Yancey: fear of heaven

Saturday, October 21, 2023
Meditation:
    See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he promised us—even eternal life.
    —1 John 2:24-25 (NIV)
Quotation:
    We fear heaven as our ancestors feared hell. The notion seems quaint, cowardly, an escape from this world’s problems. What inversion of values, I wonder, has led us to commend a belief in annihilation as brave and dismiss a hope for blissful eternity as cowardly?
    ... Philip Yancey (b. 1949), Soul Survivor, New York: Doubleday, 2001, p. 221 (see the book)
    See also 1 John 2:24-25; Ps. 133:3; Matt. 25:46; John 3:16; 5:24-25; 6:40; 14:2-3; 1 Cor. 1:26-29; 15:53-54; 2 Cor. 5:1; Col. 1:27; 2 Tim. 1:8-10; Tit. 3:4-7; 1 Pet. 1:3-5,21; 2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21:1-4
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your promises are true. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Underhill: the fuel fo growth always present

Friday, October 20, 2023
Meditation:
    Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody
    —1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 (NIV)
Quotation:
    There is no need for peculiar conditions in order to grow in the spiritual life, for the pressure of God’s Spirit is present everywhere and at all times. Our environment itself, our home and our job, is the medium through which we experience His moulding action and His besetting love. It is not Christian to try to get out of our frame, or to separate our outward life from our life of prayer, since both are the creation of one Charity. The third-rate little town in the hills, with its limited social contacts and monotonous manual work, reproves us when we begin to fuss about our opportunities and our scope. And this quality of quietness, ordinariness, simplicity, with which the saving action of God enters history, endures from the beginning to the end.
    ... Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), The School of Charity, New York: Longmans, Green, 1934, reprinted, Morehouse Publishing, 1991, p. 46 (see the book)
    See also 1 Thess. 4:11-12; Ps. 19:7; 119:130; Matt. 11:25; 18:2-3; John 1:46; 2 Cor. 5:9; Phil. 4:11-13; 1 Tim. 6:6-8; Heb. 13:5; 1 Pet. 2:1-3
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, quell the desires of worldly ambition in my heart. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Tozer: priorities

Thursday, October 19, 2023
    Feast of Henry Martyn, Translator of the Scriptures, Missionary in India & Persia, 1812
Meditation:
Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens:
    and thy glory above all the earth...
    —Psalm 108:5 (KJV)
Quotation:
    Let the seeking man reach a place where life and lips join to say continually, “Be thou exalted,” and a thousand minor problems will be solved at once. His Christian life ceases to be the complicated thing it had been before and becomes the very essence of simplicity.
    ... A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), The Pursuit of God [1948], Christian Publications, 1982, p. 97 (see the book)
    See also Ps. 108:5; 8:1; 19:7; 21:13; 57:5,11; 116:6; 119:130; Matt. 11:25; 18:2-3; 2 Cor. 1:12; 3:18; 1 Pet. 2:2-3
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant simplicity to my heart. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Augustine: selective belief

Wednesday, October 18, 2023
    Feast of Luke the Evangelist
Meditation:
    I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.
    —Galatians 1:6-7 (NIV)
Quotation:
    If you believe what you like in the gospel, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.
    ... St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), Reply to Faustus the Manichaean, tr., R. Stothert, in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, v. IV, Philip Schaff, ed., Buffalo: Christian Literature Company, 1887, XVII.3, p. 235 (see the book)
    See also Gal. 1:6-9; Deut. 4:2; 12:32; Matt. 24:24; Phil. 3:1; 1 Tim. 4:1,16; 2 Tim. 4:3-4; Tit. 1:9; 2:1; 2 Pet. 2:1-3; 1 John 2:26; 4:1; 2 John 1:7-10; Jude 1:3-4; Rev. 22:18-19
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your people receive the whole Gospel. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Ignatius: you are the stones

Tuesday, October 17, 2023
    Feast of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, Martyr, c.107
Meditation:
    As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
    —1 Peter 2:4-5 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Like stones of God’s Temple, ready for a building of God the Father, you are being hoisted up by Jesus Christ, as with a crane (that’s the cross!), while the rope you use is the Holy Spirit. Your faith is what lifts you up, while love is the way you ascend to God.
    ... Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 35-98?), Letter to the Ephesians [ca. 108?], par. 9 (see the book)
    See also 1 Pet. 2:4-5; 1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:19-22; Heb. 3:6; Rev. 3:12
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your people worship You in Your Temple. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Phillips: apocalypse

Monday, October 16, 2023
    Commemoration of the Oxford Martyrs, Hugh Latimer, Nicolas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer, bishops and martyrs, 1555
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other.”
    —Luke 17:24 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The New Testament is indeed a book full of hope, but we may search it in vain for any vague humanist optimism. The second coming of Christ, the second irruption of eternity into time, will be immediate, violent and conclusive. The human experiment is to end, illusion will give way to reality, the temporary disappear before the permanent, and the king will be seen for who he is. The thief in the night, the lightning flash, the sound of the last trumpet, the voice of God’s archangel—these may all be picture-language, but they are pictures of something sudden, catastrophic, and decisive. By no stretch of the imagination do they describe a gradual process.
    ... J. B. Phillips (1906-1982), Good News: Thoughts on God and Man, New York: Macmillan, 1963, p. 158-159 (see the book)
    See also Luke 17:24; Dan. 7:13-14; Matt. 24:30-31; 1 Cor. 15:51-52; Phil. 3:20-21; 1 Thess. 4:16-17; 5:1-2; 2 Pet. 3:10; 1 John 3:2; Rev. 8:6-7; 16:18
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, our hope is in You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Theresa: the life of prayer

Sunday, October 15, 2023
    Feast of Teresa of Avila, Mystic, Teacher, 1582
Meditation:
    ... pray continually;
    —1 Thessalonians 5:17 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The life of prayer is just love to God and the custom of being ever with Him.
    ... Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), Santa Teresa, an Appreciation, Alexander Whyte, ed., London: Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier, 1897, p. 75 (see the book)
    See also 1 Thess. 5:17-18; 1 Sam. 12:23; Ps. 55:16-17; 109:4; Mark 6:46; Luke 6:12; 18:1; Rom. 12:2; Eph. 6:18; Phil. 4:6; Col. 4:2
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, make me into one who loves prayer. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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