Pascal: getting at the truth

Saturday, October 16, 2010
Meditation:
    (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)
    —John 20:9 (NIV)
Quotation:
    [Unbelievers] think they have made great efforts to get at the truth when they have spent a few hours in reading some book out of Holy Scripture, and have questioned some cleric about the truths of the faith. After that, they boast that they have searched in books and among men in vain.
    ... Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensées (Thoughts) [1660], P.F. Collier & Son, 1910, #194, p. 70 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, remove the obstacles, so that ____ and ____ may receive a greater knowledge of You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Baillie: life in dependence upon God

Friday, October 15, 2010
    Feast of Teresa of Avila, Mystic, Teacher, 1582
Meditation:
    Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”
    “Nothing,” they answered.
    —Luke 22:35 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Jesus lived His life in complete dependence upon His Father, as we all ought to live our lives. But such dependence does not destroy human personality. Man is never so fully and so truly personal as when he is living in complete dependence upon God. This is how personality comes into its own. This is humanity at its most personal.
    ... Donald M. Baillie (1887-1954), God was in Christ: an essay on incarnation and atonement, Scribner, 1955, p. 93 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You supply the needs of Your people. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Trueblood: difficulties

Thursday, October 14, 2010
Meditation:
    Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.
    —Jude 3
Quotation:
    If we are honest, we freely admit that the Christian system involves difficulties; but so does every other system. No thoughtful person gives up a position merely because he finds difficulties in it; he does not abandon it until he is able to find other and alternative systems with fewer difficulties... I learned from my professors of philosophy... that, while philosophy might not provide me with a watertight intellectual defense of the Christian faith, it would, if used aright, help me to reveal the weakness of its enemies. By careful analysis it is possible to see that there are glaring weaknesses and non-sequiturs in atheism, naturalism, positivism, scientism, and psychologism. The Christian must be a fighter, for he is always under attack. The Church will not be as strong as it ought to be until each local pastor uses his precious freedom from outside employment in order to become a scholarly participant in the intellectual struggle of our day and generation.
    ... Elton Trueblood (1900-1994), The Incendiary Fellowship, New York: Harper, 1967, p. 47-48 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have revealed Your truth to reason. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Donne: den of thieves

Wednesday, October 13, 2010
    Feast of Edward the Confessor, 1066
Meditation:
    Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it a ‘den of robbers.’”
    —Matthew 21:12-13 (NIV)
Quotation:
    You rob, and spoil, and eat his people as bread, by extortion, and bribery, and deceitful weights and measures, and deluding oaths in buying and selling, and then come hither, and so make God your receiver, and his house a den of thieves. His house is sanctum sanctorum, the holiest of holies, and you make it only sanctuarium; it should be a place sanctified by your devotions, and you make it only a sanctuary to privilege malefactors, a place that may redeem you from the ill opinion of men, who must in charity be bound to think well of you, because they see you here.
    ... John Donne (1573-1631), Works of John Donne, vol. III, London: John W. Parker, 1839, Sermon LXVIII, p. 217 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are cleansing Your church. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Phillips: our expectations of God

Tuesday, October 12, 2010
    Commemoration of Wilfrid, Abbot of Ripon, Bishop of York, Missionary, 709
    Commemoration of Elizabeth Fry, Prison Reformer, 1845
Meditation:
But [the Israelites] soon forgot what he had done
    and did not wait for his counsel.
In the desert they gave in to their craving;
    in the wasteland they put God to the test.
So he gave them what they asked for,
    but sent a wasting disease upon them.
    —Psalm 106:13-15 (NIV)
Quotation:
    From the crude cry which we have so often heard during the war years: “If there is a God, why doesn’t He stop Hitler?,” to the unspoken questioning in many a Christian heart when a devoted servant of Christ dies from accident or disease at what seems to us a most inopportune moment, there is this universal longing for God to intervene, to show His hand, to vindicate His purpose. I do not pretend to understand the ways of God any more than the next man; but it is surely more fitting as well as more sensible for us to study what God does do and what He does not do as He works in and through the complex fabric of this disintegrated world, than to postulate what we think God ought to do and then feel demoralized and bitterly disappointed because He fails to fulfill what we expect of Him.
    ... J. B. Phillips (1906-1982), Making Men Whole, London: Highway Press, 1952, p. 33 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, help me to receive You as You truly are. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Jones: the character of the Redeemer

Monday, October 11, 2010
    Commemoration of Ethelburga, Abbess of Barking, 675
Meditation:
    The eunuch was reading this passage of Scripture:
    “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
        and as a lamb before the shearer is silent,
        so he did not open his mouth.
    In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
        Who can speak of his descendants?
        For his life was taken from the earth.”
    The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.
    —Acts 8:32-35 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Some have said that the power of a Redeemer would depend upon two things: first, upon the richness of the self that was given; and second, upon the depths of the giving. Friend and foe alike are agreed on the question of the character of Jesus Christ... Whatever our creed, we stand with admiration before the sublime character of Jesus. Character is supreme in life, and hence Jesus stood supreme in the supreme thing—so supreme that, when we think of the ideal, we do not add virtue to virtue, but think of Jesus Christ, so that the standard of human life is no longer a code, but a character.
    ... E. Stanley Jones (1884-1973), Now and Then
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have demonstrated the Gospel. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Perrin: failures dear to Christ

Sunday, October 10, 2010
    Feast of Paulinus, Bishop of York, Missionary, 644
Meditation:
    And rejoice before the LORD your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name—you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, the Levites in your towns, and the aliens, the fatherless and the widows living among you.
    —Deuteronomy 16:11 (NIV)
Quotation:
    A great many of those about me would be imprisoned under any law; in France, as here, they would be regular jail-birds. But I loved them better and better—and still I knew how little was my love for them compared to Christ’s. It is easy enough for a man to be honest and a “good Christian” and keeper of “the moral law,” when he has his own little room, his purse well filled—when he is well shod and well fed. It is far less easy for a man who has to live from day to day, roaming from city to city, from factory to factory. It is far less easy for someone just out of jail, with nothing to wear but old down-at-the-heels shoes and a shirt in rags. All of a sudden, I understood our Lord’s words: “I was in prison ... and you visited me not.” All these men, lazy, outside the law, starving: these failures of all kinds—they were dear to Christ—they were Christ, waiting in prison for someone to lean over Him—and if we were true Christians, we would do them every kindness.
    ... Henri Perrin (1914-1954), Priest-Workman in Germany, London: Sheed & Ward, 1947, p. 83 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, soften our hearts towards the poor. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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