Summer: sending the right message

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Meditation:
    ... if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
    —2 Chronicles 7:14 (NIV)

Quotation:
    Bless God, America.
    ... Linden Summer

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, heal our nation and all the world.

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Quarles & Lyte: I am His

Friday, July 3, 2009
    Feast of Thomas the Apostle

Meditation:
    In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth,
    and the heavens are the work of your hands.
They will perish, but you remain;
    they will all wear out like a garment.
    Like clothing you will change them
    and they will be discarded.
    —Psalm 102:25,26 (NIV)

Quotation:
Long did I toil, and knew no earthly rest,
Far did I rove, and found no certain home;
At last I sought them in His sheltering breast,
Who opes His arms and bids the weary come:
With Him I found a home, a rest divine,
And I since then am His, and He is mine.

The good I have is from His stores supplied:
The ill is only what He deems the best.
He for my friend, I’m rich with naught beside;
And poor without Him, though of all possessed.
Changes may come—I take, or I resign
Content, while I am His, and He is mine.

Whate’er may change, in Him no change is seen,
A glorious Sun, that wanes not, nor declines;
Above the clouds and storms He walks serene,
And on His people’s inward darkness shines;
All may depart—I fret not nor repine,
While I my Saviour’s am, while He is mine.

While here, alas! I know but half His love,
But half discern Him, and but half adore;
But when I meet Him in the realms above,
I hope to love him better, praise Him more,
And feel, and tell, amid the choir divine,
How fully I am His, and He is mine.
    ... J. Quarles (1624-1665) & Henry F. Lyte (1793-1847), Miscellaneous Poems, London: Rivingtons, 1868, p. 75 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, may I wholly love and praise You.

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Law: natural delight in religion

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Meditation:
    In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval.
    —1 Corinthians 11:18,19 (NIV)

Quotation:
    When religion is in the hands of the mere natural man, he is always the worse for it; it adds a bad heat to his own dark fire, and helps to inflame his four elements of selfishness, envy, pride, and wrath. And hence it is that worse passions, or a worse degree of them, are to be found in persons of great religious zeal, than in others that made no pretences to it. History also furnishes us with instances of persons of great piety and devotion, who have fallen into great delusions, and deceived both themselves and others. The occasion of their fall was this: ... They considered their whole nature, as the subject of religion, and divine graces; and therefore their religion was according to the workings of their whole nature, and the old man was as busy, and as much delighted in it, as the new.
    ... William Law (1686-1761), Christian Regeneration [1739], in Works of Rev. William Law, v. V, London: G. Moreton, 1893, p. 168 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You must help me to crucify the old man.

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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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Coleridge: the declension of love

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.”
    —Matthew 5:13 (NIV)

Quotation:
    He, who begins by loving Christianity, better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.
    ... Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Aids to Reflection [1825], London: W. Pickering, 1839, Aphorism XXV, p. 74 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, fix my heart on You.

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Maurice: the desire for unity

Monday, June 29, 2009
    Feast of Peter & Paul, Apostles

Meditation:
    [Jesus praying:] I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
    —John 17:22,23 (NIV)

Quotation:
    The desire for unity has haunted me all my life through; I have never been able to substitute any desire for that, or to accept any of the different schemes for satisfying it which men have desired.
    ... Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872), The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice: Chiefly Told in His Own Letters, v.1, ed. John Frederick Maurice, London: Macmillan, 1885, p. 41 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, only Your hand can unite Your people.

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Clowney: Christians and luck

Sunday, June 28, 2009
    Feast of Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, Teacher, Martyr, c.200

Meditation:
    God is our refuge and strength,
    an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
    and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
    and the mountains quake with their surging.
    —Psalm 46:1-3 (NIV)

Quotation:
    Too many Christians still live with crossed fingers, sweating out their good luck as a portent of calamity. To see them, you would never guess that God’s good pleasure, and not the goddess of fate, rules human destiny.
    ... Edmund P. Clowney (1917-2005)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, my life is always in Your hands.

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