Sadgrove & Wright: the point to the story

April 25, 2009
    Feast of Mark the Evangelist

Meditation:
    [Peter:] The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.
    -- Acts 3:13-15 (NIV)

Quotation:
    Modern attempts to get away from the sheer historical facts of the Resurrection are, at best, based on a total misunderstanding. The whole Bible proclaims the need for, and the achievement of, a salvation that will remake creation (not one that will ignore it or escape from it), and it is just such a salvation, at once supernatural and historical, that was won on Easter Day. If the Resurrection narratives are [merely] a subtle way of convincing us that God still loves us, or that there is a life (albeit, a non-material one) beyond death, they must be reckoned among the oddest and most ill-conceived stories ever written.
    ... Michael Sadgrove (1950- ) & Tom Wright (1948- ), "Jesus Christ the Only Saviour" in Obeying Christ in a Changing World, J. R. W. Stott, ed., Vol. 1: The Lord Christ. London: Collins, 1977, p. 73 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I am healed through Your Resurrection.

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Augustine: hidden grace

April 24, 2009
    Commemoration of Mellitus, First Bishop of London, 624

Meditation:
    [Jesus:] "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love."
    -- John 15:9,10 (NIV)

Quotation:
    It is not that we keep His commandments first, and that then He loves; but that He loves us, and then we keep His commandments. This is that grace, which is revealed to the humble, but hidden from the proud.
    ... St. Augustine (354-430), Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel according to St. John, lxxxii.3 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I am not worthy, but You have granted me Your grace.

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Carver: 500 lean years

April 23, 2009
    Feast of George, Martyr, Patron of England, c.304
    Commemoration of Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1988

Meditation:
    And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
    -- Matthew 24:14 (NIV)

Quotation:
    The belief in baptismal regeneration of infants, which had... become almost universal [in the middle ages], and the reliance on mysterious sacramental efficacy for sanctification and heavenly admission, strongly militated against regeneration and spiritual reality within the Church. The complete professionalization of a priestly ministry largely eliminated laymen from direct evangelism and robbed them of the missionary spirit, since they were not to be trusted to teach and could not validly administer the saving symbols. The reliance on organization and ceremonial grace, along with the growing concept of the representative relation of the Pope on earth to the Christ in heaven, involved a practical ignoring of the Holy Spirit as the divinely ordained Counterpart of the Christ and the informing soul of the Church... The vast territorial extent of Christianity and the very general ignorance of world geography made it possible for Christians to lose sight of the non-Christian world and to feel, even if somewhat vaguely, that the Christian task was complete, so far as its world occupation was concerned. The Mohammedan growth had encircled the Christian territories. The relations between Christendom and the Mohammedan world fostered anything else than a spirit of helpfulness and a disposition to give the blessings of the one to the other. Christian information about the heathen world was largely cut off by... Mohammedanism; and in order to reach the heathen, missionaries would have to make their way through Mohammedan territory.
    ... William Owen Carver (1868-1954), The Course of Christian Missions, New York: Revell, 1939, pp. 77-78 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, bless those who take the good news to the world.

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Carmichael: Deep unto deep

April 22, 2009

Meditation:
    Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me--a prayer to the God of my life.
    -- Psalm 42:7,8 (NIV)

Quotation:
    Deep unto deep, O Lord,
        Crieth in me,
    Gathering strength I come,
        Lord, unto Thee.
    Jesus of Calvary,
        Smitten for me,
    Ask what Thou wilt, but give
        Love to me.
    ... Amy Carmichael (1867-1951)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are my greatest desire.

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Anselm: knowing God in heaven

April 21, 2009
    Feast of Anselm, Abbot of Le Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1109

Meditation:
    I myself am convinced, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge and competent to instruct one another.
    -- Romans 15:14 (NIV)

Quotation:
    Those blessed ones of thine... shall rejoice according as they shall love; and they shall love according as they shall know. How far they will know thee, Lord, then! and how much they will love thee!
    ... St. Anselm (1033-1109), Proslogium, or Discourse on the Existence of God, tr. Sidney N. Deane, Chicago: The Opencourt Publishing Co, 1903, p. 33 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Through Your grace, Lord, I grow daily in knowledge of You.

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Dodd: disown evil

April 20, 2009

Meditation:
    There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.
    -- 1 Corinthians 12:6 (NIV)

Quotation:
    The ascetic believed that, because he was so holy, the Devil was permitted special liberties with him, and he found in his increasing agony of effort a token of divine approval. Not along this track lies the path of moral progress. Christianity says: face the evil once for all, and disown it. Then quiet the spirit in the presence of God. Let His perfections fill the field of vision. In particular, let the concrete embodiment of the goodness of God in Christ attract and absorb the gaze of the soul. Here is the righteousness, not as a fixed and abstract ideal, but in a living human person. The righteousness of Christ is a real achievement of God’s own Spirit in man.
    ... C. Harold Dodd (1884-1973), The Meaning of Paul for Today [1920], p. 113 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I look upon Your goodness with awe.

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Dodd: Christian righteousness

April 19, 2009
    Commemoration of Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1012

Meditation:
    Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.
    -- Romans 3:20,21 (NIV)

Quotation:
    The higher faiths call their followers to strenuous moral effort. Such effort is likely to be arduous and painful in proportion to the height of the ideal, desperate in proportion to the sensitiveness of the conscience. A morbid scrupulousness besets the morally serious soul. It is anxious and troubled, afraid of evil, haunted by the memory of failure. The best of the Pharisees tended in this direction, and no less the best of the Stoics. And so little has Christianity been understood that the popular idea of a serious Christian is modeled upon the same type of character. (Continued tomorrow)
    ... C. Harold Dodd (1884-1973), The Meaning of Paul for Today [1920], p. 112 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, all good works are Your creation.

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