Just in case any of you were wondering,

yes I watched the Michigan game today.

What did I think about it?

I thought … I would rather have just been kicked in the shins for three hours…

On to more important things…

“The reason why we can hope to find God is that He is here, engaged all the time in finding us. Every pulse of love is a tendril that draws us in His direction. Every verification of truth links the finite mind up into a Foundational Mind that undergirds us. Every deed of good will points toward a consummate Goodness which fulfills all our tiny adventures in faith. We can find Him because in Him we live and move and have our being.”

… Rufus Jones, Pathways to the Reality of God

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Sing, men and angels, sing, for God our Life and King
Has given us light and spring and morning breaking
Now may man’s soul arise as kinsman to the skies,
And God unseals his eyes to an awaking. 

Sing, creatures, sing; the dust that lives by lure and lust
Is kindled by the thrust of life undying;
This hope our Master bare has made all fortunes fair,
And man can on and dare, his death defying.

 After the winter snows a wind of healing blows,
And thorns put forth a rose, and lilies cheer us;
Life’s everlasting spring has robbed death of his sting,
Henceforth a cry can bring our Master near us.
         … John Masefield

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Beginning a series on hope:

 The one great fear which is a holy fear is, I think, lest you make your adventure too small, too easy, too self-full, too mediocre. Christianity fails because people will keep on the surface too much, they will not go down to face these deep inner obediences; and that is ultimately to be beaten by themselves. We talk big and play so small. And the world has found it out –the great bulk have discarded Christianity as the way of Hope and put their hope in other things.
         … The Notebooks of Florence Allshorn

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

“This Christian claim [of universal validity] is naturally offensive to the adherents of every other religious system. It is almost as offensive to modern man, brought up in the atmosphere of relativism, in which tolerance is regarded almost as the highest of the virtues. But we must not suppose that this claim to universal validity is something that can quietly be removed from the Gospel without changing it into something entirely different from what it is… Jesus’ life, his method, and his message do not make sense, unless they are interpreted in the light of his own conviction that he was in fact the final and decisive word of God to men… For the human sickness there is one specific remedy, and this is it. There is no other.”
         … Stephen Neill, Christian Faith and Other Faiths

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

“The sovereign God wants to be loved for Himself and honored for Himself, but that is only part of what He wants. The other part is that He wants us to know that when we have Him we have everything — we have all the rest.”

… A. W. Tozer

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. We insist upon trying to modify Him and bring Him nearer to our own image.

… A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

The faint, far-off results of those energies which God’s creative rapture implanted in matter when He made the worlds are what we now call physical pleasures; and even thus filtered, they are too much for our present management. What would it be to taste at the fountain-head that stream of which even these lower reaches prove so intoxicating? Yet that, I believe, is what lies before us. As St. Augustine said, the rapture of the saved soul will “flow over” into the glorified body. In the light of our present specialized and depraved appetites, we cannot imagine this [torrent of pleasure], and I warn everyone most seriously not to try. But it must be mentioned, to drive out thoughts even more misleading–thoughts that what is saved is a mere ghost, or that the risen body lives in numb insensibility. The body is made for the Lord, and these dismal fancies are wide of the mark.
         … C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry;
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide;
Take not Thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.

From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen;
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men;
From sale and profanation
Of honor and the sword;
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord!

Tie in a living tether
The prince and priest and thrall;
Bind all our lives together,
Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exultation
Aflame with faith, and free,
Lift up a living nation,
A single sword to Thee.

… Gilbert K. Chesterton [1906]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites