Packer: the source of revelation

Saturday, July 18, 2020
Meditation:
    No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.
    —John 1:18 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Revelation is a divine activity, not a human achievement. It is not the same thing as discovery or the dawning of insight or the emerging of a bright idea. Revelation does not mean people finding God, but God finding us, God sharing his secrets with us, God showing us himself.
    ... James I. Packer (1926-2020), God has Spoken: revelation and the Bible, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979, p. 46 (see the book)
    See also John 1:18; Eze. 34:16; Matt. 3:17; 9:12-13; 10:6; 15:24; 16:15-17; 17:5; Luke 5:31-32; 19:10; John 1:14; 3:16; 15:15; Heb. 1:1-2; 2 Pet. 1:21
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have revealed Yourself in Jesus. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Calvin: naturalist atheists

Friday, July 17, 2020
Meditation:
    They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
    —Romans 1:25 (NIV)
Quotation:
    At this day... the earth sustains on her bosom many monster minds, minds which are not afraid to employ the seed of Deity deposited in human nature as a means of suppressing the name of God. Can anything be more detestable than this madness in man, who, finding God a hundred times both in his body and his soul, makes his excellence in this respect a pretext for denying that there is a God? He will not say that chance has made him different from the brutes; ... but, substituting Nature as the architect of the universe, he suppresses the name of God.
    ... John Calvin (1509-1564), The Institutes of the Christian Religion, v. I [1559], tr. John Allen, Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath-School Work, 1921, I.v.4, p. 60 (see the book)
    See also Ps. 14:1-3; Job 12:7-25; Jer. 18:13-15; Rom. 1:18-25
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have shined the light of truth before us. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Fenelon: love eternal

Thursday, July 16, 2020
    Commemoration of Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, 1099
Meditation:
Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise;
    give thanks to him and praise his name.
For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
    his faithfulness continues through all generations.
    —Psalm 100:4-5 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Be persuaded, timid soul, that He has loved you too much to cease loving you.
    ... François Fénelon (1651-1715), Selections from Fénelon, ed. Mary Wilder Tileston, Boston: Roberts Bros., 1879, p. 188 (see the book)
    See also Ps. 100:4-5; 136; Luke 1:50; 2 Cor. 1:3; Jas. 2:23; Jude 1:21
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your people are secure in Your love. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Owen: the beginnings of apostasy

Wednesday, July 15, 2020
    Commemoration of Swithun, Bishop of Winchester, c.862
    Commemoration of Bonaventure, Franciscan Friar, Bishop, Peacemaker, 1274
Meditation:
    All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.
    —Romans 2:12-13 (NIV)
Quotation:
    “Secret sins,” such as are not known to be sins, it may be, to ourselves, make way for those that are “presumptuous.” Thus pride may seem to be nothing but a frame of mind belonging unto our wealth and dignity, or our ... abilities; sensuality may seem to be but a lawful participation of the good things of this life; passion and peevishness, but a due sense of the want of respect that we must suppose owing unto us; covetousness, a necessary care of ourselves and of our families. If the seeds of sin are covered with such pretences, they will in time spring up and bear bitter fruit in the minds and the lives of men. And the beginning of all apostasy, both in religion and in morality, lies in such pretences. Men plead that they can do so-and-so lawfully, until they can do things openly unlawful.
    ... John Owen (1616-1683), A Treatise of the Dominion of Sin and Grace [1688], in Works of John Owen, v. VII, London: Johnson & Hunter, 1852, p. 559 (see the book)
    See also Ps. 19:12,13; Matt. 12:33-35; Rom. 2:12-13; 6:14; 2 Tim. 4:3,4
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, break my heart to Your rule. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Hopkins: The world is charged...

Tuesday, July 14, 2020
    Feast of John Keble, Priest, Poet, Tractarian, 1866
Meditation:
    All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
    —Ecclesiastes 1:8-9 (NIV)
Quotation:
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went,
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and ah! bright wings.
    ... Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Penguin Classics, 1953, p. 27 (see the book)
    See also Gen. 1:2; Eccl. 1:8-9; 2:16-18; John 15:26
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are present in Your world!

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Donne: Keep us

Monday, July 13, 2020
Meditation:
    Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he fell asleep.
    —Acts 7:60 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Keep us, Lord, so awake in the duties of our callings, that we may sleep in Thy peace, and wake in Thy glory.
    ... John Donne (1573-1631), Works of John Donne, vol. V, London: John W. Parker, 1839, Sermon CXLVI, p. 623 (see the book)
    See also Acts 7:60; Ps. 3:5; 4:8; 132:3-5; Acts 6:7
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You alone grant the gift of peace. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Beza: complete the work

Sunday, July 12, 2020
Meditation:
    We proclaim [Christ], admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.
    —Colossians 1:28-29 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Cover, Lord, what has been: govern what shall be. Oh, perfect that which Thou hast begun, that I suffer not shipwreck in the haven.
    ... Theodore Beza (1519-1605), his last words, quoted in The Last Hours of Eminent Christians, Henry Clissold, London: Rivingtons, 1829, p. 169 (see the book)
    See also Eze. 27:25-27; 2 Cor. 12:8-9; Phil. 3:10-12; Col. 1:27-29; 1 Tim. 1:18-19
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, even when I am discouraged, Your Spirit is working through the Gospel to complete me. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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