Trueblood: what the Church is

Saturday, April 10, 2010
    Feast of William Law, Priest, Mystic, 1761
    Commemoration of William of Ockham, Franciscan Friar, Philosopher, Teacher, 1347
    Commemoration of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Priest, Scientist, Visionary, 1955
Meditation:
    And the gospel must first be preached to all nations.
    —Mark 13:10 (NIV)
Quotation:
    All of the early Christians were missionaries. They did not leave the evangelistic task either to professional evangelists or to pastors to whom they paid salaries, for these did not exist... The early Church did not have a missionary arm; it was a missionary movement.
    ... Elton Trueblood (1900-1994), The Incendiary Fellowship, New York: Harper, 1967, p. 112 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, make me a missionary wherever You place me. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Bonhoeffer: an idolized doctrine?

Friday, April 9, 2010
    Feast of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Teacher, Martyr, 1945
Meditation:
    Peter said to him, “We have left all we had to follow you!”
    “I tell you the truth,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life.”
    —Luke 18:28-30 (NIV)
Quotation:
    We Lutherans... have paid the doctrine of pure grace divine honours unparalleled in Christendom; in fact, we have exalted the doctrine to the position of God Himself. Everywhere Luther’s formula has been repeated, but its truth perverted into self-deception. So long as our Church holds the correct doctrine of justification, there is no doubt whatever that she is a justified Church! So they said, thinking that we must vindicate our Lutheran heritage by making this grace available on the cheapest and easiest terms. To be “Lutheran” must mean that we leave the following of Christ to the Nomians, the Calvinists, and the Anabaptists—and all this for the sake of grace! We justified the world, and condemned as heretics those who tried to follow Christ. The result was that a nation became Christian and Lutheran, but at the cost of true discipleship... We poured forth unending streams of grace. But the call to follow Jesus was hardly ever heard.
    ... Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), The Cost of Discipleship, London: SCM Press, 1964, p. 12-13 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Speak, Lord, so Your people may hear Your call. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Gossip: He is gracious

Thursday, April 8, 2010
    Commemoration of William Augustus Muhlenberg of New York, Priest, 1877
Meditation:
    Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.
    —Joel 2:13 (NIV)
Quotation:
    I like to begin a service with some divine assurance of the liberality and the eager forgiveness of the God who is now meeting with us; not by beseeching Him to be gracious, but by believing that He is; that He stands to His promises; and that, quite safely, we can deal with Him on that assumption.
    ... A. J. Gossip (1873-1954), In the Secret Place of the Most High, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947, p. 54 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I have receievd Your mercy. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Guinness: the pendulum of the future

Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Meditation:
Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save.
When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
    on that very day their plans come to nothing.
    —Psalm 146:3-4 (NIV)
Quotation:
    With the death of absolutes, the prospects are grim for any lover of justice, freedom, and order. Western culture will lurch drunkenly between chaotic lawlessness and countering authoritarianism, in which some particularly abysmal vacuum of confidence could finally issue in a supreme dictatorship, mocking the Western aspirations for democracy as ineffective and demonstrating the strong alliance between technology and the state. Until then, violence, blood brother of such a totalitarianism, will play its fateful part, naked or disguised, in an inevitable power struggle on all levels.
    ... Os Guinness (b. 1941), The Dust of Death, Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1973, p. 160 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, we long for Your reign on earth. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Maugham: the value of art

Tuesday, April 6, 2010
    Commemoration of Albrecht Dürer, artist, 1528, and Michelangelo Buonarrotti, artist, spiritual writer, 1564
Meditation:
    One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple
    —Psalm 27:4 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Art—if it is to be reckoned as one of the great values of life—must teach men humility, tolerance, wisdom, and magnanimity. The value of art is not beauty, but right action.
    ... W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), Mr. Maugham Himself, Doubleday, 1954, p. 673 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Author of all beauty, Your light makes clear my life’s path. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Luther: saving faith

Monday, April 5, 2010
Meditation:
    If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.
    —Romans 14:8 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The only saving faith is that which casts itself on God for life or death.
    ... Martin Luther (1483-1546), A Treasury of Sermon Illustrations, Charles Langworthy Wallis, ed., Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1950, p. 116 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, my life and death are in Your hands. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Fulbert: Sing, choirs of New Jerusalem

Sunday, April 4, 2010
    Easter
Meditation:
    Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.
    —John 20:18 (NIV)
Quotation:
Ye choirs of New Jerusalem,
Your sweetest notes employ,
The Paschal victory to hymn
In songs of holy joy!

For Judah’s Lion burst his chains
And crushed the serpent’s head;
Christ cries aloud through death’s domains
To wake the imprisoned dead.

Triumphant in his glory now,
To him all power is given;
To him in one communion bow
All saints in earth and heaven.

All glory to the Father be,
All glory to the Son,
All glory to the Spirit be
While endless ages run.
    ... Fulbert of Chartres (11th century), tr. Robert Campbell (1814-1868), Songs of Praise, enl. ed., Ralph Vaughan Williams, et al., ed., Oxford University Press, 1931, p. 44 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have made Your victory is ours as well.

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