Marshall: sons, not slaves

Saturday, January 21, 2012
    Feast of Agnes, Child Martyr at Rome, 304
Meditation:
    “Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land; but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.” For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
    —Isaiah 1:18-20 (NIV)
Quotation:
    By giving humans freedom of will, the Creator has chosen to limit His own power. He risked the daring experiment of giving us the freedom to make good or bad decisions, to live decent or evil lives, because God does not want the forced obedience of slaves. Instead, He covets the voluntary love and obedience of sons who love Him for Himself.
    ... Catherine Marshall (1914-1983), Beyond Our Selves, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961, p. 26 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, create a willing heart in me. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Rolle: love of the Lord

Friday, January 20, 2012
    Commemoration of Richard Rolle of Hampole, Writer, Hermit, Mystic, 1349
Meditation:
    Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
    —Deuteronomy 6:5 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The commandment of God is, that we love Our Lord in all our heart, in all our soul, in all our thought. In all our heart; that is, in all our understanding without erring. In all our soul; that is, in all our will without gainsaying. In all our thought; that is, that we think on Him without forgetting. In this manner is very love and true, that is work of man’s will. For love is a willful stirring of our thoughts unto God, so that it receive nothing that is against the love of Jesus Christ, and therewith that it be lasting in sweetness of devotion; and that is the perfection of this life.
    ... Richard Rolle (1290?-1349), The Commandments, in English Spirituality in the Age of Wyclif, David Lyle Jeffrey, tr., Regent College Publishing, 1988, 73:8-9 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant Your people the purpose of fulfilling this commandment. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Tozer: the wrath of God

Thursday, January 19, 2012
    Commemoration of Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, 1095
Meditation:
    See, the day of the LORD is coming—a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger—to make the land desolate and destroy the sinners within it.
    —Isaiah 13:9 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The holiness of God, the wrath of God, and the health of the creation are inseparably united. Not only is it right for God to display anger at sin, but I find it impossible to understand how He could do otherwise.
    God’s wrath is His utter intolerance of whatever degrades or destroys.
    ... A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), Man: The Dwelling Place of God, Harrisburg, Penn.: Christian Publications, Inc., 1966, p. 111 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, fill me with intolerance for my sin. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Carmichael: Tune Thou my harp

Wednesday, January 18, 2012
    Commemoration of Amy Carmichael, Founder of the Dohnavur Fellowship, 1951
Meditation:
    And I heard a sound from heaven like the roar of rushing waters and like a loud peal of thunder. The sound I heard was like that of harpists playing their harps. And they sang a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders. No one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth.
    —Revelation 14:2-3 (NIV)
Quotation:
Tune Thou my harp;
There is not, Lord, could never be,
The skill in me.

Tune Thou my harp,
That it may play Thy melody,
Thy harmony.

Tune Thou my harp;
O Spirit, breathe Thy thought through me
As pleaseth Thee.
    ... Amy Carmichael (1867-1951), Rose from Brier [1933], London: SPCK, 1950, p. 128-129 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Fill my heart with Your song, Lord.

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Gore: God's will

Tuesday, January 17, 2012
    Feast of Antony of Egypt, Abbot, 356
    Commemoration of Charles Gore, Bishop, Teacher, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, 1932
Meditation:
    [Jesus] went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”
    —Matthew 26:42 (NIV)
Quotation:
    We do not know if it is God’s will that this or that person should recover from sickness, or this or that calamity should be averted. God is wiser than we are. We do not know whether it is God’s will that we should have rain that is so necessary for our crops. There are things like these that lie in a region of uncertainty into which the intelligence of man cannot penetrate. So then as the object of prayer is not to bring the divine will down to the human, but to lift the human up into correspondence with the divine, for all these uncertain things we can pray indeed, but uncertainly—‘If it be possible, let this or that come to pass; nevertheless, not my will, but Thine, be done.’
    ... Charles Gore (1853-1932), The Sermon on the Mount [1910], London: John Murray, 1905, p. 141 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, help me to submit to Your will. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Tillotson: life without leaving the world

Monday, January 16, 2012
Meditation:
    Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin.
    —1 Peter 4:1 (NIV)
Quotation:
    It is further objected that [Jesus] hath left us no example of that, which by many is esteemed the only religious state of life; viz. perfect retirement from the world, for the more devout serving of God, and freeing us from the temptations of the world, such as is that of monks and hermits; this, perhaps, may seem to some a great oversight and omission: but our Lord in great wisdom thought fit to give us a pattern of a quite different sort of life, which was, not to fly the conversation of men, and to live in a monastery or a wilderness, but to do good among men, to live in the world with great freedom, and with great innocency. He did, indeed, sometimes retire himself for the more free and private exercise of devotion, as we ought to do; but he passed his life chiefly in the conversation of men, that they might have all the benefit that was possible of his instruction and example. We read, that “he was carried into the wilderness to be tempted;” but not that he lived there to avoid temptation. He hath given us an example of denying the world, without leaving it.
    ... John Tillotson (1630-1694), Works of Dr. John Tillotson, v. VIII, London: J. F. Dove, for R. Priestley, 1820, Sermon CXC, p. 274 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have shown the way. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Stevenson: for self-blame

Sunday, January 15, 2012
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
    —Luke 6:41-42 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Lord, enlighten us to see the beam that is in our own eye, and blind us to the mote that is in our brother’s. Let us feel our offences with our hands, make them great and bright before us like the sun, make us eat them and drink them for our diet. Blind us to the offences of our beloved, cleanse them from our memories, take them out of our mouths for ever. Let all here before Thee carry and measure with the false balances of love, and be in their own eyes and in all conjunctures the most guilty. Help us at the same time with the grace of courage, that we be none of us cast down when we sit lamenting amid the ruins of our happiness or our integrity: touch us with fire from the altar, that we may be up and doing to rebuild our city: in the name and by the method of him in whose words of prayer we now conclude.
    ... Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), from “Prayers Written for Family Use at Vailima”, in The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, v. IV, London: T. & A. Constable for Longmans Green & Co.1896, p. 387 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You lift up the least and humble the greatest. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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