MacDonald: mercy and justice

Saturday, August 1, 2015
Meditation:
    Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
    —Luke 6:36 (NIV)
Quotation:
    We are enjoined to forgive, to be merciful, to be as our father in heaven. Two rights cannot possibly be opposed to each other. If God punish sin, it must be merciful to punish sin; and if God forgive sin, it must be just to forgive sin. We are required to forgive, with the argument that our father forgives. It must, I say, be right to forgive. Every attribute of God must be infinite as himself. He cannot be sometimes merciful, and not always merciful. He cannot be just, and not always just. Mercy belongs to him, and needs no contrivance of theologic chicanery to justify it.
    ... George MacDonald (1824-1905), “Justice”, in Unspoken Sermons, Third Series, London: Longmans, Green, 1889, p. 119 (see the book)
    See also Luke 6:36; Deut. 32:4; Ps. 86:5; 62:12; 116:5
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are just and merciful. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Ignatius of Loyola: reaching the purpose

Friday, July 31, 2015
    Commemoration of Ignatius of Loyola, Founder of the Society of Jesus, 1556
Meditation:
Serve the LORD with gladness:
    come before his presence with singing.
    —Psalm 100:2 (KJV)
Quotation:
    Man was created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord and in this way to save his soul. The other things on Earth were created for man’s use, to help him reach the end for which he was created.
    ... St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491/5-1556), The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, New York: P. J. Kennedy & Sons, 1914, p. 19 (see the book)
    See also Deut. 10:12-13; Josh. 24:15; 1 Sam. 12:20; Ps. 2:11; 100:2; 111:1; 117; 146:1; Col. 3:23-24
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your people praise You for Your mercy and goodness. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Wilberforce: ignoring the eternal things

Thursday, July 30, 2015
    Commemoration of William Wilberforce, Social Reformer, 1833
Meditation:
    The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.
    —1 John 2:17 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The generality of nominal Christians... are almost entirely taken up with the concerns of the present world. They know indeed that they are mortal but they do not feel it. The truth rests in their understandings, and cannot gain admission into their hearts. This speculative persuasion is altogether different from that strong practical impression of the infinite importance of eternal things, which, attended with a proportionate sense of the shortness and uncertainty of all below, while it prompts to activity from a conviction that “the night cometh when no man can work,” produces a certain firmness of texture, which hardens us against the buffetings of fortune, and prevents our being very deeply penetrated by the cares and interests, the good or evil of this transitory state.
    ... William Wilberforce (1759-1833), A Practical View, Boston: Crocker & Brewster, 1829, p. 170 (see the book)
    See also 1 John 2:17; Matt. 6:31-34; John 9:4; 15:19; Gal. 1:10; 2 Tim. 2:3-4; Jas. 4:4; 1 John 2:15-16
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You remind me that my home is not here. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Bounds: the battlefield

Wednesday, July 29, 2015
    Feast of Mary, Martha & Lazarus, Companions of Our Lord
Meditation:
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
    the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
    God will help her at break of day.
    —Psalm 46:4-5 (NIV)
Quotation:
    [The prayer closet] is the battlefield of the Church; its citadel; the scene of heroic and unearthly conflicts. The closet is the base of supplies for the Christian and the Church. Cut off from it there is nothing left but retreat and disaster. The energy for work, the mastery over self, the deliverance from fear, all spiritual results and graces, are much advanced by prayer.
    ... E. M. Bounds (1835-1913), Purpose in Prayer, New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1920, p. 52 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 6:6; Ps. 46:4-5; Rom. 8:26; Eph. 6:18; 1 Thess. 5:17; Jude 1:20
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, in prayer, You are the source of all strength. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Milton: Such music!

Tuesday, July 28, 2015
    Commemoration of Johann Sebastian Bach, musician, 1750
Meditation:
    Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”
    —Luke 2:13-14 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Such music (as ‘tis said)
        Before was never made,
    But when of old the Sons of Morning sung,
        While the Creator great
        His constellations set,
    And the well-balanced World on hinges hung,
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.

        Ring out, ye crystal spheres!
        Once bless our human ears,
    If ye have power to touch our senses so;
        And let your silver chime
        Move in melodious time;
    And let the bass of heaven’s deep organ blow;
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort to the angelic symphony.
    ... John Milton (1608-1674), [1629] from On the morning of Chist’s Nativity, The Complete Poems of John Milton, New York: P. F. Collier, 1909, p. 11 (see the book)
    See also Luke 2:13-14; Gen 1:2-10; Ps. 19:1; 33:6; 40:3; 102:25; Isa. 40:26; 45:12; 48:13; Rev. 4:11
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, teach me to sing Your praises.

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Stott: the Christian counterculture

Monday, July 27, 2015
    Commemoration of Brooke Foss Westcott, Bishop of Durham, Teacher, 1901
    Commemoration of John R. W. Stott, spiritual writer and teacher, 2011
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
    “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
    —Matthew 7:12-14 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The Sermon on the Mount is the most complete description anywhere in the New Testament of the Christian counterculture. Here is a Christian value system, ethical standard, religious devotion, attitude to money, ambition, lifestyle and network of relationships—all of which are the total opposite of the non-Christian world. The Sermon presents life in the kingdom of God, a fully human life indeed but lived out under the divine rule.
    ... John R. W. Stott (1921-2011), Sermon on the Mount [1978], InterVarsity Press, 2000, p. 6 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 7:12-14; 5:14,22,28,32,39-42; 6:19-20,24,33-34
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I long for Your rule to come. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Phillips: absolute sovereignty

Sunday, July 26, 2015
Meditation:
    [Paul:] “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.”
    —Acts 17:24-26 (NIV)
Quotation:
    It is necessary to point out that our responsibility is a relative one only, for as we think of the world-wide disintegration of the human family, the prospect before us could easily fill us with alarm and despondency, if we were not sure first of the absolute sovereignty of God who (I speak reverently) knows what He is doing in conducting this enormous experiment that we call life.
    ... J. B. Phillips (1906-1982), Making Men Whole, London: Highway Press, 1952, p. 15 (see the book)
    See also 1 Chr. 29:10-12; Ps. 24; Isa. 45:5-6; Hag. 2:7; John 10:29; Acts 17:24-26; Rev. 4:11
Quiet time reflection:
    You are our Rock, Lord. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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