Eckhart: everything is in God's sphere

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Meditation:
    Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall.
    —Psalm 55:22 (NIV)

Quotation:
    Let God operate in thee; hand the work over to Him and do not disquiet thyself as to whether or no He is working with nature or above nature, for His are both nature and grace.
    ... Meister Eckhart (1260?-1327?), Works of Meister Eckhart, Kessinger Publishing, 1997, p. 41 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    All the work of my hands depends upon Your sovereign grace.

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Calvin: the hope that sustains

Friday, June 12, 2009

Meditation:
    Keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.
    —Jude 21 (NIV)

Quotation:
    But as many things entice us to apostasy, so that it is difficult to keep us faithful to God in the end, [Jude] calls the attention of the faithful to the last day. For the hope of that alone ought to sustain us, so that we may at no time despond; otherwise, we must necessarily fail every moment.
    ... John Calvin (1509-1564), Commentaries on the catholic epistles [1551], tr. J. Owen, Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1855, p. 447 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You must lift my eyes to the Cross.

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Maurice: when unity will come

Thursday, June 11, 2009
    Feast of Barnabas the Apostle

Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.”
    —Matthew 10:32,33 (NIV)

Quotation:
    A united confession of the Name, a united Worship of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit,—such a Confession,—such a Worship as the past contains only a dim shadow and prophecy of—we have a right to look for. It may come when we least expect it; it will probably come after a period of darkness, fierce contention, utter disbelief. But the confession will only be united when we cease to confound our feeble expressions of trust and affiance, our praises and adorations, with Him to whom they rise, from whom they proceed; when we are brought to nothingness, that He may be shown to be all in all.
    ... Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872), Lincoln’s Inn Sermons [1853], London: Macmillan, 1891, in six volumes, v. 2, p. 144 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, teach me to worship You as I should.

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Cranfield: our kind of antinomianism

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Meditation:
    For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.
    —Jude 4 (NIV)

Quotation:
    All antinomianism is a radical denial of Christ and of God. And antinomianism is by no means merely a thing of the past. It is present wherever zeal for the Christian religion, for worship, theology, and all manner of other Church activities is unaccompanied by moral earnestness, wherever Christians can complacently and without any sense of incongruity combine piety with indifference to their neighbours’ needs and a comfortable acquiescence in social and political injustice.
    ... C. E. B. Cranfield (b. 1915), I & II Peter and Jude, London: SCM Press, 1960, p. 158 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, may Your law be honored everywhere.

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Tozer: the necessity of renunciation

Tuesday, June 9, 2009
    Feast of Columba, Abbot of Iona, Missionary, 597
    Commemoration of Ephrem of Syria, Deacon, Hymnographer, Teacher, 373

Meditation:
    The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.
    "I will make you into a great nation
        and I will bless you;
    I will make your name great,
        and you will be a blessing.
    I will bless those who bless you,
        and whoever curses you I will curse;
    and all peoples on earth
        will be blessed through you."
    So Abram left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran.
    —Genesis 12:1-4 (NIV)

Quotation:
    If we would indeed know God in growing intimacy, we must go this way of renunciation. And if we are set upon the pursuit of God He will sooner or later bring us to this test. Abraham’s testing was, at the time, not known to him as such, yet if he had taken some course other than the one he did, the whole history of the Old Testament would have been different. God would have found His man, no doubt, but the loss to Abraham would have been tragic beyond the telling. So we will be brought one by one to the testing place, and we may never know when we are there. At that testing place there will be no dozen possible choices for us; just one and an alternative, but our whole future will be conditioned by the choice we make.
    ... A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), The Pursuit of God [1948], Wilder Publications, 2008, p. 24 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, make me ready to follow You.

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Henry: celebrating the resurrection

Monday, June 8, 2009
    Feast of Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath & Wells, Hymnographer, 1711

Meditation:
    And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them, Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.
    —Luke 24:33,34 (KJV)

Quotation:
    [My father’s] common salutation of his family or friends, on the Lord’s day in the morning, was that of the primitive Christians:—The Lord is risen; He is risen indeed; making it his chief business on that day to celebrate the memory of Christ’s resurrection.
    ... Matthew Henry (1662-1714), The life of the Rev. Philip Henry, A.M. [1697], W. Ball, 1839, p. 50 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your people await Your return.

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Chadwick: miracles and laws

Sunday, June 7, 2009
    Trinity Sunday

Meditation:
    Then came the Feast of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the temple area walking in Solomon's Colonnade. The Jews gathered around him, saying, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”
    Jesus answered, “I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father's name speak for me, but you do not believe because you are not my sheep.”
    —John 10:22-26 (NIV)

Quotation:
    Some will not believe in miracles because the laws of nature work uniformly. But their uniformity is undisturbed by human operations; the will of man wields, without cancelling, these mighty forces which surround us: and why may not the will of God do the same?
    ... G. A. Chadwick (1840-1923), The Gospel According to St. Mark, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1891, p. 316 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, we lack knowledge of You. Show us Your ways.

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