Gossip: sorrow for sin?

Saturday, January 23, 2010
    Commemoration of Phillips Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts, spiritual writer, 1893
Meditation:
    Now this is what the LORD Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”
    —Haggai 1:5-6 (NIV)
Quotation:
    In prayer we express deep penitence and contrition for our shortcomings, using sorrowful and self-accusing words. And this often in all sincerity. But, at other times, we are not really much disturbed about it; or, at least, not nearly so much as our heaped-up language would imply. What we imagine that we are achieving through this unreality I do not know. We shall not fool the All-wise; nor induce Him to believe that we are anything other, or better, than we actually are! Were it not saner to tell Him the truth, exactly as it is—not that we are overwhelmed with sorrow for our sinfulness, if it is not so; but rather this, that, to all our other sinfulness, we have added this last and crowning sinfulness, that we are not much worried about it, or, at least, not nearly as much as we ought to be. Be pleased, in pity, to grant us such measure of sorrow for our failures as will lead us to a true repentance; and, through that, to a new way of life.
    ... A. J. Gossip (1873-1954), In the Secret Place of the Most High, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947, p. 27-28 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant me true sorrow for my sins. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Mascall: a message to the worldly

Friday, January 22, 2010
Meditation:
    [Therefore,] remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.
    —Ephesians 2:12,13 (NIV)
Quotation:
    If Dr. [John A. T.] Robinson is right in saying that “God is teaching us that we must live as men who can get on very well without him,” then the Church has no need to say anything whatever to secularized man, for that is precisely what secularized man already believes.
    ... E. L. Mascall (1905-1993), in The Observer, March 24, 1963, reproduced in The Honest to God Debate, David L. Edwards, ed., London, SCM Press, 1963, p. 93 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, use Your people to show the world its need for You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Foster: women in the early church

Thursday, January 21, 2010
    Feast of Agnes, Child Martyr at Rome, 304
Meditation:
    Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were anticipating.”
    When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer the door. When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”
    “You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.”
    But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished.
    —Acts 12:11-16 (NIV)
Quotation:
    That is where they meet, the Upper Room, scene of the Last Supper, scene of the Resurrection appearances when the doors were shut, scene now of their waiting for the Spirit. Whose is it? The clue lies in Acts 12, where St. Peter, strangely freed from Herod’s prison, knows at whose house they will be gathered for prayer. He knocks, startles the gate-girl Rhoda. It was “the house of Mary the mother of John whose surname was Mark”—the young man who was to write the earliest of the gospels. The first meeting place of any Christian congregation was the home of a woman in Jerusalem.
    Something of the sort happens everywhere. The church in Caesarea centres upon Philip the Evangelist. “Now this man had four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy.” ... Joppa church depends on Tabitha, “a woman full of good works and almsdeeds which she did.” Follow St. Paul about the Mediterranean. He crosses to Europe because he dreams of a man from Macedonia who cries, “Come over and help us.” But when he lands at Philippi it is not a man, but a woman. “Lydia was baptized and her household”—his first convert in Europe, a woman. Everywhere women are the most notable of the converts, often the only ones who believe. In Thessalonica there are “of the chief women not a few;” Beroea, “Greek women of honourable estate;” Athens, only two names, one of them, Damaris, a woman. At Corinth Priscilla and Aquila come into the story, the pair always mentioned together, and four times out of the six with the wife’s name first, a thing undreamed of in the first century. Why? Because she counted for more in church affairs—hostess of the church in her houses in Corinth, Ephesus and Rome, chief instructress of Apollos the missionary, intimate of the greatest missionary of all, St. Paul. Six times in the Epistles greetings are sent to a house-church, and in five cases the church is linked with a woman’s name.
    ... John Foster (1898-1973), Five Minutes a Saint, Richmond: John Knox Press, 1963, p. 39 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I thank You that You have sanctified whom You will; that there is neither male nor female, for all are one. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Schaeffer: radical opposition to wrong

Wednesday, January 20, 2010
    Commemoration of Richard Rolle of Hampole, Writer, Hermit, Mystic, 1349
Meditation:
    Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.
    —2 Timothy 2:15 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The Christian is the real radical of our generation, for he stands against the monolithic, modern concept of truth as relative. But too often, instead of being the radical, standing against the shifting sands of relativism, he subsides into merely maintaining the status quo. If it is true that evil is evil, that God hates it to the point of the cross, and that there is a moral law fixed in what God is in Himself, then Christians should be the first into the field against what is wrong.
    ... Francis A. Schaeffer (1912-1984), The God Who is There [1968], in The Francis A. Schaeffer Trilogy, Good News Publishers, 1990, p. 118 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Quicken our conscience, Lord. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Brother Lawrence: what sinners are capable of

Tuesday, January 19, 2010
    Commemoration of Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, 1095
Meditation:
    Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
    —Romans 12:21 (NIV)
Quotation:
    As for the miseries and sins he heard of daily in the world, he was so far from wondering at them that, on the contrary, he was surprised that there were not more, considering the malice sinners were capable of. For his part, he prayed for them; but, knowing that God could remedy the mischiefs they did when He pleased, he gave himself no further trouble.
    ... Brother Lawrence (c.1605-1691), The Practice of the Presence of God, New York, Revell, 1895, p. 8-9 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You dismiss the evil from the world. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Webb: joy

Monday, January 18, 2010
    Commemoration of Amy Carmichael, Founder of the Dohnavur Fellowship, 1951
Meditation:
    Be joyful always.
    —1 Thessalonians 5:16 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Joy is not gush: joy is not jolliness. Joy is simply perfect acquiescence in God’s will, because the soul delights itself in God Himself... Rejoice in the will of God, and in nothing else. Bow down your heads and your hearts before God, and let the will, the blessed will of God, be done.
    ... Hanmer William Webb-Peploe (1837-1923), included in Springs in the Valley, ed. Mrs. Charles E. Cowman, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997, p. 163 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, let Your will in my life be my joy. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Hoskyns: learning in the church

Sunday, January 17, 2010
    Feast of Antony of Egypt, Abbot, 356
    Commemoration of Charles Gore, Bishop, Teacher, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, 1932
Meditation:
    You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat. It is written: “‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.’” So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.
    —Romans 14:10-12 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The Church is the place where we learn not how self-sufficient we are, but where we learn what sin really is. The Church is the place where the Pharisee learns to say with the Publican: Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.
    ... Sir Edwyn C. Hoskyns (1884-1937), We are the Pharisees, London: SPCK, 1960, p. 19 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, let me never consider my sin “better” than someone else’s. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt