Marshall: depending on God

Saturday, October 24, 2009
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
    —John 15:5 (NIV)
Quotation:
    If your every human plan and calculation has miscarried, if, one by one, human props have been knocked out, and doors have shut in your face, take heart. God is trying to get a message through to you, and the message is: “Stop depending on inadequate human resources. Let me handle the matter.”
    ... Catherine Marshall (1914-1983), Adventures in Prayer, F.H. Revell, 1975, p. 26 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I depend solely on You.CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Muggeridge: the short road to revival

Friday, October 23, 2009
Meditation:
    What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.
    —1 Corinthians 7:29-31 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The early Christians... enjoyed the inestimable advantage of believing that the millennium was near, which precluded them from seeking to establish a beneficent regime in this world. In the time at their disposal, it was just not worth while. Perhaps the best hope of reviving the Christian religion would be to convince the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and other dignitaries likewise that the world will shortly be coming to an end. A difficult undertaking, I fear, notwithstanding much evidence pointing that way.
    ... Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990), The Green Stick, London: Collins, 1972, p. 43 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, teach us to value that which is permanent.CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Aristides: the observable testimony

Thursday, October 22, 2009
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
    —John 13:34-35 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Christians love one another. They never fail to help widows; they save orphans from those who would hurt them. If a man has something, he gives freely to the man who has nothing. If they see a stranger, Christians take him home and are happy, as though he were a real brother. They don’t consider themselves brothers in the usual sense, but brothers instead through the Spirit, in God. ... And if they hear that one of them is in jail, or persecuted for professing the name of their redeemer, they all give him what he needs—if it is possible, they bail him out.
    If one of them is poor and there isn’t enough food to go around, they fast several days to give him the food he needs... This is really a new kind of person. There is something divine in them.
    ... Marcianus Aristides (2nd century), a lawyer, before HadrianThe Apology of Aristides on Behalf of the Christians, ed. J. Rendel Harris, Joseph Armitage Robinson, Cambridge: The University Press, 1891, p. 49-50 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your goodness shows forth through Your people.CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Tertullian: loyalty to God's appointees

Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Meditation:
    Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.
    —1 Peter 2:13 (NIV)
Quotation:
    As to the Emperor and the charge of high treason against us, Caesar’s safety lies not in hands soldered on. We invoke the true God for the Emperor. Even if he persecute us, we are bidden pray for them that persecute us, as you can read in our books which are not hidden, which you often get hold of. We pray for him because the Empire stands between us and the end of the world. We count the Caesars to be God’s vice-regents and swear by their safety (not by their genius, as required). As for loyalty, Caesar really is more ours than yours; for it was our God who set him up. It is for his own good, that we refuse to call the Emperor God; Father of his Country is a better title. No Christian has ever made a plot against a Caesar; the famous conspirators and assassins were heathen, one and all. Piety, religion, faith are our best offering of loyalty.
    ... Tertullian (Quintus S. Florens Tertullianus) (160?-230?), Apology [ca. 193], quoted in The Influence of Christ in the Ancient World, T. R. Glover, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929, p. 34 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, improve earthly government for all people.CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Chapman: the attraction of belonging

Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Meditation:
    Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.
    —1 John 5:5 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The sure way to success for any commercial venture is to suggest that those people who buy things from it, or gamble on its terms, are members of a “club,” a “circle.” Study the advertisements in any popular magazine: people are “invited to apply for membership;” “members will receive a catalogue;” they are even offered “rules,” which they gladly accept because the need for authority lies heavily upon them; they then receive a card admitting them to the circle, with the “President’s signature” printed on it. In the need for belonging, the acknowledgement of dependence, may lie the greatest opportunity of the Christian evangelist. It is not unlike the conditions under which the early Church worked. In the later Roman Empire, crumbling under its own size, its communications and resources stretched to the utmost, the mystery-religions came into their own. Rites of initiation, the sharing of secret knowledge, offered to people of all classes an escape from the perplexities of life, a retreat into a closed circle of the elect where they might feel that their transformed personalities had some significance. Who can know how many weary souls there were who strayed into the Church through rumours of a secret rite of purification, of a shared meal that conferred wisdom, and who remained to comprehend the fullness of the Godhead, a belonging greater than they had ever imagined.
    ... Raymond Chapman (b. 1924), The Ruined Tower, London: G. Bles, 1961, p. 110-111 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, nothing can equal belonging to You.CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Ramsay: how Christianity spread

Monday, October 19, 2009
    Feast of Henry Martyn, Translator of the Scriptures, Missionary in India & Persia, 1812
Meditation:
    Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward all men.
    —Titus 3:1-2 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The life of the early Church lay in constant intercommunication between all its parts; its health and growth were dependent on the free circulation of the life-blood of common thought and feeling. Hence it was first firmly seated on the great lines of communication across the empire, leading from its origin in Jerusalem to its imperial center in Rome. It had already struck root in Rome within little more than twenty years after the Crucifixion, and it had become really strong in the great city about thirty years after the Apostles began to look round and out from Jerusalem. This marvelous development was possible only because the seed of the new thought floated free on the main currents of communication, which were ever sweeping back and forward between the heart of the empire and its outlying members. Paul, who mainly directed the great movement, threw himself boldly and confidently into the life of the time; he took the empire as it was, accepted its political conformation and arrangement, and sought only to touch the spiritual and moral life of the people.
    ... Sir William M. Ramsay (1851-1939), Was Christ Born at Bethlehem? [1898], Putnam's Sons, 1898, p. 31-32 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, let Your people see Your purpose beyond worldly affairs.CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Whately: interpreting the promises spiritually

Sunday, October 18, 2009
    Feast of Luke the Evangelist
Meditation:
    You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit.
    —1 Thessalonians 1:6 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Now if all these things were to come to pass, the determined expectation of which caused the Jews to reject Christ,—if he should actually appear, with miraculous splendor, as the restorer of the Jewish nation, and city, and Temple, reigning over the whole world as a great earthly sovereign, and reserving peculiar privileges for his own nation,—if, I say, all these expectations should be fulfilled, to which the Jews have so long and so obstinately clung, surely this would not be so much a conversion of the Jews to Christianity as a conversion of Christians to Judaism; it would not be bringing the Jews to the Gospel by overcoming their national prejudices, but rather carrying back the Gospel to meet the Jewish prejudices; it would be destroying the spiritual character of our religion, and establishing those erroneous views which have hitherto caused the Jews to reject it.
    We may conclude, then, that all the promises and predictions in Scripture relative to the future glories of the Jews and of Jerusalem, are to be understood of the Christian church, of which the Jewish church was a figure; and all that is said of feasting and splendor, and wealth, and worldly greatness and enjoyment, is to be interpreted spiritually of the inward comfort and peace of mind, and “joy of the Holy Ghost,” which is promised to sincere Christians in this life, and of the unspeakable happiness prepared for them after death.
    ... Richard Whately (1787-1863), A View of the Scripture Revelations Concerning a Future State [1829], Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1857, p. 158 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your Spirit comforts me and strengthens me always.CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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