such pretences, they will in time spring up and bear bitter fruit in the minds and the lives of men. And the beginning of all apostasy, both in religion and in morality, lies in such pretences. Men plead that they can do so-and-so lawfully, until they can do things openly unlawful.
    ... John Owen (1616-1683), A Treatise of the Dominion of Sin and Grace [1688], in Works of John Owen, v. VII, London: Johnson & Hunter, 1852, p. 559 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, break my heart to Your rule. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Newbigin: asking the wrong question

2010-01-30T02:00:00.001-06:00

Saturday, January 30, 2010
    Commemoration of Lesslie Newbigin, Bishop, Missionary, Teacher, 1998
Meditation:
    Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble.
    —1 Peter 3:8 (NIV)
Quotation:
    If [instead of beginning with the fellowship,] we begin by saying that the Church exists where the Word is truly preached and the Sacraments rightly administered, we are immediately involved in the attempt to answer the question, “What is correct doctrine and correct administration?” In fact, the latter question has tended to drop out of the centre of Protestant discussion, for the Word was really central and the Sacrament was conceived essentially as the Word made visible. “The Word,” says Luther, “is the one perpetual and infallible mark of the Church.” The natural result of this position is that the question of doctrinal correctness becomes the all important one. And, ex hypothesi, this question has to be discussed in isolation, apart from consideration of the character of the fellowship in which the doctrine is taught. The Church is defined in terms of agreement about doctrine, and this doctrinal agre! ement must be agreement on paper. A written theological statement becomes the one determinative centre of the Church’s life [instead of the unity of the believers in Christ].
    ... Lesslie Newbigin (1909-1998), The Household of God, London, SCM Press, 1953, New York: Friendship Press, 1954, p. 51 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant us Your Spirit, that we may be united. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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La Rochefoucauld: the triumph of pride

2010-01-29T02:00:00.001-06:00

Friday, January 29, 2010
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
    —Matthew 7:1-2 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Pride has a greater share than goodness of heart in the remonstrances we make to those who are guilty of faults; we reprove, not so much with a view to correcting them, as to persuade them that we are exempt from those faults ourselves.
    ... François La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680), Moral Reflections, Sentences and Maxims of Francis, Duc de la Rochefoucauld, New York: W. Gowans, 1851, p. 15 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, in my pride, I sin against Your grace and holiness. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Drummond: on Pilgrim's Progress

2010-01-28T02:00:00.000-06:00

Thursday, January 28, 2010
    Feast of Thomas Aquinas, Priest, Teacher of the Faith, 1274
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices--mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law--justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.”
    —Matthew 23:23 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The tendency of the religions of all time has been to care more for religion than for humanity; Christ cared more for humanity than for religion—rather, His care for humanity was the chief expression of His religion. He was not indifferent to observances, but the practices of the people bulked in His thoughts before the practices of the Church. It has been pointed out as a blemish on the immortal allegory of Bunyan that the Pilgrim never did anything—anything but save his soul. The remark is scarcely fair, for the allegory is designedly the story of a soul in a single relation; and, besides, he did do a little. But the warning may well be weighed. The Pilgrim’s one thought, his work by day, his dream by night, was escape. He took little part in the world through which he passed. He was a Pilgrim travelling through it; his business was to get through safe. Whatever this is, it is not Christianity.
    ... Henry Drummond (1851-1897), The Programme of Christianity, New York: J. Potts, 1891, p. 9 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, keep our eyes on the substance of faith in You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Pascal: the centrality of Christ

2010-01-27T02:00:00.001-06:00

Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Meditation:
    The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
    —Jeremiah 17:9 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Not only do we not know God except through Jesus Christ; we do not even know ourselves except through Jesus Christ.
    ... Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensées (Thoughts) [1660], P.F. Collier & Son, 1910, #548, p. 177 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are the only path to true knowledge. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Luther: the true treasure

2010-01-26T02:00:00.001-06:00

Tuesday, January 26, 2010
    Feast of Timothy and Titus, Companions of Paul
    Commemoration of Dorothy Kerin, Founder of the Burrswood Healing Community, 1963
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.”
    —John 12:27-28 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The true treasure of the Church is the Most Holy Gospel of the glory and the grace of God.
    ... Martin Luther (1483-1546), Luther’s Ninety-five Theses, Harold J. Grimm, ed., Fortress Press, 1957, thesis #62, p. 14 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, arouse Your church for Your Gospel. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Marshall: why the Church didn't work

