Bernard: accountable for what we have

Saturday, August 20, 2011
    Feast of Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, Teacher, 1153
    Commemoration of William & Catherine Booth, Founders of the Salvation Army, 1912 & 1890
Meditation:
    For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have.
    —2 Corinthians 8:12 (NIV)
Quotation:
    And now be careful to be found a wise and faithful servant, and communicate the heavenly bread to your fellow servants without envy or idleness. Do not take up the vain excuse of your rawness of inexperience which you may imagine or assume. For sterile modesty is never pleasing, nor that humility laudable which passes the bounds of reason. Attend to your work; drive out bashfulness by a sense of duty, and act as a master... But I am not sufficient for these things, you say. As if your offering were not accepted from what you have, and not from what you have not. Be prepared to answer for the single talent committed to your charge, and take no thought for the rest... For he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. Give all, as assuredly you shall pay to the uttermost farthing; but of a truth out of what you have, not what you have not.
    ... Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153), The Life and Times of St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, A.D. 1091-1153, James Cotter Morison, London: Macmillan, 1889, p. 203 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, from what You have given me, I give to You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Bounds: contact with God

Friday, August 19, 2011
Meditation:
    Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
    —Romans 12:12 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Prayer is the contact of a living soul with God. In prayer, God stoops to kiss man, to bless man, and to aid in everything that God can devise or man can need. Prayer fills man’s emptiness with God’s fullness. It fills man’s poverty with God’s riches. It puts away man’s weakness with God’s strength. it banishes man’s littleness with God’s greatness. Prayer is God’s plan to supply man’s great and continual need with God’s great and continual abundance.
    ... E. M. Bounds (1835-1913), The Reality of Prayer, Racine: Treasres Media, Inc. 2007, p. 7 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I flourish from Your abundance. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Rauschenbusch: speculative theology

Thursday, August 18, 2011
Meditation:
    Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
    —Matthew 10:39 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Theologians have felt no hesitation in founding a system of speculative thought on the teachings of Jesus; and yet Jesus was never an inhabitant of the realm of speculative thought.
    ... Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918), Christianity and the Social Crisis, New York: Macmillan Co., 1907, p. 91 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your word is immediate. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Bronnert: seeing stones

Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Meditation:
    As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
    —1 Peter 2:4-5 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The benefits to the leader [of a pilgrimage to Israel] are in all sorts of directions in addition to the ones to all pilgrims: seeing the Scriptures in a fresh light, becoming aware of the Eastern Church, and the need to relate to and pray for the living stones as well as admiring the dead ones.
    ... David Bronnert, in a letter
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are the master builder. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Singh: an ocean of Love

Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Meditation:
    But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
    —Ephesians 2:4-7 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Without Christ I was like a fish out of water, or like a bird in the water. With Christ I am in the ocean of Love, and while in the world, am in heaven.
    ... Sadhu Sundar Singh (1889-1929), With and Without Christ, Harper & Brothers, 1929, p. 112 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I can never live apart from You again. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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MacDonald: God's kind of righteousness

Monday, August 15, 2011
Meditation:
    For therein is revealed a righteousness of God from faith unto faith: as it is written, But the righteous shall live by faith.
    —Romans 1:17 (ASV)
Quotation:
    The righteousness which is of God by faith in the source, the prime of that righteousness, is then just the same kind of thing as God’s righteousness, differing only as the created differs from the creating. The righteousness of him who does the will of his father in heaven, is the righteousness of Jesus Christ, is God’s own righteousness. The righteousness which is of God by faith in God, is God’s righteousness. The man who has this righteousness, thinks about things as God thinks about them, loves the things that God loves, cares for nothing that God does not care about... The man with God’s righteousness does not love a thing merely because it is right, but loves the very rightness in it. He not only loves a thought, but he loves the man in his thinking that thought; he loves the thought alive in the man.
    ... George MacDonald (1824-1905), “Righteousness”, in Unspoken Sermons, Third Series, London: Longmans, Green, 1889, p. 222-223 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord Jesus, You alone have demonstrated God’s righteousness for all to see. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Ryle: no cross, no crown

Sunday, August 14, 2011
    Commemoration of Maximilian Kolbe, Franciscan Friar, Priest, Martyr, 1941
Meditation:
    Then [Jesus] called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
    —Mark 8:34 (NIV)
Quotation:
    We must not conceal from ourselves that true Christianity brings with it a daily cross in this life, while it offers us a crown of glory in the life to come. The flesh must be daily crucified. The devil must be daily resisted. The world must be daily overcome. There is a warfare to be waged, and a battle to be fought. All this is the inseparable accompaniment of true religion. Heaven is not to be won without it. Never was there a truer word than the old saying, “No cross, no crown!” If we never found this out by experience, our souls are in a poor condition.
    ... J. C. Ryle (1816-1900), Expository thoughts on the Gospels, with the text complete, St. Matthew, Ipswitch: William Hunt, 1856, p. 202 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, by Your mercy, may I win that crown You have promised, for the sake of Your glory. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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