Chesterton: the end of doubt

Saturday, January 11, 2020
    Commemoration of Mary Slessor, Missionary in West Africa, 1915
Meditation:
    “You have said harsh things against me,” says the LORD.
    “Yet you ask, ‘What have we said against you?’
    “You have said, ‘It is futile to serve God. What did we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the LORD Almighty? But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly the evildoers prosper, and even those who challenge God escape.’”
    —Malachi 3:13-15 (NIV)
Quotation:
    It is vain for bishops and pious bigwigs to discuss what dreadful things will happen if wild skepticism runs its course. It has run its course. It is vain for eloquent atheists to talk of the great truths that will be revealed if once we see free thought begin. We have seen it end. It has no more questions to ask; it has questioned itself. You cannot call up any wilder vision than a city in which men ask themselves if they have any selves. You cannot fancy a more skeptical world than that in which men doubt if there is a world. It might certainly have reached its bankruptcy more quickly and cleanly if it had not been feebly hampered by the application of indefensible laws of blasphemy or by the absurd pretense that modern England is Christian. But it would have reached the bankruptcy anyhow.
    ... Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), Orthodoxy, London, New York: John Lane Company, 1909, p. 65-66 (see the book)
    See also Mal. 3:13-15; Job 22:17; Ps. 14:1-3; Zeph. 1:12; Matt. 23:37-38; Luke 13:34-35
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, may the day come soon when all nations bow before You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Adler: sin

Friday, January 10, 2020
Meditation:
    But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.
    —Romans 14:23 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Sin is not only manifested in certain acts that are forbidden by divine command. Sin also appears in attitudes and dispositions and feelings. Lust and hate are sins, as well as adultery and murder. And, in the traditional Christian view, despair and chronic boredom—unaccompanied by any vicious act—are serious sins. They are expressions of man’s separation from God, as the ultimate good, meaning, and end of human existence.
    ... Mortimer J. Adler (1902-2001), in Great Ideas Online, #369, Apr., 2006, Great Ideas from the Great Books, part V. q. 59
    See also Rom. 14:23; Pr. 21:4; Matt. 15:17-20; Tit. 1:15-16; Heb. 11:6
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, guard me from sins of idleness. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Studd: the Great-God Party

Thursday, January 9, 2020
Meditation:
Great is the LORD, and most worthy of praise,
    in the city of our God, his holy mountain.
    —Psalm 48:1 (NIV)
Quotation:
    I belong and will ever belong to “The Great God Party.” I will have nought to do with “The Little God Party...” Christ wants not nibblers of the possible, but grabbers of the impossible.
    ... C. T. Studd (1860-1931), C. T. Studd—Cricketer and Pioneer [1933], Norman P. Grubb, World-Wide Revival Prayer Movement, 1947, p. 164-165 (see the book)
    See also Ps. 48:1; Gen. 18:14; Ps. 86:10; 99:4; 145:3; 147:5; Nah. 1:3; Matt. 19:26; Mark 10:27; Luke 1:37; 18:27; Rev. 15:3
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, embolden Your people. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Elliot: action

Wednesday, January 8, 2020
    24th anniversary of CQOD
    Commemoration of Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, and Pete Fleming, martyrs, Ecuador, 1956
Meditation:
    Yet when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, for I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!
    —1 Corinthians 9:16 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The man who will not act till he knows all will never act at all.
    ... Jim Elliot (1927-1956), citing a popular saying of ancient Greece, The Journals of Jim Elliot, ed. Elisabeth Elliot, Revell, 1990, p. 131 (see the book)
    See also 1 Cor. 9:16; Matt. 7:21; 12:50; Luke 6:46; 11:28; 12:47-48; John 13:17; Rom. 2:13; Jas. 1:22-25; 4:17
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, arouse your people to action (me, too). CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Minear: Brahms' German Requiem

Tuesday, January 7, 2020
Meditation:
LORD, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am.
Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity
    —Psalm 39:4-5 (KJV)
Quotation:
    [Johannes] Brahms chose his own texts [for his German Requiem] from Luther’s Bible to illustrate the Protestant conviction that man must hear and respond to God’s word in man’s own language, and that every believer must be free to deal with the Biblical text apart from priestly veto... For the word “German” he would gladly have substituted the word “human” because he was concerned to comment on “the primary text of human existence,” finding there, as in the Bible, the universal themes of suffering and joy.
    ... Paul S. Minear (1906-2007)
    See also Ps. 39:4-7; 84:1-2,4; 126:5-6; Isa. 35:10; 40:6-7; 66:13; Matt. 5:4; John 16:22; 1 Cor. 15:51-52,54-55; Heb. 13:14; Jas. 5:7; 1 Pet. 1:24-25; Rev. 4:11; 14:13
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are the Father of all, and all belong to You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Lecky: an ideal character

Monday, January 6, 2020
    EPIPHANY
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.”
    —Matthew 5:37 (NIV)
Quotation:
    It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character, which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love; has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions; has been not only the highest pattern of virtue but the strongest incentive to its practice; and has exerted so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.
    ... W. E. H. Lecky (1838-1903), History of European Morals, v. II [1869], New York: D. Appleton, 1910, p. 8-9 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 5:37-48; John 1:14,17-18; 3:16; Heb. 1:1-2; Jas. 5:12
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, our inheritance from You is rich beyond measure. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Kierkegaard: increasing His sufferings

Sunday, January 5, 2020
Meditation:
    Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
    —Hebrews 9:26-28 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Lord Jesus Christ! A whole life long didst thou suffer that I too might be saved; and yet thy suffering is not yet at an end; but this too wilt thou endure, saving and redeeming me, this patient suffering of having to do with me, I who so often go astray from the right path, or even when I remained on the straight path stumbled along it or crept so slowly along the right path. Infinite patience, suffering of infinite patience. How many times have I not been impatient, wished to give up and forsake everything; wished to take the terribly easy way out, despair: but thou didst not lose patience. Oh, I cannot say what thy chosen servant says: that he filled up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in his flesh; no, I can only say that I increased thy sufferings, added new ones to those which thou didst once suffer in order to save me.
    ... Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Journals, ed. Alexander Dru, Oxford University Press, 1959, p. 361 (see the book)
    See also Heb. 9:26-28; Luke 1:17-19; John 19:1-3; Col. 1:24; Heb. 12:1-2
Quiet time reflection:
    You, Lord, have borne what I cannot. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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