Minear on Brahms' German Requiem

Thursday, January 7, 2010
Meditation:
LORD, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am.
Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity
    —Psalm 39:4-5 (KJV)
Quotation:
    [Johannes] Brahms chose his own texts [for his German Requiem] from Luther’s Bible to illustrate the Protestant conviction that man must hear and respond to God’s word in man’s own language, and that every believer must be free to deal with the Biblical text apart from priestly veto... For the word “German” he would gladly have substituted the word “human” because he was concerned to comment on “the primary text of human existence,” finding there, as in the Bible, the universal themes of suffering and joy.
    ... Paul S. Minear (1906-2007)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are the Father of all, and all belong to You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Lecky: an ideal character

Wednesday, January 6, 2010
    EPIPHANY
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.
    —Matthew 5:37 (NIV)
Quotation:
    It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character, which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love; has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions; has been not only the highest pattern of virtue but the strongest incentive to its practice; and has exerted so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.
    ... W. E. H. Lecky (1838-1903), History of European Morals, v. II [1869], New York: D. Appleton, 1910, p. 8-9 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, our inheritance from You is rich beyond measure. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Nida: an unjustified analysis

Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Meditation:
    Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
    —Acts 2:46-47 (NIV)
Quotation:
    It is quite true that the Greek word ekklesia comes from two roots which mean literally “called out.” Many preachers have made use of this fact to point out helpful spiritual implications, and yet, by New Testament times, the word carried no such denotation as “called out.” It was simply the word for “assembly” or “congregation.” It so happened that in the Greek city-states an assembly of the citizenry resulted from the people being called out of their city and summoned from their farms to participate in such gatherings. Even though the etymology of the word remains, its real meaning is just “assembly,” and a Greek-speaking person of New Testament times would be no more inclined to understand ekklesia in its original etymological value of “called out” than we today would recognize “God be with you” in “good-by,” which, as we may learn from the dictionary, was derived from the longer phrase.
    ... Eugene A. Nida (b. 1914), God’s Word in Man’s Language, Harper, 1952, p. 61 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, we praise You for the promise of Your presence in the assembly. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Packer: the anchor

Monday, January 4, 2010
Meditation:
    And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.
    —1 John 5:20 (KJV)
Quotation:
    If we think that Jesus did not rise, but “lives” and “reigns” only in his followers’ memories and imaginations, and is not actively and objectively “there” in the place of power, irrespective of whether he is acknowledged or not, we should give up hope of our own rising, and of Jesus’ public return, and admit that the idea of churches and Christians being sustained by the Spirit-giving energy of a living Lord was never more than a pleasing illusion. And, in that case, we ought frankly to affirm that, though the New Testament is an amazing witness to the religious creativity of the human spirit, its actual message is more wrong than right, more misleading than helpful; and we must reconstruct our gospel accordingly. Only a weak, muddled, or cowardly mind will hesitate to do this.
    ... James I. Packer (b. 1926), “Jesus Christ the Lord”, in The Lord Christ, John Stott, ed., vol. 1 of Obeying Christ in a Changing World, John Stott, gen. ed., 3 vol., London: Fountain, 1977, p. 34 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, lead us out from under the spreading clouds of doubt. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Fuller: another fool for Christ

Sunday, January 3, 2010
    Commemoration of Gladys Aylward, Missionary in China, 1970
Meditation:
    All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove [Jesus] out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.
    —Luke 4:28-30 (NIV)
Quotation:
    George Brush, the hero of [Thornton Wilder’s] “Heaven’s My Destination,” a textbook salesman and evangelist extraordinary, is the innocent fool, in the kindliest sense of both the noun and the adjective. He is striving to be the fool in Christ, sowing the inevitable amazement, consternation and wrath that must ensue when Christ’s fool runs at large among the worldly wise.
    ... Edmund Fuller (1914/15-2001), “Thornton Wilder: the Notation of the Heart”, originally in American Scholar, September, 1959, pp 210-217, included in Books with Men Behind Them, New York: Random House, 1959, p. 49-50 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, you show that we cannot hold onto our friends’ good opinion of us and the Gospel. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Kirk: fools for Christ

Saturday, January 2, 2010
    Feast of Basil the Great & Gregory Nazianzen, Bishops, Teachers, 379 & 389
    Commemoration of Seraphim, Monk of Sarov, Mystic, Staretz, 1833
Meditation:
    Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
    —1 Corinthians 1:26-27 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The fool for Christ holds a prophetic role in Christianity, from the early church to Russian Orthodox “pilgrims” and such later fools as Luther, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky, who were seekers after the true, the good, the holy, the beautiful. They were insane—not in a clinical sense, but in the madness of the Holy, an insanity which ordinary sanity refuses to admit.
    ... David Kirk (1935-2007), Quotations from Chairman Jesus, Springfield, Ill.: Templegate Publishers, 1969, p. 132-133 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant me boldness to speak the word of truth, regardless of my standing in the community. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Luther: reading the Bible

Friday, January 1, 2010
    Feast of the Naming & Circumcision of Jesus
Meditation:
    So on the first day of the seventh month Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, which was made up of men and women and all who were able to understand. He read it aloud from daybreak till noon as he faced the square before the Water Gate in the presence of the men, women and others who could understand. And all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law. Day after day, from the first day to the last, Ezra read from the Book of the Law of God. They celebrated the feast for seven days, and on the eighth day, in accordance with the regulation, there was an assembly.
    —Nehemiah 8:2-4 (NIV)
Quotation:
    For some years now I have read through the Bible twice every year. If you picture the Bible to be a mighty tree and every word a little branch, I have shaken every one of these branches because I wanted to know what it was and what it meant.
    ... Martin Luther (1483-1546), Preface to the Prophets [1532], in What Luther Says: an anthology, v. I, Ewald Martin Plass, ed., Concordia Pub. House, 1959, p. 83 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Your word is precious to me, Lord. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt