Chesterton: the paradox of courage

Saturday, June 13, 2020
    Commemoration of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Apologist and Writer, 1936
Meditation:
    For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.
    —Matthew 16:25 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry: the Christian courage, which is a disdain of death; not the [Oriental] courage, which is a disdain of life.
    ... Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), Orthodoxy, London, New York: John Lane Company, 1909, p. 170 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 16:25; Ps. 31:24; Acts 4:13; 7:52-58; Heb. 13:6
Quiet time reflection:
    Take my life, Lord, and expend it for Your purposes. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Albright: true prophets displease

Friday, June 12, 2020
Meditation:
    They say to the seers, “See no more visions!” and to the prophets, “Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!”
    —Isaiah 30:10-11 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Elijah stood in the direct line of this tradition [of prophets]. The prophet of Yahweh was still an inspired seer, whose oracles followed the ecstatic model and were seldom remembered long; the time had not come for marvelous poetic sermons, composed in advance, delivered orally and written down later by enthralled listeners or recited from generation to generation until collected into anthologies by later scholars. Pious Israelites were not far wrong in distinguishing between true prophets and false prophets of Yahweh by the impact of their words on the privileged classes; if the latter were pleased the prophet was false; if they were displeased the prophet was true.
    ... William Foxwell Albright (1891-1971), The Biblical Period from Abraham to Ezra, Harper & Row, 1963, p. 65 (see the book)
    See also Isa. 30:10-11; 1 Kings 22:8; Jer. 23:30-32; Matt. 23:37; Acts 7:51-52
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, free us from slavery to our comforts. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Lewis: the coming of union

Thursday, June 11, 2020
    Feast of Barnabas the Apostle
Meditation:
How good and pleasant it is
    when brothers live together in unity!
    —Psalm 133:1 (NIV)
Quotation:
    I sometimes have a bright dream of reunion engulfing us unawares, like a great wave from behind our backs, perhaps at the very moment when our official representatives are still pronouncing it impossible. Discussions usually separate us; actions sometimes unite us.
    ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1964, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002, p. 16 (see the book)
    See also Ps. 133:1; Acts 4:32; 1 Cor. 1:10; Phil. 1:27; 2:1-2; 1 Pet. 3:8
Quiet time reflection:
    The world separates; You, Lord, unite. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Soper: meekness

Wednesday, June 10, 2020
Meditation:
But the meek will inherit the land
    and enjoy great peace.
    —Psalm 37:11 (NIV)
Quotation:
    What we call the meekness of Our Lord is more than an aspect of His character: it is its fundamental principle. There is nothing in it of the “inert door-mat”; it was, and is, the practice of uncompromising and unyielding love, the exposition of a new technique in dealing with evil. I believe it to be the business of Christians, especially to-day, first to realize, and then to proclaim, this revolutionary technique as the only way to peace and justice. It won’t be easy, for meekness has little “face value” compared with armaments; but, if the Cross means anything at all, it is the vindication of meekness as the most dynamic and explosive force that humanity has ever known.
    ... Donald O. Soper (1903-1998), Popular Fallacies about the Christian Faith, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938, p. 76 (see the book)
    See also Ps. 37:11; Matt. 11:29; Phil. 2:14-15; Col. 3:12-13;Jas. 3:17-18; 1 Pet. 2:21-23
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, correct my mind, for I resist meekness. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Allen: maintaining doctrine

Tuesday, June 9, 2020
    Feast of Columba, Abbot of Iona, Missionary, 597
    Commemoration of Ephrem of Syria, Deacon, Hymnographer, Teacher, 373
Meditation:
    This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.
    —1 John 3:10 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The [early] Church maintained her doctrine by thinking it so clear that any one could understand it: we maintain our doctrine by treating it as so complicated that only theologians can understand it. Consequently, the Church then was quite prepared that any man who believed in Christ should teach others what he knew of Him: we are only prepared to allow men whom we have specially trained to teach it.
    ... Roland Allen (1869-1947), The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes Which Hinder It, London: World Dominion Press, 1949, reprint, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1997, p. 65 (see the book)
    See also 1 John 3:10; Ps. 19:7; Acts 4:13; Rom. 1:18-19; 1 Cor. 3:18; 2 Cor. 11:3; Eph. 3:8-9; 2 Pet. 3:15-18
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, let simplicity in Christ be my guide. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Allen: heresy from the learned

Monday, June 8, 2020
    Feast of Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath & Wells, Hymnographer, 1711
    Commemoration of Roland Allen, Mission Strategist, 1947
Meditation:
    But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.
    —2 Corinthians 11:3-4 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The great heresies in the early Church arose not from the rapid expansion result of these unknown [and untrained] teachers; but in those churches which were longest established, and where the Christians were not so busily engaged in converting the heathen around them. The Church of that day was apparently quite fearless of any dangers that the influx of large numbers of what we should call illiterate converts might lower the standard of church doctrine. She held the tradition handed down by the apostles, and expected the new converts to grow up into it, to maintain it and to propagate it. And so in fact they did. The danger to doctrine lay not in these illiterate converts on the outskirts; but at home, in places like Ephesus and Alexandria, amongst the more highly educated and philosophically minded Christians. It was against them that she had to maintain the doctrine.
    ... Roland Allen (1869-1947), The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes Which Hinder It, London: World Dominion Press, 1949, reprint, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1997, p. 64 (see the book)
    See also 2 Cor. 11:3-4; Acts 15:28-29; 17:22-32; 1 Cor. 11:18-19; Gal. 1:6-8; 3:1-5; Eph. 4:14-15; 1 Tim. 1:8-11; 4:16; 2 Tim. 2:2-5; Tit. 1:7-9; Jude 1:3
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, focus Your church on converting the lost. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Merton: enter by love

Sunday, June 7, 2020
    Trinity Sunday
Meditation:
    No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
    —1 John 4:12-13 (NIV)
Quotation:
    We enter into the Mystery of the Holy Trinity not so much by thinking and imagining, as by loving. Thought and imagination soon reach the limits beyond which they cannot pass, and these limits still fall infinitely short of the reality of God. But love, overstepping all bounds and flying beyond limitations with the wings of God’s own Spirit, penetrates into the very depths of the mystery and apprehends Him Whom our intelligence is unable to see.
    ... Thomas Merton (1915-1968), The Living Bread, Farrar, New York: Straus & Cudahy, 1956; reprint, Macmillan, 1980, p. 51 (see the book)
    See also 1 John 4:12-13; Isa. 40:31; Luke 3:21-22; John 14:9-10; 1 Cor. 2:10; 1 John 4:7
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You Spirit sings a psalm of praise to You within my heart. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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