CQOD: 09/17/06 -- Donne: simplicity and truth

Christian Quotation of the Day

September 17, 2006

Feast of Hildegard, Abbess of Bingen, Visionary, 1179

Meditation:
    Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
    -- Genesis 2:1,2 (KJV)

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Quotation:
    That earth and that heaven, which spent God himself, Almighty God, six days in finishing, Moses sets up in a few syllables, in one line: In the beginning God created heaven and earth. If a Livie or a Guicciardine, or such extensive and voluminous authors had had this story in hand, God must have made another world, to have made them a library to hold their books, of the making of this world. Into what wire would they have drawn out this earth! Into what leaf-gold would they have beat out these heavens! It may assist our conjecture herein, to consider, that amongst those men, who proceed with a sober modesty and limitation in their writing, & make a conscience not to clog the world with unnecessary books, yet the volumes which are written by them, upon the beginning of Genesis, are scarce less than infinite. God did no more but say, Let this & this be done; and Moses doth no more but say, that upon God’s saying it was done. God required not Nature to help him to do it; Moses required not Reason to help him believe.
    ... John Donne (1573-1631), XXVIII in Fifty Sermons

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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your word prevails.

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See Believer's Desktop Companion 2004
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