Taylor: the full capacity of prayer

Saturday, September 11, 2010
Meditation:
    The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”
    He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.”
    —Luke 17:5-6 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The prayer power has never been tried to its full capacity... If we want to see mighty works of Divine grace and power wrought, in the place of weakness, failure and disappointment, let [us] answer God’s standing challenge, “Call to me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.”
    ... J. Hudson Taylor (1832-1905), included in Good News for Russia, ed. Jesse Wendell Brooks, Chicago: The Bible Institute Colportage Association, 1918, p. 32 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant us the desire to see Your work in our lives and in the world. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Lapp: the stability of the biblical text

Friday, September 10, 2010
Meditation:
    [The LORD] spoke to them from the pillar of cloud; they kept his statutes and the decrees he gave them.
    —Psalm 99:7 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 by two Ta’amireh shepherds produced more changes in the life of the tribe than it did in the text of the Old Testament.
    ... Paul W. Lapp, in Biblical Archaeology Review, v. IV, n. 1, March, 1978, p. 16
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have given us Your authentic word. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Forsyth: the practice of prayer

Thursday, September 9, 2010
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.”
    —John 10:14-15 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Ten minutes went by, nearly two complete triangles. I had not prayed, not really prayed, for many years, and the habit came hard. Lord, please get me out of this bloody mess... No, you mustn’t talk like that to Him. “Our Father, which art in Heaven—” He’d heard that a thousand times, would be hearing it another thousand times tonight. What do you say to Him when you want help? Please, God, make somebody notice me up here; please make someone see me flying in triangles, and send up a shepherd to help me down to a safe landing. Please help me, and I promise—What on earth could I promise Him? He had no need of me, and I, who now had need of Him, had taken no notice of Him for so long that He’d probably forgotten all about me.
    ... Frederick Forsyth (b. 1938), The Shepherd, Viking Press, 1976, p. 51 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You save those who call upon Your name. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Tillyard: temptation to despair

Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Meditation:
    [The LORD] determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.
    —Psalm 147:4 (NIV)
Quotation:
    When Christianity was young and growing, there was general terror of the stars and a wide practice of astrology. The terror was mainly superstitious, and the only way of mitigating the stars’ enmity was through magic. It was one of the Church’s main tasks to reduce the license of... astrological superstition to her own discipline: there was no question of cutting it out altogether. Naturally, she did not wholly succeed, and her task could never be completed. In the Elizabethan as in earlier ages, the orthodox belief in the stars’ influence, sanctioned but articulated and controlled by the authority of religion, was not always kept pure from the terrors of primitive superstition... The superstitious terrors... have little specifically to do with the Elizabethan age. But it is worth reflecting (as is not always done) that even these were not all horror and loss. If mankind had to choose between a universe that ignored him and one that noticed him to do him harm, he might well choose the second. Our own age need not begin congratulating itself on its freedom from superstition till it defeats a more dangerous temptation to despair.
    ... E. M. W. Tillyard (1889-1962), The Elizabethan World Picture [1943], 9th ed., Vintage Books, 1960, p. 53-54 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, free us to receive Your revelation. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Carmichael: forgive but not forget

Tuesday, September 7, 2010
    Commemoration of Douglas Downes, Founder of the Society of Saint Francis, 1957
Meditation:
    Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.
    —1 Peter 3:9 (NIV)
Quotation:
    If I say, “Yes, I forgive, but I cannot forget,” as though God, who twice a day washes all the sands on all the shores of all the world, could not wash such memories from my mind, then I know nothing of Calvary love.
    ... Amy Carmichael (1867-1951), If [1938], London: SPCK, 1961, p. 40 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Purify and complete my forgiveness, Lord. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Rhymes: the world in the church

Monday, September 6, 2010
    Commemoration of Allen Gardiner, founder of the South American Missionary Society, 1851
    Commemoration of Albert Schweitzer, Teacher, Physician, Missionary, 1965
Meditation:
    And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown and in his own house is a prophet without honor.” And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.
    —Matthew 13:57-58 (NIV)
Quotation:
    If we consider the lives of Christians in their churches, we so often find that they make good sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, employers, and employees—they have many individual virtues; but they have no way of life other than that which has been imposed upon them by their environment. It is their sociological conditions, their social class, their neighbourhood, their national characteristics, rather than their Christian faith which determine their outlook and values: they are an overwhelming demonstration that it is the economic conditions and background of one’s life which determine what one is and what one will think. This is an intolerable condition, and so long as it persists we shall not be able to make any impact on the world, because it will be abundantly clear that it is the world which is making its impact upon us.
    ... Douglas Rhymes (1914-1996), “The Place of the Laity in the Parish”, in Layman’s Church, ed. John A. T. Robinson, London: Lutterworth Press, 1963, p. 30 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You alone are the answer to the menace of culture. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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John of the Cross: suffering

Sunday, September 5, 2010
Meditation:
    I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
    —Philippians 3:10-12 (NIV)
Quotation:
    O you souls who wish to go on with so much safety and consolation, if you knew how pleasing to God is suffering, and how much it helps in acquiring other good things, you would never seek consolation in anything; but you would rather look upon it as a great happiness to bear the Cross of the Lord.
    ... St. John of the Cross (1542-1591), The Complete Works of Saint John of the Cross, v. III, Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1935, p. 154 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have sanctified my suffering. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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