“If heaven were by merit, it would never be heaven to me, for if I were in it I should say, ‘I am sure I am here by mistake; I am sure this is not my place; I have no claim to it.’ But if it be of grace and not of works, then we may walk into heaven with boldness.”
Charles Spurgeon
An old quote has brought me comfort and warmth on this very rainy day:
‘I have taken all my good deeds, and all my bad deeds, and have cast them together in a heap before the Lord, and have fled from both to Jesus Christ, and in Him I have sweet peace’ – David Dickson (1583-1663)
I’ve come on to share a quote that I have deeply enjoyed in recent weeks:
“I recall a conversation between Oprah and [Toni] Morrison in which Oprah confessed she sometimes has to go over and over a passage [in one of Morrison’s novels] to understand it. Morrison said that the process to which Oprah was referring “is called reading.””
Michael Jinkins
I struggle rather frequently with the thought that, as cracked and weathered as it is, this world is one flush with beauty from its Creator. Beauty feels both deeply present.. and just out of reach, especially when my mind has been washed with weariness from the flood of emails, messages, and the relentless buzzing of social media (that demands! a! reaction!). I see it, to borrow St. Paul’s words, through a glass (and very dimly).
Good writing is a great help in this regard. It tends to calm and slow me down. Good passages or chunks of prose feel like a tram ride through an exhibit at the zoo – where I might walk past briskly, or give up on the leopard’s emergence after five agonizing seconds of Waiting, the tram demands that I circle the enclosure until it is done.
Good writing insists on its own way. Its words, strung together, take me down new paths, and help me to linger on the idea that they enclose until the idea opens itself up to me in some new way.
“I understood that every flower created by Him is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would no longer be enameled with lovely hues. And so it is in the world of souls, Our Lord’s living garden.” – Saint Therese of Lisieux
In a culture of work and productivity, there can be a sense of shame that settles over me when i realise that down the road, or in the present – i may have to rely very heavily on the kindness of others, with little to ‘give’ in return. This quote reminded me that my idea of goodness & growth is small and flimsy, and invited me to trade it in for something truer and deeper.
That even when i am unspectacular and not ‘interesting’ or ‘remarkable’, like a reed – which is just a fancy word for ‘a piece of grass next to a river’ – Jesus is delighted in me, and I am not alone. I grow in a garden with many other flowers. We are just like the simple wild flowers in forests and fields, small and hidden, but blooming gently where God has planted us. Unspectacular, unnoticed by the greater population.. yet – Jesus is delighted in His ‘little flower’, and speaks of it with love. So together with many unspectacular ‘others’, we grow as a garden and give glory to God.
So it is okay if I am weak and do not have lovely colors all the time, if I am small and hidden.. Jesus will still tend to me with His great heart, and He even promises that it is okay if I do not look like a rose. Part of the church’s beauty is that it is a garden with so many flowers.. if all the flowers were roses, how boring!
“The winter is the childhood of the year. Into this childhood of the year came the child Jesus; and into this childhood of the year must we all descend. It is as if God spoke to each of us according to our need, “My son, my daughter, you are growing old and cunning; you must grow a child again, with my Son, this blessed birth-time. You are growing old and selfish; you must become a child. You are growing old and careful; you must become a child. You are growing old and distrustful; you must become a child. You are growing old and petty, and weak, and foolish; you must become a child—my child, like the baby there, that strong sunrise of faith and hope and love, lying in his mother’s arms in the stable.”
“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
“…it seems to me there are a few basic both/and propositions that could turn down the temperature of our rhetoric, while also pushing the racial conversation toward greater clarity and usefulness.
For example, might we be able to acknowledge that systemic injustice can exist while also asking for evidence that, in whatever particular situation we are studying, it does exist? That seems like a reasonable starting place for further conversation. “I acknowledge that structural racism could play a part, but let’s take a closer look at the evidence for that claim.”
Isn’t it reasonable to think that minorities have different experiences than members of the majority and that members of the majority may be blind to those experiences, while nevertheless rejecting the kind of standpoint epistemology that circumscribes the right to speak, and even defines the measure of truth itself, by the standard of one’s lived experience?
These both/and propositions won’t remove all our different emphases and suspicions, but they might help us inch toward one another in finding common ground. That is, if we want to find common ground.”
“The coming of Christ in the flesh and the declaration of the good news of his saving purpose was not a matter of human planning and ingenuity, nor was it frustrated by human resistance and sin. It was a gift whose reception was made possible by the prayerful obedience of Mary and whose effect was to create a new community of God’s sons and daughters. As we look forward, what is there for us to do but pray, obey and be ready for God’s re-creating work through the eternal and unchanging Saviour, Jesus Christ?”
and can it be, that I should gain
an interest in my Savior’s blood?
“If we are going to feed our people, we must ever advance in our grasp of Biblical truth. We must be like Jonathan Edwards who resolved in his college days, and kept the resolution all his life, “Resolved: To study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly, and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive, myself to grow in knowledge of the same.
“We must train our people [to grasp] that it is not irreverent to see difficulties in the Biblical text and to think hard about how they can be resolved. Preaching should model this for them week after week.
He has called us to an eternity of discovery so that every morning for ages to come we might break forth in new songs of praise.”
As I look at what will possibly be the greatest teaching load of my life thus far in the coming months, I am grateful for how 2020 has afforded me time and space to read and ponder. I heartily confess my dependence on Christ and His Word, on the Spirit who illuminates, and on the body of believers that challenges, encourages, and builds me up.
If you know anyone who longs to teach, do check in on and encourage them. The heart veers off course at the hint of success and approval. Discipline in private falls by the wayside. They need your help! They have to be reading. They have to be growing. They have to be hungry for their daily bread. If not, what are they feeding you from?
“Christians are people who know that they owe their lives to Jesus Christ, not just as their example, but as their Savior. In gratitude they give their lives wholly to him for all that he has done in their place and continues to do on their behalf. As enemies of grace who brought him to the cross for their share in the sins of the world, they have received him into their lives by faith and are learning to be transformed by his love. They know that because of who Jesus Christ is and what he has done, in all its inexhaustible wonder and mystery, they have not been condemned to the nothingness that would otherwise have been theirs. Knowing also that God has loved them while they were yet enemies, as indeed he loves the whole world, they rededicate themselves to him each day, that through their lives they might faithfully bear witness to what he has done.
By the power of his grace and in the fellowship of his love, despite many grievous failures and lapses, they renounce retaliation, retribution, and the violence spawned when these are unchecked. By a power not their own, they show forgiveness to those who harm them and compassion to those in need, as God has forgiven and shown compassion to them. They refuse to condone contrary practices and to cooperate with those who do. They are ready to die if need be, and otherwise wholly to give their lives, in service to the one who so wholly gave his life for them. In these and other ways, they would attest, and hope humbly to share in, the politics of the nonviolent God.”
George Hunsinger
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