Price: the end of the divide

Saturday, January 3, 2015
    Commemoration of Gladys Aylward, Missionary in China, 1970
Meditation:
    The voice spoke to [Peter] a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
    —Acts 10:15 (NIV)
Quotation:
    I believe no Christian has a right to take part in anything into which he or she cannot walk wholeheartedly with Jesus Christ. We can just toss out the two words “secular” and “sacred” from our vocabulary from now on and rejoice as we gladly call it all His!
    ... Eugenia Price (1916-1996), Discoveries: Made from Living My New Life, Zondervan, 1979, p. 105 (see the book)
    See also Acts 10:15; Num. 14:21; Hab. 2:14; Matt. 6:9-10; John 13:3; Rom. 1:20
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, may I walk with You in all things. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Basil: on the solitary life

Friday, January 2, 2015
    Feast of Basil the Great & Gregory Nazianzen, Bishops, Teachers, 379 & 389
    Commemoration of Seraphim, Monk of Sarov, Mystic, Staretz, 1833
Meditation:
    Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.
    —Philippians 2:3 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Whose feet then will you wash? For whom will you perform the duties of care? In comparison with whom shall you be lower or even the last, if you live by yourself?
    ... St. Basil the Great (330?-379), The Rule of St Basil in Latin and English: A Revised Critical Edition, Anna Silvas, tr., Liturgical Press, 2013, Q. 3, p. 81 (see the book)
    See also Phil. 2:3; Matt. 20:16; John 13:3-5,12-15
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, may I be ever more conscious of the believing community You have placed me in. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Johnson: on the new year

Thursday, January 1, 2015
    Feast of the Naming & Circumcision of Jesus
Meditation:
    May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
    —1 Thessalonians 5:23 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Almighty God, who hast brought me to the beginning of another year, and by prolonging my life, invitest to repentance, forgive me that I have mispent the time past; enable me, from this instant, to amend my life according to thy holy word; grant me thy Holy Spirit, that I may so pass through things temporal, as not finally to lose the things eternal. O God, hear my prayer for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.
    ... Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), Prayers and Meditations, London: Vernor, Hood, and Sharpe, 1806, January 1, 1757, p. 22 (see the book)
    See also 1 Thess. 5:23; Mark 10:15; John 17:17; Heb. 2:11; 2 Pet. 1:2-4; 1 John 1:9
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant me faithfulness in the year to come. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Wycliffe: the hungry people

Wednesday, December 31, 2014
    Commemoration of John Wycliffe, Reformer, 1384
Meditation:
    [The LORD:] “‘How can you say, “We are wise, for we have the law of the LORD,” when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely?”
    —Jeremiah 8:8 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The Holy Ghost descended upon the heathen, as he did upon the apostles in Jerusalem; and Christ were so merciful to send the Holy Ghost to the heathen men, and he made them partakers of his blessed word; why should it then be taken from us [by Church rules forbidding English Bibles] in this land that be Christian men? Consider you whether it is not all one to deny Christ’s words for heresy, and Christ for an heretic? for if my word be a lie, then I am a liar that speaketh the word; therefore if my words be heresy, then am I a heretic that speaketh the word; therefore it is all one to condemn the word of God in any language for heresy, and God for an heretic that spake the word; for he and his word is all one, and they may not be separated... How may any antichrist for dread of God take it away from us that be Christian men, and thus suffer the people to die for hunger in heresy and blasphemy of man’s law that corrupteth and slayeth the! soul?
    ... John Wycliffe (1320?-1384), Wyckett, in Tracts and Treatises of John de Wycliffe, Robert Vaughan, ed., London: Blackburn and Pardon, 1845, p. 275-276 (see the book)
    See also Jer. 8:8; Ps. 19:9; Matt. 15:1-6; Luke 8:21; 11:28; John 5:39-40; Acts 2:4; 10:45; Rom. 3:1-2; 10:17; 2 Tim. 3:16-17; Heb. 4:12; 2 Pet. 1:19-21; 1 John 2:27
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your word is for Your whole people. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Law: singing at midnight

Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Meditation:
    About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.
    —Acts 16:25 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The man of strength and power is to forgive and pray for his enemies, and the innocent sufferer who is chained in prison must, with Paul and Silas, at midnight sing praises to God. For God is to be glorified, holiness is to be practised, and the spirit of Religion is to be the common spirit of every Christian in every state and condition of life.
    ... William Law (1686-1761), A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life [1728], London: Methuen, 1899, p. 156-157 (see the book)
    See also Acts 16:25; Ps. 86:12; Matt. 5:44-45; Luke 6:27-28
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, implant the spirit of forgiveness in my heart. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Niebuhr: love of God vs. love of man

Monday, December 29, 2014
    Feast of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1170
Meditation:
    Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
    —Matthew 9:35-36 (NIV)
Quotation:
    We must face the recognition that what the early Christians saw in Jesus Christ, and what we must accept if we look at him rather than at our imaginations about him, was not a person characterized by universal benignity, loving God and man. His love of God and his love of neighbour are two distinct virtues that have no common quality but only a common source. Love of God is adoration of the only true good; it is gratitude to the bestower of all gifts; it is joy in holiness; it is “consent to Being.” But the love of man is pitiful rather than adoring; it is giving and forgiving rather than grateful. It suffers for and in their viciousness and profaneness; it does not consent to accept them as they are, but calls them to repentance. The love of God is nonpossessive Eros; the love of man pure Agape; the love of God is passion; the love of man, compassion. There is duality here, but not of like-minded interest in two great values, God and man. It is rather the duality of the Son of Man and Son of God, who loves God as man should love Him, and loves man as only God can love, with powerful pity for those who are foundering.
    ... H. Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962), Christ and Culture, New York: Harper, 1951, reprint, Harper & Row, 1956, p. 18-19 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 9:35-36; 22:37-40; Mark 6:34; John 3:16
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant me love of You and my neighbors. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Allen: the way to salvation

Sunday, December 28, 2014
    Feast of the Holy Innocents
Meditation:
    Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
    Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
    —John 6:28-29 (NIV)
Quotation:
    If we allow the consideration of heathen morality and heathen religion to absolve us from the duty of preaching the gospel we are really deposing Christ from His throne in our own souls. If we admit that men can do very well without Christ, we accept the Saviour only as a luxury for ourselves. If they can do very well without Christ, then so could we. This is to turn our backs upon the Christ of the gospels and the Christ of Acts and to turn our faces towards law, morality, philosophy, natural religion.
    We look at the moral teaching of some of the heathen nations and we find it higher than we had expected... Or we look at morality in Christian lands, and we begin to wonder whether our practice is really much higher than theirs, and we say, “They are very well as they are. Leave them alone.”
    When we so speak and think we are treating the question of the salvation of men exactly as we should have treated it had Christ never appeared in the world at all. It is an essentially pre-Christian attitude, and implies that the Son of God has not been delivered for our salvation. It suggests that the one and only way of salvation known to me is to keep the commandments. That was indeed true before the coming of the Son of God, before the Passion, before the Resurrection, before Pentecost; but after Pentecost that is no longer true. After Pentecost, the answer to any man who inquires the way of salvation is no longer “Keep the law,” but “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.”
    ... Roland Allen (1869-1947), Pentecost and the World, London: Oxford University Press, 1917, included in The Ministry of the Spirit, David M. Paton, ed., London: World Dominion Press, 1960, p. 37 (see the book)
    See also John 6:28-29; Ps. 89:26-27; Jer. 31:33-34; Acts 2:36,38; 4:12; Eph. 1:19-23; Phil. 2:9-11; Col. 1:15-19; Heb. 1:4
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, may _____ and _____ come to belief in You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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