Joad: an excluded category

Saturday, March 13, 2010
Meditation:
    I tell you this [about riches in Christ] so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments.
    —Colossians 2:4 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The fact that a belief is subjectively determined does not mean that it is untrue; it may be a rationalization of our wishes and may, nevertheless, be in accordance with the evidence. Sometimes we are in the fortunate position of knowing that this is so. We may hold a belief to be true because we wish it to be true, and we may at a later date gratefully acknowledge that the evidence is strongly in its favour. It is by no means to be taken for granted that religious beliefs do not fall within this category. I make this point because many people argue as if it were sufficient to show that our religious beliefs are rationalizations, ... in order to disprove them; as if the fact that religious beliefs fulfilled our wishes and comforted our feelings was in itself a reason for supposing them to be false.
    ... C. E. M. Joad (1891-1953), God and Evil, New York: Harper, 1943, p. 228 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, rid my mind of all controversies concerning You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Ambrose: the rules of art

Friday, March 12, 2010
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?”
    “The son of David,” they replied.
    He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says, ‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.”’ If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?”
    —Matthew 22:42-45 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Very many deny that the Sacred writers wrote according to the rules of art. Nor do we contend for the contrary; for they wrote not according to art, but according to grace, which is above all art; for they wrote that which the Spirit gave them to speak. And yet they who wrote on art made use of their writings from which to frame their art, and to compose its comments and rules.
    ... St. Ambrose of Milan (339-397), letter to Justus, A.D. 381, The Letters of S. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, Oxford, J. Parker, 1881, p. 27 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have placed beauty of language in Your word that we may recognize the marks of Your truth. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Freeman: not even among the heathen

Thursday, March 11, 2010
Meditation:
    Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor.”
    He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. And he was amazed at their lack of faith. Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village.
    —Mark 6:4-6 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The shameful apostasy of Israel is unparalleled among the heathen nations of the world, God charges (Jer. 2:9-13). Search through every pagan nation, inquire in every idol temple, investigate the religious life of the idolaters of the world, and there will be found a fidelity to these false gods that will put Israel’s unfaithfulness to her God to shame. Israel’s conduct was unheard of even among the heathen. The idolatrous nations remained true to their gods, in spite of the fact that they did not actually exist and could not help them in any way. God, as it were, marvels at Israel’s unbelief.
    ... Hobart E. Freeman (1920-1984), An Introduction to the O. T. Prophets, Chicago: Moody Press, 1968, p. 238 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant me faith that I may believe and repent. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Wesley: all things possible

Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Meditation:
    Ah, Sovereign LORD, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.
    —Jeremiah 32:17 (NIV)
Quotation:
    If all things are possible with God, then all things are possible to him who believes in him.
    ... John Wesley (1703-1791), Sermons on Several Occasions, v. II, New York: Carlton & Phillips, 1855, p. 446 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have performed a miracle within me. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Rutherford: on being cut off

Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Meditation:
    I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
    —Lamentations 3:19-23 (NIV)
Quotation:
    I get not my feasts without some mixture of gall; neither am I free of old jealousies; for he hath removed my lovers and friends far from me; he hath made my congregation desolate, and taken away my crown; and my dumb sabbaths are like a stone tied to a bird’s foot, that wanteth not wings; they seem to hinder my flight, were it not that I dare not say one word, but “Well done, Lord Jesus.”
    ... Samuel Rutherford (1600-1664), Letters of Samuel Rutherford, Edinburgh: William Whyte & Co., 1848, letter, Feb. 20, 1637, p. 192-193 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I will wait on You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Studdert Kennedy: reason grows in faith

Monday, March 8, 2010
    Commemoration of Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy, Priest, Poet, 1929
Meditation:
    Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the LORD God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the LORD God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph.
    —Amos 5:14-15 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The faculty of faith is not meant to kill the faculty of criticism and the instinct of curiosity, but rather to keep them keen and alive, and prevent them dying of despair. Faith is the mark of those who seek and keep on seeking, who ask and keep on asking, who knock and keep on knocking, until the door is opened. The passive, weak-kneed taking of everything on trust which is often presented as faith is a travesty of its truth. True faith is the most active, positive, and powerful of all virtues. It means that a man, having come into spiritual communion with that great personal Spirit Who lives and works behind the universe, can trust Him, and, trusting Him, can use all his powers of body, mind, and spirit to cooperate with Him in the great purpose of perfection; it means that the man of faith will be the man of science in its deepest, truest sense, and will never cease from asking questions, never cease from seeking for the reason that lies behind all mysteries.
    ... G. A. Studdert Kennedy (1883-1929), The Hardest Part, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1919, p. 83-84 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your grace enables me to know You better. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Lewis: the God of good

Sunday, March 7, 2010
    Feast of Perpetua, Felicity & their Companions, Martyrs at Carthage, 203
Meditation:
    And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the LORD'S commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good? To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the LORD set his affection on your forefathers and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations, as it is today. Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer.
    —Deuteronomy 10:12-16 (NIV)
Quotation:
    There were in the eighteenth century terrible theologians who held that “God did not command certain things because they are right, but certain things are right because God commanded them.” To make the position perfectly clear, one of them even said that though God has, as it happens, commanded us to love Him and one another, He might equally well have commanded us to hate Him and one another, and hatred would then have been right. It was apparently a mere toss-up which He decided on. Such a view of course makes God a mere arbitrary tyrant. It would be better and less irreligious to believe in no God and to have no ethics than to have such an ethics and such a theology as this.
    ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Reflections on the Psalms, Edinburgh: James Thin, 1958; G. Bles, 1958, p. 61 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your are good, and You have rejected evil. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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