Willard: the ruined soul

Saturday, May 1, 2010
    Feast of Philip & James, Apostles
Meditation:
    When Jesus heard this, he was astonished and said to those following him, “I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
    —Matthew 8:10-12 (NIV)
Quotation:
    We should be very sure that the ruined soul is not one who has missed a few more or less important theological points and will flunk a theological examination at the end of life. Hell is not an “oops!” or a slip. One does not miss heaven by a hair, but by constant effort to avoid and escape God. “Outer darkness” is for one who, everything said, wants it, whose entire orientation has slowly and firmly set itself against God and therefore against how the universe actually is. It is for those who are disastrously in error about their own life and their place before God and man. The ruined soul must be willing to hear of and recognize its own ruin before it can find how to enter a different path, the path of eternal life that naturally leads into spiritual formation in Christlikeness.
    ... Dallas Willard (b. 1935), The Renovation of the Heart, Colorado Springs, Colo.: Navpress, 2002, p. 59 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Break, O Lord, that rebellious spirit within me, and lead me to submission to Your word. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Moffatt: the closing of the canon

Friday, April 30, 2010
    Commemoration of Pandita Mary Ramabai, Translator of the Scriptures, 1922
Meditation:
    In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.
    —Hebrews 1:1,2 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The Old Testament [is] a reflection of national life in sharply defined phases: the Hebrews, Israel, and the Jews successively appear as its bearers. But there is a religious unity through the complicated story, a unity which carries with it a continuity of purpose. The people themselves were not always conscious of that purpose; even when they were, they frequently did their best to thwart it. Nevertheless, the purpose prevailed. The religious mind calls it a revelation of God, and the more we pass through a study of the literature into a conception of the people among whom it arose, the more we compare their faith and fortunes with those of their neighbours, the more impossible it seems to explain the rise and career of these particular Semitic clans within the ancient world, a part from a Divine choice. Those who called the literature the “Old Testament” believed that this Divine choice and purpose was fulfilled in the “New Testament,” in the religious movement within Judaism which, during the first century A.D., named itself after Jesus Christ. The members of this movement held that the Old Testament was unintelligible apart from the New, and the New unintelligible apart from the Old. The Church believes that the divine purpose revealed in the Old Testament is not to be fulfilled in any national future for Judaism, within Palestine or elsewhere, but in a catholic community for the world. Hence its Bible adds the New Testament to the Old as the one and only sequel.
    ... James Moffatt (1870-1944), A New Translation of the Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1935, New York: Harper, 1935, Introduction, p. xv-xvi (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have placed the history of Your salvation before us. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Dudley-Smith: in His heart and mind

Thursday, April 29, 2010
    Feast of Catherine of Siena, Mystic, Teacher, 1380
Meditation:
    [The LORD:] If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever.
    —Jeremiah 7:5-7 (NIV)
Quotation:
And what am I, to know
your promises, your mercies, your grace, your love?
Suppose my heart is (as I can only too well believe)
hard, unfruitful, deep, deceitful—is that beyond the power
of the fingers that made the heavens?

O, majestic Lord, you care for me,
you have me in your mind and heart.
In that I rest.
Amen.
    ... Timothy Dudley-Smith (b. 1926), Someone Who Beckons: readings and prayers for 60 days, InterVarsity Press, 1978, p. 29 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You make me able to believe.

CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

MacDonald: almost anything for Jesus

Wednesday, April 28, 2010
    Commemoration of Peter Chanel, Religious, Missionary in the South Pacific, Martyr, 1841
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
    —John 13:17 (NIV)
Quotation:
    How many are there not who seem capable of anything for the sake of the church or of Christianity, except the one thing the Lord cares about—that they should do what He tells them! He would deliver them from themselves into the liberty of the sons of God, make them His brothers; they leave Him to vaunt their church.
    ... George MacDonald (1824-1905), “The Displeasure of Jesus”, in Unspoken Sermons, Third Series, London: Longmans, Green, 1889, p. 188 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, break our institutions to Your service. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Rossetti: Spring bursts today

Tuesday, April 27, 2010
    Feast of Christina Rossetti, Poet, 1894
Meditation:
    So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable...
    —1 Corinthians 15:42 (NIV)
Quotation:
An Easter Carol.

        Spring bursts today,
For Christ is risen and all the earth’s at play.

        Flash forth, thou Sun,
The rain is over and gone, its work is done.

        Winter is past,
Sweet spring is come at last, is come at last.

        Bud, Fig and Vine,
Bud, Olive, fat with fruit and oil and wine.

        Break forth this morn
In roses, thou but yesterday a thorn.

        Uplift thy head,
O pure white lily through the winter dead.

        Beside your dams
Leap and rejoice, you merry-making Lambs.

        All Herds and Flocks
Rejoice, all Beasts of thickets and of rocks.

        Sing, Creatures, sing,
Angels and Men and Birds, and everything,

        All notes of Doves
Fill all our world: this is the time of loves.
    ... Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), Christina Rossetti: the complete poems, London: Penguin Classics, 2001, p. 363-364 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Hail to the risen Lord!

CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Chesterton: the paradox of courage

Monday, April 26, 2010
Meditation:
    For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.
    —Matthew 16:25 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry: the Christian courage, which is a disdain of death; not the [Oriental] courage, which is a disdain of life.
    ... Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), Orthodoxy, London, New York: John Lane Company, 1909, p. 170 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Take my life, Lord, and expend it for Your purposes. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Taylor: Fix my thought

Sunday, April 25, 2010
    Feast of Mark the Evangelist
Meditation:
    “Have you understood all these things?” Jesus asked.
    “Yes,” they replied.
    He said to them, “Therefore every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.”
    —Matthew 13:51-52 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Fix my thoughts, my hopes, and my desires, upon heaven and heavenly things; teach me to despise the world, to repent me deeply for my sins; give me holy purposes of amendment, and [spiritual] strength and assistances to perform faithfully whatsoever I shall intend piously. Enrich my understanding with an eternal treasure of Divine Truths, that I may know thy will: and thou, who workest in us to will and to do of Thy good pleasure, teach me to obey all Thy commandments, to believe all Thy revelations, and make me partaker of all Thy gracious promises.
    ... Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), Holy Living [1650], in The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, D.D., v. III, London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1847, p. 34 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your presence and purpose strengthen me. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt