Quote of the day

[lee_merrill]

LONDON, Jan 9, 1646 LXX. To LADY KENMURE
MADAM, - Oh how sweet is it that the company of the firstborn should be divided into two great bodies of an army, and some in their country, and some in the way to their country! If it were no more than once to see the face of the Prince of this good land, and to be feasted for eternity with the fatness, sweetness, dainties of the rays and beams of matchless glory, and incomparable fountain-love, it were a well-spent journey to creep hands and feet through seven deaths and seven hells, to enjoy Him up at the well-head. Only let us not weary: the miles to that land are fewer and shorter than when we first believed. Strangers are not wise to quarrel with their host, and complain of their lodging. It is a foul way, but a fair home. Oh that I had but such grapes and clusters out of the land as I have sometimes seen and tasted in the place whereof your Ladyship maketh mention! But the hope of it in the end is a heartsome convoy in the way.
Grace be with you.
Your Ladyship's, in Jesus Christ.

Samuel Rutherford

[lee_merrill]

Are you in sorrow? Prayer can make your affliction sweet and strengthening. Are you in gladness? Prayer can add to your joy a celestial perfume. Are you in extreme danger from outward or inward enemies? Prayer can set at your right hand an angel whose glance could lay an army low. What will prayer do for you? I answer: All that God can do for you. "Ask what I shall give thee." --Farrar

[lee_merrill]

"Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." (Eph 5:20 NIV)

To "give thanks to Him for all things," is, indeed, a very difficult duty; for it includes giving thanks for trials of all kinds; for suffering and pain; for languor and weariness; for the crossing of our wills; for contradiction; for reproaches; for loneliness; for privations. Yet they who have learned submission will not find it a hard duty; for they will so entirely love all that God wills and appoints, that they will see it is the very best thing for them. Hereafter they will see all the links of the chain, and how wonderfully even those have fitted, which at the time seemed to have no adaptation or agreement. This belief enables them to praise Him, and give thanks now for each thing, assured that as it has been, so it will be--that the God of love will do all things well.

Priscilla Maurice


Is it not a thing worth having, to have this settled conviction of your hearts, that Christ is moving through all the impulses of your life, and that nothing falls out without the intervention of His presence and the power of His will working through it? Do you not think that such belief would gird you up for difficulty, and would lift you buoyantly over trials and depressions, and would see you upon a vantage ground high above all the petty annoyances of life?

Tell me, is there any other place a Christian can plant his foot and say, "Now I am on a rock and I care not what comes!"

Alexander Maclaren

[lee_merrill]

"When we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door. Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales--because they find them romantic. In fact, a baby is about the only person, I should think, to whom a modern realistic novel could be read without boring him. This proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water." (Chesterton, Orthodoxy)

[odis]

never let the fear of striking out stop you from playing the game
--- a cinderella story

talk less, say more
---unknown

can't decide between these 2

[Teluog]

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it." Yogi Berra

[lee_merrill]

'Twas the night before Tweb, and all through the house,
Not a disk drive was stirring, not even a mouse,
The browsers were placed on the desktop with care,
In hopes that St. DDW soon would be there.

The keytops were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of op'ning posts danced in their heads,
Xman's mom with her cursor, Yxboom in locked caps,
Had screensavers running, while taking their naps.

That Javascript script, that would fling us some snows,
Was only a gleam in the eye of ... who knows?
When what to my wondering firewall appeared,
But a message that said “You have email!” Oh dear...

It's a new Windows driver! Just point here and click,
So I knew in a moment it must be a trick,
More rapid than Google, my cursor aflame,
I whistled for Norton, and called them by name:

Melissa! The Love Bug! Bugbear! Really fix 'em!
Check Blaster and Code Red, erase them and nix 'em,
I'll be checking my Porsche too, and holes in the wall,
Lest they trash my boot sector, and then dash it all!

Then I heard a beep! Why, it wasn't a spoof,
For the program was signed with its Microsoft proof.
So I clicked on "Install," and then read "Now please wait,"
My computer then brought up a Twebby slate,

"Now type in a name not familiar to most,
Which will always appear in each message you post.
A password is needed, an avatar, too,
Though with just the one post, that GIF can't yet be you."

The forums were rosy, some solemn, some merry,
And though there were thorns, skip the prunes, pick the cherries,
Saw oodles of smilies that danced in a row,
Made a link to my home page, to toot up my show.

Then I ventured a post, with a tightening of teeth,
For some smoke had encircled one thread like a wreath,
Thirty posts! Pick a face, not that GIF! Vermicelli?
Well, people will think you're attached to your belly.

Add a fine signature that I got off the shelf,
Although people won't say that I said it myself.
A wink of the eye, and a smilie or two,
And edit it twice, so you're done when you're through.

Tried to sit on my hands, through the flames of "ye jerk!"
And I spent hours and hours, even posted at work,
There was sending of pearls, and tweaking of noses,
I even learned something! And smelled a few roses.

I copied and saved, cut and pasted and whistled,
Bought some more Biblesoft, quoted favorite epistles,
Is there life after Tweb? Log off for the night,
Happy bitstreams! Till we all get theology right...

[lee_merrill]

As thou learnest this lesson, to carry all thy sorrows to God, and lie at thy Saviour's feet, and spread thy grief before Him, thou wilt find a calm come over thee, thou knowest not whence; thou wilt see through the clouds a bright opening, small perhaps and quickly closed, but telling of eternal rest, and everlasting day, and of the depth of the Love of God. Thy heart will still rise and sink, but it will rise and sink, not restlessly, nor waywardly, not in violent gusts of passion; but resting in stillness on the bosom of the ocean of the Love of God. Then shalt thou learn, not to endure only patiently, but, in everything against thy will, humbly and quickly to see and to love the loving Will of God. Thy faith and thy love and thy hope will grow, the more thou seest the work of God with thee; thou wilt joy in thy sorrow, and thy sorrow will be turned into joy.

- Edward B. Pusey

[Mr MacGuffin]

i know this doesn't quite fit with the other quotes but...

"Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I've ever known."
Invisible Monsters

[lee_merrill]

The whole duty and blessedness of waiting on God has its root in this, that He is such a blessed Being, full, to overflowing, of goodness and power and life and joy, that we, however wretched, cannot for any time come into contact with Him, without that life and power secretly, silently, beginning to enter into us and blessing us. God is Love! God's love is just His delight to impart Himself and His blessedness to His children. Come, and however feeble you feel, just wait in His presence. As a feeble invalid is brought out into the sunshine to let its warmth go through him, come with all that is dark and cold in you into the sunshine of God's holy, omnipotent love, and sit and wait there, with the one thought: Here I am, in the sunshine of His love. As the sun does its work in the weak one who seeks its rays, God will do His work in you.

- Andrew Murray

[lee_merrill]

"O Daniel, servant of the living God, is your God whom you serve continually, able to deliver you?" (Dan. 6:20)

How many times we find this expression in the Scriptures, and yet it is just this very thing that we are so prone to lose sight of. We know it is written "the living God"; but in our daily life there is scarcely anything we practically so much lose sight of as the fact that God is the living God; that He is now whatever He was three or four thousand years since; that He has the same sovereign power, the same saving love towards those who love and serve Him as ever He had and that He will do for them now what He did for others two, three, four thousand years ago, simply because He is the living God, the unchanging One. Oh, how therefore we should confide in Him, and in our darkest moments never lose sight of the fact that He is still and ever will be the living God!

Be assured, if you walk with Him and look to Him and expect help from Him, He will never fail you. An older brother who has known the Lord for forty-four years, who writes this, says to you for your encouragement that He has never failed him. In the greatest difficulties, in the heaviest trials, in the deepest poverty and necessities, He has never failed me; but because I was enabled by His grace to trust Him He has always appeared for my help. I delight in speaking well of His name.

George Mueller

[lee_merrill]

"Bring them here to me," he said. (Mat 14:18 NIV)

"In all that is in our hands, we must bring them to the Son of God. If we would feed others, our gifts must first be blessed and broken by the Lord. In all our trials and discouragements, they only bear fruit when tended by him. If our joys are not to vanish like the morning mist, they must be joys shared with God."

"There is no other place for all that concerns us, but in the hands of the Savior."

(a quote I just made up to sound like C.H. Mackintosh or E.B. Pusey )

[lee_merrill]

Heed not distressing thoughts, when they rise ever so strongly in you; nay, though they have entered you, fear them not, but be still a while, not believing in the power which you feel they have over you, and it will fall on a sudden.

Isaac Penington

[lee_merrill]

From an inward purifying and steadfast abiding under it, springs a lively operative desire for the good of others.

- John Woolman's Journal

"Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart." (1Pe 1:22 NIV)

[lee_merrill]

And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows. - Exodus 3:7

Thou knowest, Lord, the weariness and sorrow
Of the sad heart that comes to Thee for rest;
Cares of today, and burdens for tomorrow,
Blessings implored, and sins to be confessed;
I come before Thee at Thy gracious word,
And lay them at Thy feet--Thou knowest, Lord.

JANE BORTHWICK

That sorrow which can be seen is the lightest form really, however apparently heavy; then there is that which is not seen, secret sorrows which yet can be put into words, and can be told to near friends as well as be poured out to God; but there are sorrows beyond these, such as are never told, and cannot be put into words, and may only be wordlessly laid before God: these are the deepest. Now comes the supply for each: "I have seen" that which is patent and external; "I have heard their cry," which is the expression of this, and of as much of the external as is expressible; but this would not go deep enough, so God adds, "I know their sorrows," down to very depths of all, those which no eye sees or ear ever heard.

F. R. HAVERGAL

(from Joy and Strength, by Mary Wilder Tileston)