Brooks: loyalty to a Person

Monday, March 23, 2026
Meditation:
    And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, “‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed’—for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.
    —Acts 4:24-28 (ESV)
Quotation:
    The characteristic of our modern Christianity, which correlates it with all apostolic times, is the substitution of loyalty to a person in place of belief in doctrines as the essence and test of Christian life. This is the simplicity and unity by which the Gospel can become effective.
    ... Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), Life and letters of Phillips Brooks, v. II, Alexander V. G. Allen, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1901, p. 333 (see the book)
    See also Acts 4:24-28; Matt. 4:19; Rom. 8:1-2; Gal. 3:26
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are the Anointed One, and my loyalty is to You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Joad: the only good explanation

Sunday, March 22, 2026
Meditation:
    And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
    —Genesis 3:2-6 (ESV)
Quotation:
    To take the fact of evil seriously is to take the fact of morality seriously... I am unable to see how the fact of the moral consciousness, and, in particular, the fact of the opposition between “is” and “ought,” between desire and duty, can be explained in terms of purely natural causation... [They] can be explained only on the assumption that, in addition to the natural, there is also a non-natural order of the universe which is immanent in and on occasion intrudes actively into the natural.
    ... C. E. M. Joad (1891-1953), The Recovery of Belief, London: Faber and Faber, 1952, p. 76-78 (see the book)
    See also Gen. 3:2-6; Josh. 7:20-21; Jer. 14:13-14; Acts 26:27; 2 Cor. 11:13-15
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I too have eaten the forbidden fruit and know evil within myself. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Wilde: the broken gates

Saturday, March 21, 2026
Meditation:
    For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.
    —Isaiah 57:15 (ESV)
Quotation:
And thus we rust Life’s iron chain
    Degraded and alone:
And some men curse, and some men weep,
    And some men make no moan:
But God’s eternal Laws are kind
    And break the heart of stone.

And every human heart that breaks,
    In prison-cell or yard,
Is as that broken box that gave
    Its treasure to the Lord,
And filled the unclean leper’s house
    With the scent of costliest nard.

Ah! happy they whose hearts can break
    And peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plan
    And cleanse his soul from sin?
How else but through a broken heart
    May Lord Christ enter in?
    ... Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), from The Ballad of Reading Gaol [1898], in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, v. IV, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 215 (see the book)
    See also Isa. 57:15; Ps. 34:18; 51:17; 147:3; Matt. 5:3,8; Rev. 3:20
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have granted brokenness to Your servants.

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Owen: Christian motivation

Friday, March 20, 2026
    Feast of Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne, Missionary, 687
Meditation:
    For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences.
    —2 Corinthians 5:10-11 (KJV)
Quotation:
    It is the “terror of the Lord” that causes us to “persuade” others, but it is the “love of Christ that constraineth us” to live to Him.
    ... John Owen (1616-1683), The Doctrine of the Saints’ Perseverance Explained and Confirmed [1654], in Works of John Owen, v. XI, London: Johnson & Hunter, 1853, ch. X, p. 395 (see the book)
    See also 2 Cor. 5:10-11,14; Matt. 25:31-46; Acts 10:24; 17:31; 1 Pet. 4:5; 1 John 4:10
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, may You extend Your grace to _____ and _____. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Forsyth: the mediator

Thursday, March 19, 2026
    Feast of Joseph of Nazareth
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “... If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
    Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
    —John 14:7-9 (ESV)
Quotation:
    Is a mediator between the eternal spirit and the finite an unreality, an intrusion? The mystic soul may impatiently think so, but the moral soul finds such mediation the way to reality; and the mystic experience is not quite trustworthy about reality. The pagan gods had not mediators, because they were not real or good gods; but the living God has a living Revealer. To know the living God is to know Christ, to know Christ is to know the living God. We do not know God by Christ but in Him. We find God when we find Christ; and in Christ alone we know and share His final purpose. Our last knowledge is not the contact of our person with a thing or a thought; it is intercourse of person and person.
    ... P. T. Forsyth (1848-1921), This Life and the Next, New York: MacMillan, 1918, p. 62 (see the book)
    See also John 14:7-11; Matt. 11:27; 28:18; Luke 10:22; John 1:18; 17:6-8,26; 2 Cor. 4;6; Col. 1:15
Quiet time reflection:
    Because of You, gracious Lord, I believe. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Chadwick: apathy and unbelief

Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Meditation:
    When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
    —Mark 2:5 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Is it not plain that all spiritual apathy comes not from over-trust but from unbelief, either doubting that sin is present death, or else that holiness is life and that Jesus has a gift to bestow, not in heaven, but promptly, which is better to gain than all the world? Therefore salvation is linked with faith, which earns nothing but elicits all, like the touch that evokes electricity, but which no man supposes to have made it.
    ... G. A. Chadwick (1840-1923), The Gospel According to St. Mark, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1891, p. 48-49 (see the book)
    See also Mark 2:1-12; Matt. 8:6-13; 9:2-7,20-22; Luke 5:18-26; 7:44-50; 9:24-25; Rom. 3:22-24
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, my belief is so weak. Send Your spirit to strengthen me. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Hammarskjold: light shows our darkness

Tuesday, March 17, 2026
    Feast of Patrick, Bishop of Armagh, Missionary, Patron of Ireland, c.460
Meditation:
    Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
    —Genesis 4:9 (NIV)
Quotation:
    We can reach the point where it becomes possible for us to recognize and understand Original Sin, that dark counter-center of evil in our nature—that is to say, though it is not our nature, it is of it—that something within us which rejoices when disaster befalls the very cause we are trying to serve, or misfortune overtakes even those we love.
    Life in God is not an escape from this, but the way to gain full insight concerning it. It is not our depravity which forces a fictitious religious explanation upon us, but the experience of religious reality which forces the “Night Side” out into the light.
    It is when we stand in the righteous all-seeing light of love that we can dare to look at, admit, and consciously suffer under this something in us which wills disaster, misfortune, defeat to everything outside the sphere of our narrowest self interest.
    ... Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-1961), Markings, tr. Leif Sjöberg & W. H. Auden, (q.v.), New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964 (post.), p. 149 (see the book)
    See also Gen. 4:9; 37:32; Ps. 10:13-14; Pr. 28:13; John 8:44; Rom. 3:23
Quiet time reflection:
    Too easily, Lord, I excuse my own sin. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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