Kreeft: love, the ultimate meaning

Sunday, February 9, 2025
Meditation:
    This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
    —1 John 4:9-10 (NIV)
Quotation:
    [Continued from yesterday]
    Our own deepest instincts are to see love as the highest wisdom and ultimate meaning of life. The theology of divine love, which anchors this instinct in the nature of ultimate reality itself, tells us that our deepest values “go all the way up”. It also extends this instinctive wisdom, that sees love as the ultimate meaning of things, into the entire creation. The arms of the Savior on the cross reach up to the Absolute and down to the depths of the human heart and across the whole universe from atoms to archangels. When Jesus threw open his arms on the Cross, he said, in effect: “See? That’s how much I love you.”
    ... Peter Kreeft (b. 1937), The God Who Loves You, Ignatius Press, 2004, p. 105 (see the book)
    See also 1 John 4:9-10; Matt. 10:29; Luke 12:6-7,24; John 3:16-17; 12:27; Rom. 3:25-26; Eph. 5:1-2; 1 John 2:2
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your love is without limit. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt    inst    Jonah    ; Ruth

Kreeft: the dungeon of the enlightenment

Saturday, February 8, 2025
Meditation:
    To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it.
    —Deuteronomy 10:14 (NIV)
Quotation:
    [The theology of divine love] frees us from the dusty, dirty, smelly little dungeon of a universe that “Enlightenment” thought gave us: a universe in which love and beauty and praise and value are mere subjective fictions invented by the human mind, a universe in which the only things that are objectively real are blind bits of energy randomly bumping into each other. [Continued tomorrow]
    ... Peter Kreeft (b. 1937), The God Who Loves You, Ignatius Press, 2004, p. 105 (see the book)
    See also Deut. 10:14; Ex. 19:5-6; 1 Chr. 29:11; Job 38:4-7; Ps. 19:1; 24:1; 1 Cor. 10:26
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your Spirit fills the earth. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt    inst    Jonah    ; Ruth

Tozer: God's speech

Friday, February 7, 2025
Meditation:
    For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
    —2 Peter 1:21 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The facts are that God is not silent, has never been silent. It is the nature of God to speak. The second Person of the Holy Trinity is called the Word. The Bible is the inevitable outcome of God’s continuous speech. It is the infallible declaration of His mind for us to put into our familiar human words.
    ... A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), The Pursuit of God [1948], Christian Publications, 1982, p. 72 (see the book)
    See also 2 Pet. 1:21; Matt. 3:17; 10:19-20; 17:5; Mark 13:11; Luke 12:11-12; John 1:1-2; 2 Tim. 3:16-17
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your people thirst for Your word. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt    inst    Jonah    ; Ruth

Fox: the light of Jesus

Thursday, February 6, 2025
Meditation:
    The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.
    —Romans 8:16 (NIV)
Quotation:
    These things I did not see by the help of man, nor by the letter, though they are written in the letter; but I saw them in the light of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by his immediate Spirit and power, as did the Holy men of God, by whom the Holy Scriptures were written. Yet I had no slight esteem of the Holy Scriptures; they were very precious to me, for I was in that Spirit by which they were given forth; and what the Lord opened in me, I afterwards found was agreeable to them.
    ... George Fox (1624-1691), Journal, v. I, Philadelphia: B. & T. Kite, 1808, [1648] p. 111 (see the book)
    See also Rom. 8:16; John 14:16-17; 15:26; 1 Tim. 3:16; 1 John 5:6-7
Quiet time reflection:
    Spirit of God, Your people are listening. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt    inst    Jonah    ; Ruth

Thielecke: the dark night

Wednesday, February 5, 2025
    Commemoration of Martyrs of Japan, 1597
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
    —Matthew 6:6 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Over all the world there reigns a night so dark that hope seems quite impossible. This is the prophets’, the Bible’s picture of the world.
    And here, against that background, we are given the news, no, not only the “news,” it is actually demonstrated to us in the fact of “Jesus,” that this hope nevertheless is there, miraculously and incomprehensibly there—and that the heart of a Father is beating for us.
    Everything that this Jesus says, and what is more, everything he does is the reflection, the reverberation of that heart. Every one of his sayings is a pastoral, brotherly address.
    ... Helmut Thielicke (1908-1986), Our Heavenly Father, tr. John W. Doberstein, New York: Harper & Row, 1960, p. 22-23 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 6:6-15; 2 Sam. 22:29; Ps. 112:4; Isa. 9:2; John 1:4-5; 3:19; 12:46; Eph. 2:11-13; 6:12; 1 Pet. 2:9
Quiet time reflection:
    Father, in Your Son, we hope. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt    inst    Jonah    ; Ruth

Erasmus: the greater work of redemption

Tuesday, February 4, 2025
    Commemoration of Gilbert of Sempringham, Founder of the Gilbertine Order, 1189
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins...” He said to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.”
    —Luke 5:23-24 (NIV)
Quotation:
    How much more wonderful the work of redemption is in comparison with creation. It is more marvelous that God was made man than that He created the angels. That He wailed in a stable, wrapped in swaddling clothes, rather than that He reigns in the heavens He created... The creation of the world was a work of power, but the redemption of the world was a work of mercy.
    ... Desiderius Erasmus (1466?-1536), The Essential Erasmus, J. P. Dolan, ed., New York: New American Library, 1964, p. 231-232 (see the book)
    See also Luke 5:23-24; Job 38:4-7; Matt. 9:5; 16:13-17; Mark 2:9; Luke 2:6-7; 21:28; John 5:27; Rom. 3:22-24; 8:23; 1 Cor. 1:30; Heb. 1:14
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, without Your mercy, I am lost. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt    inst    Jonah    ; Ruth

Wright: overarching the OT

Monday, February 3, 2025
    Feast of Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, 865
Meditation:
    The ransomed of the LORD will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.
    —Isaiah 51:11 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The loneliness of God looking for his partners, Adam and Eve, in the Garden; the grief of God before the flood; the head-shaking exasperation of God at Babel—all these, God knows, he will have to continue to experience. And worse—there will be numerous further acts of judgment as well as mercy as the story unfolds. But unfold it will. The overarching picture is of the sovereign Creator God who will continue to work within his world until blessing replaces curse, homecoming replaces exile, olive branches appear after the flood and a new family is created in which the scattered languages can be reunited. That is the narrative which forms the outer frame for the canonical Old Testament.
    ... N. T. Wright (b. 1948), Evil and the Justice of God, InterVarsity Press, 2013, p. 53 (see the book)
    See also Isa. 51:11; Gen. 3:9; 6:6; 8:11; 11:5-8; Isa. 35:10; Acts 2:6
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your people await the day when Your will is done throughout the world. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt    inst    Jonah    ; Ruth