Lewis: a pagan heart

Saturday, July 21, 2018
Meditation:
    “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”
    Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
    Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
    And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
    
    —Isaiah 6:5-8 (NIV)
Quotation:
    I have often, on my knees, been shocked to find what sort of thoughts I have, for a moment, been addressing to God; what infantile placations I was really offering, what claims I have really made, even what absurd adjustments or compromises I was, half-consciously, proposing. There is a Pagan, savage heart in me somewhere. For unfortunately the folly and idiot-cunning of Paganism seem to have far more power of surviving than its innocent or even beautiful elements. It is easy, once you have power, to silence the pipes, still the dances, disfigure the statues, and forget the stories; but not easy to kill the savage, the greedy, frightened creature now cringing, now blustering in one’s soul.
    ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Reflections on the Psalms, Edinburgh: James Thin, 1958; G. Bles, 1958, p. 97-98 (see the book)
    See also Isa. 6:5-8; Judg. 10:15; Ps. 40:12; 69:5
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, convert the pagan within me. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Law: the greatest secret

Friday, July 20, 2018
    Commemoration of Bartolomè de las Casas, Apostle to the Indies, 1566
Meditation:
    My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up.
    —Psalm 5:3 (AV)
Quotation:
    He who has learned to pray, has learned the greatest secret of a holy and happy life.
    ... William Law (1686-1761), Christian Perfection [1726], London: W. Baynes, 1807, p. 290 (see the book)
    See also Ps. 5:3; Mark 1:35; Phil. 4:6; 1 Thess. 5:17
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, help me to open my heart to You in prayer. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Scofield: lowering the purpose of the church

Thursday, July 19, 2018
    Feast of Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, & his sister Macrina, Teachers, c.394 & c.379
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
    —Matthew 10:28 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Instead of pursuing her appointed path of separation, persecution, world-hatred, poverty, and non-resistance, [the Church] has used... Scripture to justify her in lowering her purpose to the civilization of the world, the acquisition of wealth, the use of an imposing ritual, the erection of magnificent churches, the invocation of God’s blessing upon the conflicts of armies, and the division of an equal brotherhood into “clergy” and “laity.”
    ... C. I. Scofield (1843-1921), Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth [1930], p. 17 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 10:28; Amos 5:10; Matt. 5:10-12; Mark 13:11-13; John 7:6-8
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, lead me to seek Your will for the church and not rely on the world’s goals. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Augustine: wait upon the Lord

Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Meditation:
“Therefore wait for me,”
    declares the LORD,
    “for the day I will stand up to testify.
I have decided to assemble the nations,
    to gather the kingdoms
and to pour out my wrath on them—
    all my fierce anger.
The whole world will be consumed
    by the fire of my jealous anger.
“Then will I purify the lips of the peoples,
    that all of them may call on the name of the LORD
    and serve him shoulder to shoulder.”
    —Zephaniah 3:8-9 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Great art Thou, O Lord, and highly to be praised; great is Thy power, yea, and Thy wisdom is infinite. And man would praise Thee, because he is one of Thy creatures; yea, man, though he bears about with him his mortality, the proof of his sin, the proof that Thou, O God, dost resist the proud, yet would man praise Thee, because he is one of Thy creatures. Thou dost prompt us thereto, making it a joy to praise Thee; for Thou hast created us unto Thyself, and our heart finds no rest until it rests in Thee. Grant me, O Lord, to know and understand which comes first, to call upon Thee, or to praise Thee, and which comes first, to know Thee or to call upon Thee.
    ... St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), Confessions [397], Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1886, p. 1-2 (see the book)
    See also Ps. 145:3; 147:5; Zeph. 3:8,9; Jas. 4:6; 1 Pet. 5:5
Quiet time reflection:
    From the depths, I praise You, Lord. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Kirk: the end of religion

Tuesday, July 17, 2018
Meditation:
    We love him, because he first loved us.
    —1 John 4:19 (KJV)
Quotation:
    The Way is not a religion: Christianity is the end of religion. “Religion” here means the division between sacred and secular concerns, other-worldliness, man’s reaching toward God in a way which projects his own thoughts.
    ... David Kirk (1935-2007), Quotations from Chairman Jesus, Springfield, Ill.: Templegate Publishers, 1969, p. 87 (see the book)
    See also 1 John 4:19; Matt. 23:2-33; Rom. 3:12,22-24; 11:36; 1 Cor. 3:16,17; Heb. 11:6
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are the initiator of all that has happened in my life. I acknowledge Your gift of faith and I ask for more. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Whitehead: apart from God

Monday, July 16, 2018
    Commemoration of Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, 1099
Meditation:
    I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him. Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account.
    —Ecclesiastes 3:14-15 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Apart from God every activity is merely a passing whiff of insignificance.
    ... Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), “Immortality”, in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, P. A. Schilpp, ed., Northwestern University, 1941, p. 698 (see the book)
    See also Eccl. 3:14-15; Job 14:1-2; Ps. 33:4,11; 90:5-6; 102:11; 103:15-16; Isa. 40:6-8; 46:10; Jas. 1:10-11
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have saturated life with meaning, though we cannot see it. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Clarke: the empty shelf in theology

Sunday, July 15, 2018
    Commemoration of Swithun, Bishop of Winchester, c.862
    Commemoration of Bonaventure, Franciscan Friar, Bishop, Peacemaker, 1274
Meditation:
    “Many times I struck your gardens and vineyards, I struck them with blight and mildew. Locusts devoured your fig and olive trees, yet you have not returned to me,” declares the LORD.
    —Amos 4:9 (NIV)
Quotation:
    In addition to the general situations in which men find themselves today, there are those things in personal life which have always tested faith: the inexplicable tragedies and injustices; the suffering of innocent people, especially of children; the seeming uselessness of prayer, and so forth.
    It is surely life itself that makes against belief in most cases. It is the contradiction in real life between any image of God as good, whether God is “above,” “beneath,” or “within,” that makes men atheists. Yet how few books and how few sermons touch on this basic problem! Our theological libraries are crammed with books devoted to every aspect of textual and higher criticism of the Bible; but of genuine theological thinking about the things which drive religion from men’s hearts, there is appallingly little to be found. The archaeology of Christian origins seems largely to have replaced genuine theology.
    ... O. Fielding Clarke, For Christ’s Sake, New York: Moorehouse-Barlow, 1963, p. 72 (see the book)
    See also Amos 4:6-11; Job 38:4-7; 40:6-14; Matt. 6:25-30; Rom. 8:31; Heb. 12:5-11
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your Gospel is plain—cure our blindness! CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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