Brother Lawrence: Good when He gives

Saturday, November 14, 2020
    Commemoration of Samuel Seabury, First Anglican Bishop in North America, 1796
Meditation:
    Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you.
    —Deuteronomy 8:5 (NIV)
Quotation:
Good when He gives, supremely good;
    Nor less when He denies:
Afflictions, from His sovereign hand,
    Are blessings in disguise.
    ... Brother Lawrence (c.1605-1691), attributed, The Practice of the Presence of God, New York, Revell, 1895, p. 4 (see the book)
    See also Deut. 8:5; Ps. 118:18; 119:71-75; Pr. 15:10; Heb. 12:5-6,10-11
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, make me know Your goodness in correction. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Simeon: thy increase, my decrease

Friday, November 13, 2020
    Feast of Charles Simeon, Pastor, Teacher, 1836
Meditation:
    For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
    —2 Corinthians 5:14-15 (NIV)
Quotation:
    I would have the whole of my experience one continued sense—first, of my nothingness, and dependence on God; second, of my guiltiness, and desert before Him; third, of my obligations to redeeming love, as utterly overwhelming me with its incomprehensible extent and grandeur.
    ... Charles Simeon (1759-1836), Memoirs of the Life of the Rev. Charles Simeon, Pittsburgh: R. Carter, 1847, letter to Miss Mary Elliott, Nov. 21, 1834, p. 430 (see the book)
    See also 2 Cor. 5:14-15; Matt. 10:37-38; John 3:30; 2 Cor. 12:11; Eph. 3:16-19; 1 Pet. 1:8
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You alone give value to anything of mine. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Pierce: how beautiful the feet

Thursday, November 12, 2020
Meditation:
I waited patiently for the LORD;
    he turned to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire;
    he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.
    —Psalm 40:1-2 (NIV)
Quotation:
    God is wanting you to give Him the despised, the humdrum things in your life—like feet—and let Him make them beautiful.
    ... Robert Pierce (1914-1978), founder and president, World Vision, in a private communication from World Vision
    See also Ps. 37:23-24; 40:1-2; 121:3; 119:105; Isa. 52:7; John 13:14; 1 Tim. 5:9-10
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, consecrate my feet into the path of Your choosing. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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MacDonald: not to faint

Wednesday, November 11, 2020
    Feast of Martin, Monk, Bishop of Tours, 397
Meditation:
    Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.
    —Luke 18:1 (NIV)
Quotation:
    There is a communion with God that asks for nothing, yet asks for everything... And he who seeks the Father more than anything He can give, is likely to have what he asks, for he is not likely to ask amiss.
    ... George MacDonald (1824-1905), “Man’s Difficulty Concerning Prayer”, in Unspoken Sermons, Second Series, London: Longmans, Green, 1886, p. 92 (see the book)
    See also Luke 18:1; Matt. 6:33; Acts 15:16-17; 17:27
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant me a heart to commune with You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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M. Barth: using Christ's name in vain

Tuesday, November 10, 2020
    Feast of Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, 461
Meditation:
    But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
    —Ephesians 2:4-7 (ESV)
Quotation:
    When no tensions are confronted and overcome, because insiders or outsiders of a certain class or group meet happily among themselves, then the one new thing, peace, and the one new man created by Christ, are missing; then no faith, no church, no Christ, is found or confessed. For if the attribute “Christian” can be given sense from Eph. 2, then it means reconciled and reconciling, triumphant over walls and removing the debris, showing solidarity with the “enemy” and promoting not one’s own peace of mind but “our peace.”
    When this peace is deprived of its social, national, or economic dimensions, when it is distorted or emasculated so much that only “peace of mind” enjoyed by saintly individuals is left—then Jesus Christ is being flatly denied. To propose, in the name of Christianity, neutrality or unconcern on questions of international, racial, or economic peac e—this amounts to using Christ’s name in vain.
    ... Markus Barth (1915-1994), The Broken Wall, Chicago: Judson Press, 1959, Regent College Publishing, 1959, p. 45 (see the book)
    See also Eph. 2:4-7,13-18; Mark 9:50; Rom. 12:18; 2 Cor. 13:11; Col. 1:19-20; 1 Thess. 5:13
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I confess to lacking the mercy You desire of me. Show me how I am to serve and seek Your peace, rather than my own. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Phillips: the whole Gospels

Monday, November 9, 2020
    Commemoration of Margery Kempe, Mystic, after 1433
Meditation:
    Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
    —Ephesians 6:17 (NIV)
Quotation:
    This astonishing sense of spiritual attack which, it seems to me, must inevitably follow the continual reading of the four Gospels, without preconception but with an alert mind, is not the sole privilege of the translator. It can happen to anyone who is prepared to abandon proof-texts and a closed attitude of mind, and allow not merely the stories but the quality of the Figure Who exists behind the stories to meet him afresh. Neat snippets of a few verses are of course useful in their way, but the overall sweep and much of the significance of the Gospel narratives are lost to us unless we are prepared to read the Gospels through, not once but several times.
    ... J. B. Phillips (1906-1982), New Testament Christianity, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1956, chapt. i, p. 11 (see the book)
    See also Eph. 6:17; Matt. 10:26-28; Luke 1:1-4; Acts 8:25; Heb. 4:12
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your word is my strength. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Sanday & Headlam: Free-will and Divine Sovereignty

Sunday, November 8, 2020
    Feast of Saints & Martyrs of England
Meditation:
    But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?
    —Romans 9:20-21 (NIV)
Quotation:
    [The solution lies] in a complete realization of what we mean by asserting that God is Almighty. The two ideas of Free-will and Divine Sovereignty can not be reconciled in our own minds, but that does not prevent them from being reconcilable in God’s mind. We measure Him by our own intellectual standard if we think otherwise. And so our solution of the problem of Free-will and of the problems of history and of individual salvation, must finally lie in the full acceptance and realization of what is implied by the infinity and the omniscience of God.
    ... William Sanday (1843-1920) & Arthur C. Headlam (1862-1947), A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1896, 10th ed., New York: Scribners, 1905, p. 350 (see the book)
    See also Rom. 9:17-24; Isa. 29:16; 45:9-11; Mic. 6:8; Phil. 3:12
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I acknowledge Your sovereignty and seek Your grace. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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