Teresa: disturbed by trivia

Saturday, October 15, 2011
    Feast of Teresa of Avila, Mystic, Teacher, 1582
Meditation:
    Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it.
    —James 4:11 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people’s, if we are always criticizing trivial actions which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through our ignorance of their motives.
    ... Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), The Interior Castle [1577], tr., E. Allison Peers, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961, p. 51 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, silence my critical tongue. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Engstrom: listening to God's voice

Friday, October 14, 2011
Meditation:
    Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
    —Luke 6:36 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Our first priority is to listen to God’s voice. It is our exposure to His compassion that will cause us to reach out to the oppressed, the frustrated, the angry. And it is only by listening to His voice that we will have wisdom to know how to provide workable solutions for the different groups that demand our attention.
    ... Ted W. Engstrom (1916-2006), former president, World Vision US, in a private communication from World Vision
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, make Your voice known to Your people. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Underhill: animals or Christ

Thursday, October 13, 2011
    Feast of Edward the Confessor, 1066
Meditation:
    Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.
    —Galatians 5:24 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Human nature is like a stable inhabited by the ox of passion and the ass of prejudice; animals which take up a lot of room and which I suppose most of us are feeding on the quiet. And it is there between them, pushing them out, that Christ must be born and in their very manger he must be laid—and they will be the first to fall on their knees before him. Sometimes Christians seem far nearer to those animals than to Christ in his simple poverty, self-abandoned to God.
    ... Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), The Light of Christ, New York: Longmans, Green, 1949, p. 41 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, fill me with Your worldview. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Robertson: the hard way

Wednesday, October 12, 2011
    Commemoration of Wilfrid, Abbot of Ripon, Bishop of York, Missionary, 709
    Commemoration of Elizabeth Fry, Prison Reformer, 1845
Meditation:
    Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near.
    —Isaiah 55:6 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Do we want to learn holiness with terrible struggles, and sore affliction, and the plague of much remaining evil? Then wait before you turn to God.
    ... Frederick W. Robertson (1816-1853), Sermons Preached at Trinity Chapel, Brighton, v. III, Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1859, p. 331 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your mercy is near; let me not delay to receive it. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Trueblood: loyalty to truth

Tuesday, October 11, 2011
    Commemoration of Ethelburga, Abbess of Barking, 675
Meditation:
    [Jesus in prayer:] “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.”
    —John 17:17 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The only way for a Christian to be loyal to his central commitment is to be as honest as he knows how to be. It is important to survive, but it is even more important to tell the truth, and we can never tell the truth if we are seeking, primarily, to prove a point.
    ... Elton Trueblood (1900-1994), The Future of the Christian, Harper & Row, 1971, p. 9 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, lead me away from pointless debate. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Tozer: the truth about exposition

Monday, October 10, 2011
    Feast of Paulinus, Bishop of York, Missionary, 644
Meditation:
    [Zechariah, of John the Baptist:] “And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.”
    —Luke 1:76-79 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Sound Bible exposition is an imperative must in the Church of the Living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any strict meaning of that term. But exposition may be carried on in such way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.
    ... A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), The Pursuit of God [1948], Christian Publications, 1982, p. 9 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have made Your person available to Your people. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Gossip: salvation

Sunday, October 9, 2011
    Commemoration of Denys, Bishop of Paris, & his Companions, Martyrs, 258
    Commemoration of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, Philosopher, Scientist, 1253
Meditation:
    A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd.
    So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
    When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
    All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a ‘sinner.’”
    But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
    Jesus said to him! , “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”
    —Luke 19:2-10 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Christ did not throw about that great word Salvation. But once, in the heart of an angry crowd, their enthusiasm soured suddenly into a growling muttering. He applied it confidently to a man who, under the inspiration of His friendship, had broken with his sorry past and his old selfish, unclean ways, and was doing what he could to put things right. Now that, He said, is what I call a saved man. Very solemnly He tells us that on the Day of Judgment we shall not be asked the questions we are expecting, but others that will puzzle and startle us. Those folk on the left hand were, as far as we hear, respectable folk; their business books were straight, their home life was kindly, they themselves were clean-living men and women: nothing whatever is laid to their charge excepting this, that they lived in a world needing their help and were too absorbed in something—what it was, we are not told; it may have been their souls—to give what aid ! they could.
    ... A. J. Gossip (1873-1954), From the Edge of the Crowd, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1924, p. 23-24 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, lead me to true repentance. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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