Kelly: the one true poverty

Saturday, February 6, 2016
Meditation:
    Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice.
    —Proverbs 16:8 (ESV)
Quotation:
    The deepest need of men is not food and clothing and shelter, important as they are. It is God. We have mistaken the nature of poverty, and thought it was economic poverty. No, it is poverty of soul, deprivation of God’s recreating, loving peace. Peer into poverty and see if we are really getting down to the deepest needs, in our economic salvation schemes. These are important. But they lie farther along the road, secondary steps toward world reconstruction. The primary step is a holy life, transformed and radiant in the glory of God.
    ... Thomas R. Kelly (1893-1941), A Testament of Devotion, London: Quaker Home Service, 1941, reprint Harper, Collins, 1996, p. 123 (see the book)
    See also Prov. 16:8; Hag. 2:8; Matt. 6:19-21; Col. 2:1-3
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, lead me to see first in others their need for You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Edwards: worth seeing

Friday, February 5, 2016
    Commemoration of Martyrs of Japan, 1597
Meditation:
    As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”
    —1 Peter 1:14-16 (NIV)
Quotation:
    He that sees the beauty of holiness, or true moral good, sees the greatest and most important thing in the world... Unless this is seen, nothing is seen that is worth seeing; for there is no other true excellence or beauty.
    ... Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), Treatise concerning Religious Affections [1746], in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, A.M., v. I, London: William Ball., 1839, p. 284 (see the book)
    See also 1 Pet. 1:14-16; Lev. 19:2; Matt. 5:48; 2 Cor. 7:1; Eph. 5:1-2; Phil. 1:27; 2:14-16; Heb. 12:14
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I am dazzled by the vision of your goodness. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Jenkins: a new puritanism

Thursday, February 4, 2016
    Commemoration of Gilbert of Sempringham, Founder of the Gilbertine Order, 1189
Meditation:
    I coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”
    —Acts 20:33-35 (ESV)
Quotation:
    The minister is the servant of his people, who has to help them discern for themselves the will of God for their real work in the real world. It will often be his duty, therefore, to establish a certain economy in the internal life of the Church, so that people are released to give time and energy to fulfilment of their Christian duty in the worlds of industry or politics or business or professional life, where their most determinative decisions have to be taken. A new puritanism is urgently needed in most churches, which cuts away ruthlessly from their life all organizations and activities which prevent their members from grappling with their real task.
    ... Daniel Jenkins (1914-2002), The Protestant Ministry, London: Faber & Faber, 1958 (see the book)
    See also Acts 20:33-35; Jer. 4:3; Matt. 6:24-25; 13:18-23; Luke 12:29-30; 21:34; 1 John 2:15-16
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, bless my church with discernment. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Tauler: a purely negative state

Wednesday, February 3, 2016
    Feast of Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, 865
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
    —Matthew 23:10-12 (ESV)
Quotation:
    Let a man but separate himself from all contingencies and from all works, and there will come over him in this state of emptiness a peace which is very great, lovely, and agreeable, and which is in itself no sin since it is part of our human nature. But when it is taken for a veritable possessing of God, or unity with God, then it is a sin; for it is in reality nothing else than a state of thorough passivity and apathy untouched by the power from on high, which any man can attain without special grace of God. It is a purely negative state from which (if one in arrogance calls it divine) nothing follows but blindness, failure of understanding, and a disinclination to be governed by the rules of ordinary righteousness.
    ... Johannes Tauler (ca. 1300-1361), quoted in The Meaning of God in Human Experience: a philosophic study of religion, William Ernest Hocking, Yale University Press, 1912, p. 576 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 23:8-12; Deut. 15:7-8; Isa. 58:7; Luke 3:11; 1 John 1:6; 2:10-11; 3:17
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your Spirit places me under Your rule. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Calvin: loving an adversary

Tuesday, February 2, 2016
    THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE
Meditation:
    When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!
    —1 Corinthians 6:1-3 (ESV)
Quotation:
    A lawsuit, however just, can never be rightly prosecuted by any man, unless he treat his adversary with the same love and good will as if the business under controversy were already amicably settled and composed. Perhaps someone will interpose here that such moderation is so uniformly absent from any lawsuit that it would be a miracle if any such were found. Indeed, I admit that, as the customs of these times go, an example of an upright litigant is rare; but the thing itself, when not corrupted by the addition of anything evil, does not cease to be good and pure.
    ... John Calvin (1509-1564), The Institutes of the Christian Religion, v. I [1559], tr. John Allen, Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath-School Work, 1921, IV.xx.18, p.651-652 (see the book)
    See also 1 Cor. 6:1-8; Matt. 5:25-26,41,44-46; Luke 12:58-59; 14:31-32; Jas. 4:1-3
Quiet time reflection:
    Show me, Lord, how I must love my enemies. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Bonhoeffer: Jesus, the universal center

Monday, February 1, 2016
    Commemoration of Brigid, Abbess of Kildare, c.525
Meditation:
    For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
    —Romans 5:10-11 (ESV)
Quotation:
    No man can look with undivided vision at God and at the world of reality so long as God and the world are torn asunder. Try as he may, he can only let his eyes wander distractedly from one to the other. But there is a place at which God and the cosmic reality are reconciled, a place at which God and man have become one. That and that alone is what enables man to set his eyes upon God and the world at the same time. This place does not lie somewhere out beyond reality in the realm of ideas. It lies in the midst of history as a divine miracle. It lies in Jesus Christ, the reconciler of the world.
    ... Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Ethics, tr. Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West, Douglas W. Stott, Fortress Press, 2005, reprint, Simon and Schuster, 2012, p. 82 (see the book)
    See also Rom. 5:10-11; Matt. 12:25; John 1:9-14; Rom. 8:6-8; 2 Cor. 5:18-19; Eph. 2:14-16; Col. 1:19-22; Heb. 2:17; 7:25
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are my only hope of reconciliation. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Spurgeon: religious luxury

Sunday, January 31, 2016
    Commemoration of John Bosco, Priest, Founder of the Salesian Teaching Order, 1888
Meditation:
    Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.
    —James 5:1-5 (ESV)
Quotation:
    O brethren, it is sickening work to think of your cushioned seats, your chants, your anthems, your choirs, your organs, your gowns, and your bands, and I know not what besides, all made to be instruments of religious luxury, if not of pious dissipation, while ye need far more to be stirred up and incited to holy ardour for the propagation of the truth as it is in Jesus.
    ... Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892), The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit: Sermons, Passmore & Alabaster, 1856, p. 83-84 (see the book)
    See also Jas. 5:1-5; Mark 4:13-20; 12:38-40; John 14:6
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I confess that I have looked after myself first and ignored the needs of my brother. I pray that You work in me to cure this sickness of my soul. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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