Pascal: the God-shaped gap

Saturday, June 4, 2011
Meditation:
    “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign LORD, “when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD. Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it.”
    —Amos 8:11-12 (NIV)
Quotation:
    What does this desire and this inability of ours proclaim to us but that there was once in man a genuine happiness, of which nothing now survives but the mark and the empty outline; and this he vainly tries to fill from everything that lies around him, seeking from things that are not there the help that he does not get from those that are present? Yet they are quite incapable of filling the gap, because this infinite gulf can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object—that is, God, Himself. He alone is man’s veritable good, and since man has deserted Him it is a strange thing that there is nothing in nature that has not been capable of taking His place for man: stars, sky, earth, elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, plague, war, famine, vices, adultery, incest. And since he has lost the true good, everything can equally appear to him as such—even his own destruction, though that is so contrary at once to God, to reason, and to nature.
    ... Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensées (Thoughts) [1660], P.F. Collier & Son, 1910, #425, p. 138-139 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You desire to feed Your people. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Newbolt: unhelpful controversy

Friday, June 3, 2011
    Feast of Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, Teacher, 1910
    Commemoration of Martyrs of Uganda, 1886 & 1978
Meditation:
    I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing.
    —1 Timothy 2:8 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Let us guard with all our might against lapsing into mere controversialists, unless God has given us special talents in that way, which we can use with fear and trembling as given us for the special defence of truth and of the Church. As we follow Him after the day of disputation up the slope of the Mount of Olives, and watch there, in the blood-red glow of sunset, and the purple of the deepening gloom, and the blackness of approaching night, Jerusalem with its individual history and palpitating heart of religious frenzy, melting into the judgment of a world, and the crash of falling kingdoms, and the winding up of final doom, how little all the controversy has become, in the face of a world’s sin and a world’s judgment! Jesus Christ was the Truth; and as the Truth, He met and laid low controversy.
    ... W. C. E. Newbolt (1844-1930), Speculum Sacerdotum, London: Longmans, Green, 1894, p. 188 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, unite Your people's factions. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Temple: the Ascension

Thursday, June 2, 2011
    Ascension
Meditation:
    Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
    —John 20:17 (NIV)
Quotation:
    In the days of His earthly ministry, only those could speak to him who came where He was. If He was in Galilee, men could not find Him in Jerusalem; if He was in Jerusalem, men could not find Him in Galilee. But His Ascension means that He is perfectly united with God; we are with Him wherever we are present to God; and that is everywhere and always. Because He is “in Heaven” He is everywhere on earth: because He is ascended, He is here now. Our devotion is not to hold us by the empty tomb; it must lift up our hearts to heaven so that we too “in heart and mind thither ascend and with Him continually dwell;” * it must also send us forth into the world to do His will; and these are not two things, but one.
    * from the collect for Ascension, Book of Common Prayer, 1662, 1928
    ... William Temple (1881-1944), Readings in St. John’s Gospel, London: Macmillan, 1939, 1952, p. 382 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your are continually present with Your people. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Denney: faith and history

Wednesday, June 1, 2011
    Feast of Justin, Martyr at Rome, c.165
    Commemoration of Angela de Merici, Founder of the Institute of St. Ursula, 1540
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.”
    —John 15:26-27 (NIV)
Quotation:
    When a man was chosen to take the place of Judas, and to be associated with the eleven as a witness of the Resurrection, he was chosen from the men ‘who have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and went out among us, beginning from the baptism of John unto the day that He was received up from us’. The criticism which would have us believe that from the Resurrection onward the Jesus of history was practically displaced by an ideal Christ of faith is beside the mark. The Christ of faith was the Jesus of history, and no one was regarded as qualified to bear witness to the Christ unless he had had the fullest opportunity of knowing Jesus.
    ... James Denney (1856-1917), Jesus and the Gospel: Christianity justified in the mind of Christ, New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1908, p. 14 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your witness have spoken to the ages. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Babcock: Thy will be done

Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Meditation:
    Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter.
    —2 Corinthians 7:10-11 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Thy will be done means more than thy will be borne. No matter what sorrow invades our life, we are still to do God’s will. We shall see afterwards that the sorrow rightly accepted fitted us to do some new duty, or to do our old duty more effectively. “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth,” is the right cry in the hour of bewildering grief.
    ... Maltbie D. Babcock (1858-1901), Thoughts for Every-day Living, New York: C. Scribner’s sons, 1901, p. 122 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, teach me to look to You in the moment of grief. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Tillotson: count the cost

Monday, May 30, 2011
    Feast of Josephine Butler, Social Reformer, 1906
    Commemoration of Joan of Arc, Visionary, 1431
    Commemoration of Apolo Kivebulaya, Priest, Evangelist, 1933
Meditation:
    This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.
    —1 John 5:3-4 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Men expect that religion should cost them no pains, that happiness should drop into their laps, without any design and endeavour on their part, and that, after they have done what they please while they live, God should snatch them up to heaven when they die. But though “the commandments of God be not grievous,” yet it is fit to let men know, that they are not thus easy.
    ... John Tillotson (1630-1694), Works of Dr. John Tillotson, v. I, London: J. F. Dove, for R. Priestley, 1820, Sermon VI, p. 482-483 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, relieve my fatigue, so that I may not fail You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Donne: no other way

Sunday, May 29, 2011
Meditation:
    [Peter:] “... We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as [the Gentiles] are.”
    —Acts 15:11 (NIV)
Quotation:
    To me, to whom God hath revealed his Son, in a Gospel, by a Church, there can be no way of salvation, but by applying that Son of God, by that Gospel, in that Church. Nor is there any other foundation for any, nor other name by which any can be saved, but the name of Jesus. But how this foundation is presented, and how this name of Jesus is notified unto them, amongst whom there is no Gospel preached, no Church established, I am not curious in inquiring. I know that God can be as merciful as those tender Fathers present him to be; and I would be as charitable as they are. And therefore, humbly embracing that manifestation of his Son, which he hath afforded me, I leave God, to his unsearchable waies of working upon others, without further inquisition.
    ... John Donne (1573-1631), Works of John Donne, vol. I, London: John W. Parker, 1839, p. 489 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your justice is mercy. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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