Fenelon: resisting God

Saturday, April 2, 2016
Meditation:
“I have seen his ways, but I will heal him;
    I will lead him and restore comfort to him and his mourners,
    creating the fruit of the lips.
Peace, peace, to the far and to the near,” says the LORD,
    “and I will heal him.
But the wicked are like the tossing sea;
    for it cannot be quiet,
    and its waters toss up mire and dirt.
There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.”
    —Isaiah 57:18-21 (ESV)
Quotation:
    There is never any peace for those who resist God.
    ... François Fénelon (1651-1715), Spiritual Letters of Archbishop Fénelon. Letters to men, London: Rivingtons, 1877, p. 340 (see the book)
    See also Isa. 57:18-21; 48:22; Rom. 3:15-17
Quiet time reflection:
    Break down, O Lord, the last barriers my hard heart and bent will have thrown up in resistance to Your love. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Maurice: the beam in my own eye

Friday, April 1, 2016
    Commemoration of Frederick Denison Maurice, Priest, teacher, 1872
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
    —Matthew 7:3-5 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Christians in general are far too eager to urge special exceptions when they hear these charges [of corruption in the church] preferred; far too ready to make out a case for themselves while they admit their application to others; far too ready to think that the cause of God is interested in the suppression of facts. The prophets should have taught us a different lesson. They should have led us to feel that it was a solemn duty, not to conceal, but to bring forward all the evidence which proves, not that one country is better than another, or one portion of the church better than another, but that there is a principle of decay, a tendency to apostasy in all, and that no comfort can come from merely balancing symptoms of good here against symptoms of evil there, no comfort from considering whether we are a little less contentious, a little less idolatrous than our neighbours.
    ... Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872), Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament, Cambridge: Macmillan, 1853; Boston: Crosby, Nichols, 1853, p. 461-462 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 7:3-5; Isa. 65:2-5; Matt. 3:7-10; Luke 6:41-42; 18:11; Jas. 2:9
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, cleanse the whole church for Your name’s sake. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Donne: sleep and death

Thursday, March 31, 2016
    Commemoration of John Donne, Priest, Poet, 1631
Meditation:
    But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.
    —1 Thessalonians 4:13-15 (ESV)
Quotation:
    Though natural men, who have induced secondary and figurative consideration, have found out this... emblematical use of sleep, that it should be a representation of death, God, who wrought and perfected his work, before Nature began, (for Nature was but his Apprentice, to learn in the first seven days, and now is his foreman, and works next under him) God, I say, intended sleep only for the refreshing of man by bodily rest, and not for a figure of death, for he intended not death itself then. But man having induced death upon himself, God hath taken man’s creature, death, into his hand, and mended it; and whereas it hath in itself a fearfull form and aspect, so that Man is afraid of his own creature, God presents it to him, in a familiar, in an assiduous, in an agreeable, and acceptable form, in sleep, that so when he awakes from sleep and says to himself, shall I be no otherwise when I am dead, than I was even now, when I was asleep, he may be ashamed of his waking dreams, and of his melancholy fancying out a horrid and an affrightful figure of that death which is so like sleep. As then we need sleep to live out our threescore and ten years, so we need death, to live that life which we cannot outlive.
    ... John Donne (1573-1631), Works of John Donne, vol. III, London: John W. Parker, 1839, Devotions XV, p. 566 (see the book)
    See also 1 Thess. 4:13-15; John 11:11-13; 1 Cor. 15:17-22,51-57
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, when I sleep, may I always awaken in Your presence. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Glover: the testament of suffering

Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Meditation:
    Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel...
    —2 Timothy 1:8-10 (ESV)
Quotation:
    [Continued from yesterday]
    Belief in immortality for us does not depend on a story, however well attested, in an ancient book... No, here was a sequence of great character and emancipated spirit, all attached to and explained by such a personality as the world never saw; and the central doctrine of the risen Christ squared with the rationality and the goodness of God... The wise said that God and the godlike could have no contact with suffering, but Jesus was no phantom feigning to be crucified; he truly suffered on the cross, he truly rose. Suffering is a language all can understand, and none can quite exhaust; and the suffering Christ, victorious over pain and death, meant for all who grasped his significance a new faith in God, a new freedom of mind in God.
    ... T. R. Glover (1869-1943), The Influence of Christ in the Ancient World, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929, p. 99 (see the book)
    See also 2 Tim. 1:8-10; Col. 2:8,18-22; 1 Tim. 4:7; 6:20-21; 2 Tim. 3:12-13; 2 Pet. 1:16
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have paid a far higher price for my liberty than I ever shall. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Glover: the living testament

