Brooks: sympathy

Saturday, January 23, 2021
    Commemoration of Phillips Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts, spiritual writer, 1893
Meditation:
    For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.
    —2 Corinthians 8:9 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Never let the seeming worthlessness of sympathy make you keep back that sympathy of which, when men are suffering around you, your heart is full. Go and give it without asking yourself whether it is worth the while to give it. It is too sacred a thing for you to tell what it is worth. God, from whom it comes, sends it through you to His needy child.
    ... Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), Sermons, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1878, p. 108 (see the book)
    See also 2 Cor. 8:9; Isa. 40:11; Matt. 9:36; Jas. 1:27; 1 Pet. 3:8
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You place sympathy for the suffering in the hearts of Your people. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Sherrill: lost

Friday, January 22, 2021
Meditation:
    Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land; when they are famished, they will become enraged and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God. Then they will look toward the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness.
    —Isaiah 8:21-22 (NIV)
Quotation:
    It is a Gospel to men who are without God, sinful, bewildered, anxious, discouraged, self-sufficient and proud, yet destroying themselves and others, caught in a desperate plight from which they cannot extricate themselves. The Bible characterizes men in such a state as “lost,” and as being “without hope in the world”...
    And let no one suppose that such a term as “lost” is merely a bit of conventional theological jargon. It stands for a terrible reality, a reality which modern man in his modern predicament knows only too well from his own bitter experience. It gives rise to the voices of despair which haunt our radios, our newspapers, our fiction and poetry, our stage and screen, our doctors’ offices, our hospital wards, our grisly nightmare of atomic war, and the conversation of common people who no sooner meet than they begin to bemoan the fate that has overtaken the world.
    ... Lewis J. Sherrill (1892-1957), Lift Up Your Eyes, Richmond: John Knox Press, 1949, p. 7 (see the book)
    See also Isa. 8:21-22; Jer. 18:12; Rom. 15:21; Eph. 2:12
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, open our eyes to the lost, that we might represent the Gospel to them. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Lawrence: to know God more

Thursday, January 21, 2021
    Feast of Agnes, Child Martyr at Rome, 304
Meditation:
    And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
    —Philippians 1:9-11 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Let all our employment be to know GOD; the more one knows Him, the more one desires to know Him. And as knowledge is commonly the measure of love, the deeper and more extensive our knowledge shall be, the greater will be our love; and if our love of GOD were great, we should love Him equally in pains and pleasures.
    ... Brother Lawrence (c.1605-1691), The Practice of the Presence of God, New York, Revell, 1895, Fifteenth Letter, p. 44 (see the book)
    See also Phil. 1:9-11; Rom. 11:33-34; Hos. 4:6; 1 Cor. 13:9-12; 2 Cor. 2:14; Phil. 3:8; 2 Pet. 1:5-7
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, make me see Your presence in affliction and prosperity. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Rolle: love of the Lord

Wednesday, January 20, 2021
    Commemoration of Richard Rolle of Hampole, Writer, Hermit, Mystic, 1349
Meditation:
    Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
    —Deuteronomy 6:5 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The commandment of God is, that we love Our Lord in all our heart, in all our soul, in all our thought. In all our heart; that is, in all our understanding without erring. In all our soul; that is, in all our will without gainsaying. In all our thought; that is, that we think on Him without forgetting. In this manner is very love and true, that is work of man’s will. For love is a willful stirring of our thoughts unto God, so that it receive nothing that is against the love of Jesus Christ, and therewith that it be lasting in sweetness of devotion; and that is the perfection of this life.
    ... Richard Rolle (1290?-1349), The Commandments, in English Spirituality in the Age of Wyclif, David Lyle Jeffrey, tr., Regent College Publishing, 1988, 73:8-9 (see the book)
    See also Deut. 6:5; Matt. 22:37-38; Mark 12:29-33; Rom. 8:6-7; Heb. 10:16-17; 1 John 5:2-5
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant Your people the purpose of fulfilling this commandment. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Milton: tolerance of differences among believers

Tuesday, January 19, 2021
    Commemoration of Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, 1095
Meditation:
    One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.
    —Romans 14:5 (NIV)
Quotation:
    [If] there be any difference among professed believers as to the sense of Scripture, it is their duty to tolerate such difference in each other, until God shall have revealed the truth to all.
    ... John Milton (1608-1674), from “A Treatise on Christian Doctrine,” in The Prose Works of John Milton, v. IV, London: Bohn, 1853, p. 444 (see the book)
    See also Rom. 14:4-8,23; John 14:26; 16:13; 1 Cor. 2:9-13; Eph. 4:11-15; Tit. 1:15; Heb. 11:6; 1 John 2:27
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, unite us regardless our differences. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Carmichael: Be triumphant, be triumphant

Monday, January 18, 2021
    Feast of the Confession of Saint Peter the Apostle
    Commemoration of Amy Carmichael, Founder of the Dohnavur Fellowship, 1951
Meditation:
    His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.
    —Ephesians 3:10-11 (NIV)
Quotation:
Be triumphant, be triumphant,
    Let the spiritual watchers see
That thy God doth strengthen thee,
    That in him is victory.
    ... Amy Carmichael (1867-1951), Rose from Brier [1933], London: SPCK, 1950, p. 143 (see the book)
    See also Eph. 3:10-11; Ps. 27:7-8; 55:18; 1 Cor. 15:57; 2 Cor. 2:14-15; Phil. 4:13
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, all my hope and trust is in You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Gore: the perilous use of ecclesiastical authority

Sunday, January 17, 2021
    Feast of Antony of Egypt, Abbot, 356
    Commemoration of Charles Gore, Bishop, Teacher, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, 1932
Meditation:
    Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.
    —1 Corinthians 11:27 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Now what ought to have been the attitude of thoughtful Christians towards ecclesiastical authority, resulting from our Lord’s whole attitude towards it? I think that the Catholic Church ought to have maintained and used ecclesiastical and sacerdotal authority, but that its maintenance and its use ought to have been accompanied with a continual fear. Because they had before them this fact, that however divinely authoritative, however securely resting on a basis of legitimate and genuine inspiration, yet the ecclesiastical authority of the Old Covenant, by no process of sudden revolution, but simply by a process of gradual development, was capable of becoming something so utterly alien in spirit from what it was intended to be, that when the Christ came, to prepare for whom and to welcome whom was the one reason for which it existed, it did in fact reject Him utterly.
    ... Charles Gore (1853-1932)
    See also 1 Cor. 11:27; Matt. 13:54-58; 23:13-39; Luke 4:28-30; 24:19-20; Acts 7:51-53
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, correct Your church as you correct Your children. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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