Law: our own perfection?

March 15, 2009

Meditation:
    Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.
    -- Romans 10:3 (NIV)

Quotation:
    We are looking for our own virtue, our own piety, our own goodness, and so live on and on in our own poverty and weakness; today pleased and comforted with the seeming strength and firmness of our own pious tempers, and fancying ourselves to be somewhat; tomorrow, fallen into our own mire, we are dejected, but not humbled; we grieve, but it is only the grief of pride, at the seeing our perfection not to be such as we vainly imagined. And thus it will be, till the whole turn of our minds be so changed, that we as fully see and know our inability to have any goodness of our own, as to have a life of our own.
    ... William Law (1686-1761), The Spirit of Prayer [1750], 2.3-41 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You alone are the creator and sustainer of all goodness.

    See the Christian Quotation of the Day and the Quotations Bible Study