Ambrose: the peace that is rich

Tuesday, December 7, 2010
    Feast of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, Teacher, 397
Meditation:
    Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
    —Philippians 4:6-7 (NIV)
Quotation:
    That peace is truly rich, which passeth all understanding. Peace is rich, modesty is rich, faith is rich, for to the faithful the whole world is a possession. Simplicity is rich, for there are also the riches of simplicity; for she scrutinizes nothing, has no mean, no suspicious, no deceitful thoughts, but pours herself forth with pure affection.
    Goodness too is rich, and if a man preserve it, he is fed by the riches of the heavenly inheritance.
    ... St. Ambrose of Milan (Aurelius Ambrosius) (339-397), letter to Simplician, A.D. 387, The Letters of S. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, Oxford, J. Parker, 1881, p. 251 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You send Your people eternal treasures.

Dear friends of CQOD,
    A very happy Advent season to you! We do have treasures indeed from the hand of our Savior.
    My reason for writing today is that I need some volunteers to evaluate a new feature of CQOD. If you practice a daily quiet time and you use the Psalms in your meditation (or would like to and you are willing to give me a little time), drop me a note. I promise you that it will not be a very big imposition.
    May the Lord richly bless you, as we celebrate His coming.
    RMA

CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Newbigin: the church in His mercy

Monday, December 6, 2010
    Feast of Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, c.326
Meditation:
    [Jesus, concluding the parable of the laborers in the vineyard:] “But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
    “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
    —Matthew 20:13-16 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The Church exists, and does not depend for its existence upon our definition of it: it exists wherever God in His sovereign freedom calls it into being by calling his own into the fellowship of His Son.
    And the Church exists solely by His mercy. God shuts up and will shut up every way except the way of faith which simply accepts His mercy as mercy. To that end, He is free to break off unbelieving branches, to graft in wild slips, and to call “No people” His people. And if, at the end, those who have preserved through all the centuries the visible “marks” of the Church find themselves at the same board with some strange and uncouth late-comers on the ecclesiastical scene, may we not fancy that they will hear Him say—would it not be so like him to say—“It is my will to give unto these last even as unto thee?” Final judgment belongs to God, and we have to beware of judging before the time. I think that if we refuse fellowship in Christ to any body of men and women who accept Jesus as Lord and show the fruits of His Spirit in their corporate life, we do so at our peril. It behooves us, therefore, to receive one another as Christ has received us.
    ... Lesslie Newbigin (1909-1998), The Household of God, London, SCM Press, 1953, New York: Friendship Press, 1954, p. 150 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Teach me, Lord, to receive your people as You receive them. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Allshorn: the Christlike character

Sunday, December 5, 2010
    Advent II
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “I and the Father are one.”
    —John 10:30 (NIV)
Quotation:
    We know so well what the unique quality was that held this great and beautiful pride and exquisite humility together. It lay in the relationship he held with God. We know the familiar idea of Jesus’ oneness with God: only we deal with it too much as a doctrine of the Church, not as an element in Jesus’ own experience. If we never find it in reality, in life, we cannot reveal the true Christ-like character at all—we will always be trying earnestly to be something, but on too superficial and obvious a plane.
    ... Florence Allshorn (1887-1950), The Notebooks of Florence Allshorn, London: SCM Press, 1957, p. 77-78 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Increase, O Lord, Your presence in my life. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Bornkamm: faith in Jesus the foundation