2010-01-25T02:00:00.001-06:00

Monday, January 25, 2010
    Feast of the Conversion of Paul
Meditation:
    [Jesus in prayer:] For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me.
    —John 17:8 (NIV)
Quotation:
    In [Father Smith’s] opinion the leaders of the Church had grown so used to the spectacle of the world neglecting the wisdom of Christ that they had ceased to be shocked by it and what was wanted was a renewal of the apostolic spirit among cardinals and archbishops and papal nuncios. It was no use preaching the gospel only to those who came to church to hear it. The gospel ought to be preached to those who didn’t want to hear it as well: to industrialists in their offices, to clubmen in their windows, to workers in their yards and factories, to bibbers in their taverns, to harlots in their doorways, to all those should the sweet tidings of Christ be taught. It was a sorry matter for reflection that it was only heretics who dared to brave the sneers of the mob by crying aloud the Name of Jesus at street corners and in the market place.
    ... Bruce Marshall (1899-1987), The World, the Flesh, and Father Smith, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1945, p. 127 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Let all the world hear Your Gospel, Lord! CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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de Sales: the believer's lot

2010-01-24T02:00:00.001-06:00

Sunday, January 24, 2010
    Feast of François de Sales, Bishop of Geneva, Teacher, 1622
Meditation:
    For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
    —1 Corinthians 12:13 (NIV)
Quotation:
    We must not be unjust and require from ourselves what is not in ourselves... Do not desire not to be what you are, but desire to be very well what you are.
    ... François de Sales (1567-1622), Spiritual Maxims, Longmans, Green, 1954, p. 138,114 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant me the grace to be Your servant in the role You have ordained. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Gossip: sorrow for sin?

2010-01-23T02:00:00.001-06:00

Saturday, January 23, 2010
    Commemoration of Phillips Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts, spiritual writer, 1893
Meditation:
    Now this is what the LORD Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”
    —Haggai 1:5-6 (NIV)
Quotation:
    In prayer we express deep penitence and contrition for our shortcomings, using sorrowful and self-accusing words. And this often in all sincerity. But, at other times, we are not really much disturbed about it; or, at least, not nearly so much as our heaped-up language would imply. What we imagine that we are achieving through this unreality I do not know. We shall not fool the All-wise; nor induce Him to believe that we are anything other, or better, than we actually are! Were it not saner to tell Him the truth, exactly as it is—not that we are overwhelmed with sorrow for our sinfulness, if it is not so; but rather this, that, to all our other sinfulness, we have added this last and crowning sinfulness, that we are not much worried about it, or, at least, not nearly as much as we ought to be. Be pleased, in pity, to grant us such measure of sorrow for our failures as will lead us to a true repentance; and, through that, to a new way of life.
    ... A. J. Gossip (1873-1954), In the Secret Place of the Most High, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947, p. 27-28 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant me true sorrow for my sins. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Mascall: a message to the worldly

2010-01-22T02:00:00.001-06:00

Friday, January 22, 2010
Meditation:
    [Therefore,] remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.
    —Ephesians 2:12,13 (NIV)
Quotation:
    If Dr. [John A. T.] Robinson is right in saying that “God is teaching us that we must live as men who can get on very well without him,” then the Church has no need to say anything whatever to secularized man, for that is precisely what secularized man already believes.
    ... E. L. Mascall (1905-1993), in The Observer, March 24, 1963, reproduced in The Honest to God Debate, David L. Edwards, ed., London, SCM Press, 1963, p. 93 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, use Your people to show the world its need for You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Foster: women in the early church

2010-01-21T02:00:00.000-06:00

Thursday, January 21, 2010
    Feast of Agnes, Child Martyr at Rome, 304
Meditation:
    Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were anticipating.”
    When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer the door. When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”
    “You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.”
    But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished.
    —Acts 12:11-16 (NIV)
Quotation:
    That is where they meet, the Upper Room, scene of the Last Supper, scene of the Resurrection appearances when the doors were shut, scene now of their waiting for the Spirit. Whose is it? The clue lies in Acts 12, where St. Peter, strangely freed from Herod’s prison, knows at whose house they will be gathered for prayer. He knocks, startles the gate-girl Rhoda. It was “the house of Mary the mother of John whose surname was Mark”—the young man who was to write the earliest of the gospels. The first meeting place of any Christian congregation was the home of a woman in Jerusalem.
    Something of the sort happens everywhere. The church in Caesarea centres upon Philip the Evangelist. “Now this man had four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy.” ... Joppa church depends on Tabitha, “a woman full of good works and almsdeeds which she did.” Follow St. Paul about the Mediterranean. He crosses to Europe because he dreams of a man from Macedonia who cries, “Come over and help us.” But when he lands at Philippi it is not a man, but a woman. “Lydia was baptized and her household”—his first convert in Europe, a woman. Everywhere women are the most notable of the converts, often the only ones who believe. In Thessalonica there are “of the chief women not a few;” Beroea, “Greek women of honourable estate;” Athens, only two names, one of them, Damaris, a woman. At Corinth Priscilla and Aquila come into the story, the pair always mentioned together, and four times out of the six with the wife’s name first, a thing undreamed of in the first century. Why? Because she counted for more in church affairs—hostess of the church in her houses in Corinth, Ephesus and Rome, chief instructress of Apollos the missionary, intimate of the greatest missionary of all, St. Paul. Six times in the Epistles greetings are sent to a house-church, and in five cases the church is linked with a woman’s name.
    ... John Foster (1898-1973), Five Minutes a Saint, Richmond: John Knox Press, 1963, p. 39 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I thank You that You have sanctified whom You will; that there is neither male nor female, for all are one. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Schaeffer: radical opposition to wrong

