MacDonald: the value of lost things

Wednesday, July 1, 2009
    Commemoration of John & Henry Venn, Priests, Evangelical Divines, 1813, 1873

Meditation:
    [Jesus] said to them, "Do you still not understand?"
    —Mark 8:21 (NIV)

Quotation:
    When I trouble myself over a trifle, even a trifle confessed—the loss of some little article, say—spurring my memory, and hunting the house, not from immediate need, but from dislike of loss; when a book has been borrowed of me and is not returned, and I have forgotten the borrower, and fret over the missing volume, ... is it not time that I lost a few things when I care for them so unreasonably? This losing of things is the mercy of God; it comes to teach us to let them go. Or have I forgotten a thought that came to me, which seemed of the truth? I keep trying and trying to call it back, feeling a poor man until that thought be recovered—to be far more lost, perhaps, in a notebook into which I shall never look again to find it! I forget that it is live things that God cares about.
    ... George MacDonald (1824-1905), “The Cause of Spiritual Stupidity”, in Unspoken Sermons, Second Series, London: Longmans, Green, 1886, p. 53-43 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, detach my allegiance from worthless things.

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