Erasmus: a better monument

Saturday, February 8, 2020
Meditation:
    Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, as it is written: “He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little.”
    —2 Corinthians 8:13-15 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Rich men now-a-days will have their monuments in churches... But if I were a priest or a bishop, I would put it into the heads of those thick-skulled courtiers or merchants, that if they would atone for their sins to Almighty God, they should privately bestow their liberality upon the relief of the poor.
    ... Desiderius Erasmus (1466?-1536), The Colloquies of Erasmus, v. I, tr. N. Bailey & ed. E. Johnson, London: Reeves & Turner, 1878, p. 190 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 6:19-20; 19:21; Mark 10:21; Luke 11:40-41; 12:33-34; 18:22; Acts 4:32-37; 2 Cor. 8:13-15
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I acknowledge that all I have is as a stewardship for You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt    Jonah    Ruth

Cate: a future religion or now?

Friday, February 7, 2020
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.”
    —Matthew 7:15 (NIV)
Quotation:
    In the “dynamic” religion that we are being promised for tomorrow, no ascetic discipline or special humbleness will any longer be required. It will be a hot-water bottle kind of piety with none of that gritty old morality it in. It will be a brand of faith that has been synthetized, vitaminized, homogenized, and capsulized, and it will be as ready-made for effortless consumption as that magically bleached, cottony, crustless, already sliced white bread which is the symbol of the modern American’s massive superiority over the pagan bushwhacker.
    ... Curtis Cate (1924-2006), “God and Success”, in The Atlantic Monthly, January/June 1957, p. 76 (see the book)
    See also Deut. 32:31-33; Matt. 7:15; 15:2-20; 2 John 1:7-10
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, send Your Spirit to guard and defend Your church. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt    Jonah    Ruth

Mott: incapable of evangelism

Thursday, February 6, 2020
Meditation:
    Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
    —Romans 12:2 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The invasion of the Church by the world is a menace to the extension of Christ’s Kingdom. In all ages conformity to the world by Christians has resulted in lack of spiritual life and a consequent lack of spiritual vision and enterprise. A secularized or self-centered Church can never evangelize the world.
    ... John R. Mott (1865-1955), The Evangelization of the World in this Generation, New York: Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 1905, p. 44 (see the book)
    See also Rom. 12:1-2; Matt. 28:19-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:46-48; John 15:16; 1 Thess. 5:3; 1 John 2:15-17; Rev. 3:14-18
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, reverse the decline of the church by the power of Your Spirit. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt    Jonah    Ruth

Denney: the obstacle of inspiration

Wednesday, February 5, 2020
    Commemoration of Martyrs of Japan, 1597
Meditation:
    [The LORD] said, “Go and tell this people: ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”
    —Isaiah 6:9-10 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The intelligence which has learned to be a law to itself, criticising, rejecting, appropriating, assimilating, cannot deny its nature and suspend its functions when it opens the New Testament. It cannot make itself the slave of men, not even though the men are Peter and Paul and John; no, not even though it were the Son of Man Himself. It resents dictation, not willfully nor wantonly, but because it must; and it resents it all the more when it claims to be inspired. If, therefore, the Atonement can only be received by those who are prepared from the threshold to acknowledge the inspiration and the consequent authority of Scripture, it can never be received by modern men at all.
    ... James Denney (1856-1917), The Atonement and the Modern Mind, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1903, p. 6 (see the book)
    See also Isa. 6:9-10; 65:1; Matt. 13:14-15; Mark 4:11-12; Luke 8:10; John 12:37-40; Rom. 1:21-23; 5:11; Acts 28:23-28
Quiet time reflection:
    Open the people’s ears, Lord, that they may receive Your word. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt    Jonah    Ruth

Lewis: the danger of religion

Tuesday, February 4, 2020
    Commemoration of Gilbert of Sempringham, Founder of the Gilbertine Order, 1189
Meditation:
    There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
    When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.”
    “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”
    —Exodus 3:2-5 (NIV)
Quotation:
    It is well to have specifically holy places, and things, and days, for, without these focal points or reminders, the belief that all is holy and “big with God” will soon dwindle into a mere sentiment. But if these holy places, things, and days cease to remind us, if they obliterate our awareness that all ground is holy and every bush (could we but perceive it) a Burning Bush, then the hallows begin to do harm. Hence both the necessity, and the perennial danger, of “religion.”
    ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1964, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002, p. 75 (see the book)
    See also Ex. 3:2-5; Matt. 23:5-39; Rom. 14:1-8; Col. 2:16-17; Rev. 22:11
Quiet time reflection:
    Your whole creation is a holy place to You, Lord. Grant that I may never despise it. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt    Jonah    Ruth

M'Cheyne: answering prayer

Monday, February 3, 2020
    Feast of Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, 865
Meditation:
    Then [the other criminal crucified with him] said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
    Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”
    —Luke 23:42-43 (NIV)
Quotation:
    God will either give you what you ask, or something far better.
    ... Robert Murray M’Cheyne (1813-1843), The Life and Remains, Letters, Lectures, and Poems of the Rev. Robert Murray McCheyne, Andrew Alexander Bonar, New York: R. Carter, 1866, p. 168 (see the book)
    See also Luke 23:42-43; 1 Kings 3:7-14; Eph. 3:12; Heb. 3:6; 4:16; 10:35; 1 John 3:21; 5:14-15
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your provision has exceeded my wants as the ocean exceeds a drop of water. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt    Jonah    Ruth

Mascall: a message to the worldly

Sunday, February 2, 2020
    THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE
Meditation:
    [Therefore,] remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.
    —Ephesians 2:12,13 (NIV)
Quotation:
    If Dr. [John A. T.] Robinson is right in saying that “God is teaching us that we must live as men who can get on very well without him,” then the Church has no need to say anything whatever to secularized man, for that is precisely what secularized man already believes.
    ... E. L. Mascall (1905-1993), in The Observer, March 24, 1963, reproduced in The Honest to God Debate, David L. Edwards, ed., London, SCM Press, 1963, p. 93 (see the book)
    See also Num. 11:18-22; Rom. 11:7-8; Eph. 2:11-13; 2 Tim. 4:3
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, use Your people to show the world its need for You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt    Jonah    Ruth