Thomas a Kempis: love free from self-interest

Saturday, February 11, 2012
Meditation:
    Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him...
    —Job 13:15 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Those who love Him for His own sake and not for any comfort of their own, bless Him in all trial and anguish of heart as well as in the bliss of consolation. Even if He should never give them consolation, yet they would continue to praise Him and wish always to give Him thanks. What power there is in pure love for Jesus—love that is free from all self-interest and self-love!
    ... Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471), Of the Imitation of Christ [1418], Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1877, II.xi., p. 104 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are my life’s treasure. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Gossip: gateways to the heart

Friday, February 10, 2012
    Commemoration of Scholastica, Abbess of Plombariola, c.543
Meditation:
Sacrifice and offering you did not desire
    but my ears you have opened;
burnt offerings and sin offerings
    you did not require.
    —Psalm 40:6 (NIV)
Quotation:
    A basic trouble is that most Churches limit themselves unnecessarily by addressing their message almost exclusively to those who are open to religious impressions through the intellect, whereas ... there are at least four other gateways—the emotions, the imagination, the aesthetic feeling, and the will, through which they can be reached.
    ... A. J. Gossip (1873-1954), From the Edge of the Crowd, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1924, p. 216 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You speak to me through all things. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Law: variety in the servants

Thursday, February 9, 2012
Meditation:
    But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.
    —1 Corinthians 12:18 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Every complexion of the inward man, when sanctified by humility, and suffering itself to be tuned, and struck, and moved by the Holy Spirit of God, according to its particular frame and turn, helps mightily to increase that harmony of divine praise, thanksgiving, and adoration, which must arise from different instruments, sounds, and voices. To condemn this variety in the servants of God, or to be angry at those who have not served him, in the way that we have chosen for ourselves, is but too plain a sign, that we have not enough renounced the elements of selfishness, pride, and anger.
    ... William Law (1686-1761), Christian Regeneration [1739], in Works of Rev. William Law, v. V, London: G. Moreton, 1893, p. 172-173 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I trust Your hand in the composition of the Body. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Merton: Christ in the unexpected

Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Meditation:
    Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.”
    —Mark 9:35 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The Christian life ... is a continual discovery of Christ in new and unexpected places. And these discoveries are sometimes most profitable when you find Him in something you had tended to overlook or even despise.
    ... Thomas Merton (1915-1968), The Journals of Thomas Merton, HarperCollins, 1996, p. 563 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are revealing Your presence. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Coleridge: Romans

Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Meditation:
    Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
    —2 Peter 3:15-16 (NIV)
Quotation:
    I think St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans the most profound work in existence; and I hardly believe that the writings of the old Stoics, now lost, could have been deeper... You will smile, after this, if I say that I think I understand St. Paul; and I think so, because, really and truly, I recognize a cogent consecutiveness in the argument—the only evidence I know that you understand any book.
    ... Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Table Talk, 2nd ed., London: John Murray, 1836, p. 237 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, open my mind to the understanding of Your word. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Campbell: drawn to Jesus

Monday, February 6, 2012
Meditation:
    When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!”
    —Matthew 27:54 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Our Master was his own Gospel. Men came to Him one by one attracted by the winsomeness of Jesus. He spake, of course, as never man spake, and He was as never man was, and, as has been well said by one who has a right to speak upon such subjects, he reversed our ordinary experience about our human ideals. The nearer we draw to an individual, as a rule the more plainly we see the flaws and the crevices in his character; but the nearer men drew to Jesus the more His faultless excellence declared itself; they were drawn to Him, they hardly knew why, with a reverence and a devotion unexampled in the history of the world.
    ... R. J. Campbell (1867-1956), City Temple Sermons, New York: F. H. Revell company, 1903, p.195 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your character is incomparable. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Buechner: the greatest miracle

Sunday, February 5, 2012
    Commemoration of Martyrs of Japan, 1597
Meditation:
    For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
    —John 3:16-17 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The greatest miracle that Christianity has to proclaim is that the love that suffered agonies on that hill outside the city walls was the love of God himself, the love of God for his creation, which is a love that has no limit, not even the limit of death.
    ... Frederick Buechner (b. 1926), The Magnificent Defeat, Seabury Press, 1966, p. 89 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are love. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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