Tuesday, March 29, 2016
    Commemoration of Jack Winslow, Missionary, Evangelist, 1974
Meditation:
    “No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards declared.
    —John 7:46 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The real conviction of the living Christ was not carried to the world by a book nor by a story. Men might allege that they had seen the risen Lord; that was nothing till they themselves were known. The witness of the resurrection was not the word of Paul (as we see at Athens) nor of the Eleven; it was the new power in life and death that the world saw in changed men...
    The legend of a reputed resurrection of some unknown person in Palestine nobody needed to consider; but what were you to do with the people who died in the arena, the re-born slaves with their newness of life in your own house? And when you “looked into the story,” it was no mere somebody or other of whom they told it. The conviction of the people you knew, amazing in its power of transforming character and winning first the goodwill and the trust and then the conversion of others, was supported and confirmed by the nature and personality of the Man of whom they spoke, of whom you read in their books. “Never man spake like this man,” you read, nor thought like this man, nor like this man believed in God. I can not but think that the factors that make a man Christian to-day were those that won the world then. Our age and that age, in culture, in hopes and fears, in loss of nerve, are not unlike. [Continued tomorrow]
    ... T. R. Glover (1869-1943), The Influence of Christ in the Ancient World, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929, p. 96,98-99 (see the book)
    See also John 7:46; 5:21; Acts 17:18,32; 1 Cor. 2:4-5; 2 Cor. 10:5; Eph. 4:14; 1 Tim. 1:3-4
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I was dead, and You raised me to life. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Moule: the Church's one foundation

Monday, March 28, 2016
Meditation:
    For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.
    —1 Corinthians 15:22-23 (ESV)
Quotation:
    From the very first, the conviction that Jesus had been raised from death has been that by which [the Christians’] very existence has stood or fallen. There was no other motive to account for them, to explain them... At no point within the New Testament is there any evidence that the Christians stood for an original philosophy of life or an original ethic. Their sole function is to bear witness to what they claim as an event—the raising of Jesus from among the dead... The one really distinctive thing for which the Christians stood was their declaration that Jesus had been raised from the dead according to God’s design, and the consequent estimate of him as in a unique sense Son of God and representative man, and the resulting conception of the way to reconciliation.
    ... C. F. D. Moule (1908-2007), The Phenomenon of the New Testament, v. I, London: SCM, 1967, p. 11,14,18 (see the book)
    See also 1 Cor. 15:17-23; Mark 14:27-28; 16:5-6; Rom. 3:25-26; 4:25; 1 Cor. 15:3-8; 1 Pet. 2:24
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, make me a witness in the world to Christ’s resurrection. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Winter: the resurrected Lord

Sunday, March 27, 2016
    Easter
Meditation:
    When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place, with fish laid out on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord.
    —John 21:9-12 (ESV)
Quotation:
    It was undoubtedly a real body. Hundreds of people could not have been so mistaken, especially when Jesus offered clear evidence of it. But it was not an earthbound body. It was something that bore a developmental relationship to an earthly human body, but it was not identical with it. There was clearly a continuity of life between the body of Jesus and the body of the resurrected Jesus, but in the time between his death and resurrection it had undergone a very fundamental change. That, at least, seems clear.
    So much for the list of dissimilarities: the body of Jesus after the resurrection had a different appearance and also a different form. It was like the previous body, it had some sort of developmental relationship to it, but it was obviously not identical with it.
    Now we must consider the similarities. Strangely, they all came down to one factor, but that factor is so important that it outweighs all the dissimilarities. It is simply this: Jesus before and after the resurrection was undeniably the same person. No matter what extraordinary changes had taken place in his bodily form, all who knew him well had no doubt at all who he was. They “knew” it was the Lord.
    ... David Winter, Hereafter, Wheaton, Ill.: Shaw Publishers, 1972, p. 58-59 (see the book)
    See also John 21:9-12; Luke 24:30-31,36-43; John 20:26-27
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, though I have not seen You with my eyes, I know it is You in my heart. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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