2010-01-20T02:00:00.001-06:00

Wednesday, January 20, 2010
    Commemoration of Richard Rolle of Hampole, Writer, Hermit, Mystic, 1349
Meditation:
    Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.
    —2 Timothy 2:15 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The Christian is the real radical of our generation, for he stands against the monolithic, modern concept of truth as relative. But too often, instead of being the radical, standing against the shifting sands of relativism, he subsides into merely maintaining the status quo. If it is true that evil is evil, that God hates it to the point of the cross, and that there is a moral law fixed in what God is in Himself, then Christians should be the first into the field against what is wrong.
    ... Francis A. Schaeffer (1912-1984), The God Who is There [1968], in The Francis A. Schaeffer Trilogy, Good News Publishers, 1990, p. 118 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Quicken our conscience, Lord. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Brother Lawrence: what sinners are capable of

2010-01-19T02:00:00.001-06:00

Tuesday, January 19, 2010
    Commemoration of Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, 1095
Meditation:
    Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
    —Romans 12:21 (NIV)
Quotation:
    As for the miseries and sins he heard of daily in the world, he was so far from wondering at them that, on the contrary, he was surprised that there were not more, considering the malice sinners were capable of. For his part, he prayed for them; but, knowing that God could remedy the mischiefs they did when He pleased, he gave himself no further trouble.
    ... Brother Lawrence (c.1605-1691), The Practice of the Presence of God, New York, Revell, 1895, p. 8-9 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You dismiss the evil from the world. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Webb: joy

2010-01-18T02:00:00.001-06:00

Monday, January 18, 2010
    Commemoration of Amy Carmichael, Founder of the Dohnavur Fellowship, 1951
Meditation:
    Be joyful always.
    —1 Thessalonians 5:16 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Joy is not gush: joy is not jolliness. Joy is simply perfect acquiescence in God’s will, because the soul delights itself in God Himself... Rejoice in the will of God, and in nothing else. Bow down your heads and your hearts before God, and let the will, the blessed will of God, be done.
    ... Hanmer William Webb-Peploe (1837-1923), included in Springs in the Valley, ed. Mrs. Charles E. Cowman, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997, p. 163 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, let Your will in my life be my joy. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Hoskyns: learning in the church

2010-01-17T02:00:00.001-06:00

Sunday, January 17, 2010
    Feast of Antony of Egypt, Abbot, 356
    Commemoration of Charles Gore, Bishop, Teacher, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, 1932
Meditation:
    You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat. It is written: “‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.’” So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.
    —Romans 14:10-12 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The Church is the place where we learn not how self-sufficient we are, but where we learn what sin really is. The Church is the place where the Pharisee learns to say with the Publican: Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.
    ... Sir Edwyn C. Hoskyns (1884-1937), We are the Pharisees, London: SPCK, 1960, p. 19 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, let me never consider my sin “better” than someone else’s. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Kierkegaard: increasing His sufferings

2010-01-16T02:00:00.001-06:00

Saturday, January 16, 2010
Meditation:
    Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
    —Hebrews 9:26-28 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Lord Jesus Christ! A whole life long didst thou suffer that I too might be saved; and yet thy suffering is not yet at an end; but this too wilt thou endure, saving and redeeming me, this patient suffering of having to do with me, I who so often go astray from the right path, or even when I remained on the straight path stumbled along it or crept so slowly along the right path. Infinite patience, suffering of infinite patience. How many times have I not been impatient, wished to give up and forsake everything; wished to take the terribly easy way out, despair: but thou didst not lose patience. Oh, I cannot say what thy chosen servant says: that he filled up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in his flesh; no, I can only say that I increased thy sufferings, added new ones to those which thou didst once suffer in order to save me.
    ... Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Journals, ed. Alexander Dru, Oxford University Press, 1959, p. 361 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    You, Lord, have borne what I cannot. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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