Saturday, December 4, 2010
    Commemoration of Nicholas Ferrar, Deacon, Founder of the Little Gidding Community, 1637
Meditation:
    Without warning, a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”
    He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.
    The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”
    —Matthew 8:24-27 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Form-criticism... has made an end of the false notion, which for a long time dominated critical scholarship, that it was possible throughout the gospels to distill from them a “Life of Jesus” that would be free from dogmatic presuppositions and not affected by any “retouching” derived from the faith of the Church. In fact, however, faith in Jesus Christ crucified and risen did not first appear at some later stage in the tradition, but was the foundation of the tradition, the very soil out of which it grew; and it is in light of that faith alone that the tradition can be understood.
    This faith in Jesus Christ, the Crucified and Exalted One, explains both the things which the primitive tradition makes known to us, with its manifest concern for the factual truth of the tradition about Jesus, and at the same time the peculiar liberty which the evangelists take in making alterations in the record in points of detail. In relating the acts and words of Jesus, they do not refer back to any sort of “archives” possessed by the community... Jesus Christ is not for them a figure of past history whose proper place is in a library.
    ... Günther Bornkamm (1905-1990), “The Stilling of the Storm in Matthew”, as quoted in The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History, Gabriel Hebert, London: SCM Press, 1962, p. 37 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are our contemporary. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Taylor: Beatitude

Friday, December 3, 2010
    Commemoration of Francis Xavier, Apostle of the Indies, Missionary, 1552
Meditation:
    May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.
    —1 Thessalonians 3:12 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Love is the greatest thing that God can give us, for Himself is love: and it is the greatest thing we can give to God, for it will also give ourselves, and carry with it all that is ours. The apostle calls it the band of perfection; it is the old, and it is the new, and it is the great commandment, and it is all the commandments; for it is the fulfilling of the Law. It does the work of all the graces without any instrument but its own immediate virtue. For as the love to sin makes a man sin against all his own reason, and all the discourses of wisdom, and all the advices of his friends, and without temptation and without opportunity, so does the love of God; it makes a man chaste without the laborious arts of fasting and exterior disciplines, temperate in the midst of feasts, and is active enough to choose it without any intermedial appetites, and reaches at glory through the very heart of grace, without any other aims but those of love. It is a grace that loves God for Himself, and our neighbors for God. The consideration of God’s goodness and bounty, the experience of those profitable and excellent emanations from Him, may be, and most commonly are, the first motive of our love; but when we are once entered, and have tasted the goodness of God, we love the spring for its own excellency, passing from passion to reason, from thanking to adoring, from sense to spirit, from considering ourselves to an union with God: and this is the image and little representation of heaven; it is beatitude in picture, or rather the infancy and beginnings of glory.
    ... 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. 156 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, send Your Holy Spirit to teach me love. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Kurosaki: His will for us

Thursday, December 2, 2010
Meditation:
    One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.
    —Romans 14:5 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Paul uses the example of differing opinions about food and days among the believers in Rome to teach that Christians should not despise or judge one another. Note that he does not advise them to find a happy medium between the contending opinions or to average the two extremes into a compromise. On the contrary, he admonished that “every one be fully convinced in his own mind.” He declares that God is able to make both stand, since both of them are serving the Lord in obedience to their individual convictions of His will... Each of us has to find personally what is the will of God for his own life, and let all others meet their responsibility to do the same... For God, by giving different commands to many, and putting them together according to His plan, shall accomplish ultimately His complete will.
    ... Kokichi Kurosaki (1886-1970), One Body in Christ, Kobe, Japan: Eternal Life Press, 1954, ch. 9 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, lead us to see our unity in You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Casteel: the class meeting

Wednesday, December 1, 2010
    Commemoration of Charles de Foucauld, Hermit, Servant of the Poor, 1916
Meditation:
    Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. Now we ask you, brothers, to respect those who work hard among you, who are over you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other.
    —1 Thessalonians 5:11-13 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The genius of the Methodist movement, which enabled it to conquer the raw lives of workingmen in industrial England, and the raw lives of men and women on the American frontier, was the “class meeting”—ten members and their leader, meeting regularly for mutual encouragement, rebuke, nurture, and prayer.
    ... John L. Casteel (1903-1993/5), Spiritual Renewal through Personal Groups, NY: Association Press, 1957, p. 20 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, increase the bond of love among the brethren. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt