Underhill: the capacity for suffering

Saturday, June 15, 2013
    Feast of Evelyn Underhill, Mystical Writer, 1941
Meditation:
... for I delight in your commands
    because I love them.
I lift up my hands to your commands, which I love,
    and I meditate on your decrees.
    —Psalm 119:47-48 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Those who complain that they make no progress in the life of prayer because they “cannot meditate” should examine, not their capacity for meditation, but their capacity for suffering and love. For there is a hard and costly element, a deep seriousness, a crucial choice, in all genuine religion.
    ... Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), The School of Charity, New York: Longmans, Green, 1934, reprinted, Morehouse Publishing, 1991, p. 54 (see the book)
    See also Ps. 119:47-48; Matt. 16:24,25; Col. 3:16,17
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your love was costly. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Baxter: the same message

Friday, June 14, 2013
    Commemoration of Richard Baxter, Priest, Hymnographer, Teacher, 1691
Meditation:
    So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have.
    —2 Peter 1:12 (NIV)
Quotation:
    I like to hear a man dwell much on the same essentials of Christianity. For we have but one God, and one Christ, and one faith to preach; and I will not preach another Gospel to please men with variety, as if our Savior and our Gospel were grown stale.
    ... Richard Baxter (1615-1691), A Treatise of Conversion, London: Nevill Simmons, 1658, p. 23 (see the book)
    See also 2 Pet. 1:12-15; Phil. 3:1; Eph. 4:4-6; 2 Tim. 1:13; 4:3; Tit. 1:9; Heb. 4:14; 2 Pet. 3:1; Jude 1:3
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have saved Your lost sheep. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Chesterton: good running wild

Thursday, June 13, 2013
    Commemoration of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Apologist and Writer, 1936
Meditation:
    The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
    —John 10:10 (KJV)
Quotation:
    The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.
    ... Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), Orthodoxy, London, New York: John Lane Company, 1909, p. 175-176 (see the book)
    See also John 10:10; Ps. 23:5; Matt. 20:26-28; Luke 19:10; John 3:17; Rom. 5:20-21; 2 Cor. 8:2; Eph. 3:20-21; Col. 2:6-7
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, the goodness of Your rule is boundless. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Carmichael: a far better thing

Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Meditation:
    “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
    Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
    —John 11:21-23 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Do not forget that the answer to many prayers is “Wait,” or sometimes, “No, not that, but something else, which when you see Me, you will know was a far better thing.”
    ... Amy Carmichael (1867-1951), Edges of His Ways [1955], London: SPCK, 1957, p. 113 (see the book)
    See also John 11:21-23; Ps. 5:3; 22:1-2; 80:4; 106:15; Matt. 26:39; Luke 12:13-14; Acts 3:2-6; 2 Cor. 12:7-9
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I entrust my prayers to You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Foster: pray by grace

Tuesday, June 11, 2013
    Feast of Barnabas the Apostle
Meditation:
    But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.
    —Ephesians 4:7 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The truth of the matter is, we all come to prayer with a tangled mass of motives—altruistic and selfish, merciful and hateful, loving and bitter. Frankly, this side of eternity we will never unravel the good from the bad, the pure from the impure. But what I have come to see is that God is big enough to receive us with all our mixture. We do not have to be bright, or pure, or filled with faith, or anything. That is what grace means, and not only are we saved by grace, we live by it as well. And we pray by it.
    ... Richard J. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, HarperCollins, 1992, p. 8 (see the book)
    See also Eph. 4:7; John 6:44-45; 1 Cor. 3:1-3; 10:13; 15:10; Eph. 2:8-9; 3:16-17; Phil. 2:12-13; 1 Tim. 1:14; 1 Pet. 2:2-3; 5:10
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant me Your steady hand in my prayer, so that I will not fall. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Denney: accepting just consequences

Monday, June 10, 2013
Meditation:
    And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.
    —Genesis 3:22-23 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Each of us individually has risen into moral life from a mode of being which was purely natural; in other words, ... each of us also has fallen—fallen, presumably in ways determined by his natural constitution, yet certainly, as conscience assures us, in ways for which we are morally answerable, and to which, in the moral constitution of the world, consequences attach which we must recognise as our due. They are not only results of our action, but results which that action has merited; and there is no moral hope for us unless we accept them as such.
    ... James Denney (1856-1917), The Atonement and the Modern Mind, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1903, p. 55 (see the book)
    See also Gen. 3:22-23; Matt. 27:3-5; Tit. 1:15; Heb. 9:14; 10:26-27
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, teach Your people how to awaken the world’s consciences. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Taylor: in the Presence

Sunday, June 9, 2013
    Feast of Columba, Abbot of Iona, Missionary, 597
    Commemoration of Ephrem of Syria, Deacon, Hymnographer, Teacher, 373
Meditation:
Trust in him at all times, O people;
    pour out your hearts to him,
    for God is our refuge.
    —Psalm 62:8 (NIV)
Quotation:
    He walks as in the presence of God that converses with Him in frequent prayer and frequent communion; that runs to Him in all his necessities, that asks counsel of Him in all his doubtings; that opens all his wants to Him; that weeps before Him for his sins; that asks remedy and support for his weakness; that fears Him as a judge, reverences Him as a lord, obeys Him as a father, and loves Him as a patron.
    ... Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), Holy Living [1650], in The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, D.D., v. III, London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1847, I.iii, p. 27 (see the book)
    See also Ps. 62:8; Neh. 1:4-6; Ps. 42:3-4; Matt. 6:6; Luke 11:5-8; 18:13; 22:44; John 15:15; Acts 20:27; Rom. 8:26; Eph. 6:18; 1 Thess. 5:17; Heb. 4:16; 5:7
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are close to me every hour. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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