Quote of the day

[Kelp]

Why is that important? I can't figure it out.


I like this but I can never find the source of it:

The glibness with which some men still trace what they are pleased to call the hand of God in history is enough to make unregenerate historians sneer, and to shock those of us whose religion teaches them that the ways of God are past finding out, and that you cannot draw morals from the fall of towers in Siloam or from the success or failure of pious rebels in Galilee.

[lee_merrill]

A traveler in a wood espied
A way he discerned to be the way of truth.
Seeing it was thickly overgrown with weeds,
Remarked, "Ha! I see no one has been this way
In many a year."

On closer inspection, he perceived that each blade
Was a singular sword.

"Well", said the traveler at length--
"Doubtless there are other ways."

(Read this long ago, and am quoting from memory)

Blessings,
Lee

[Kelp]

"Miracles are not impossible from a logical standpoint, and right reason does not deny them. Natural laws do not have the claim to be the only ones, nor are they threatened with being overturned by the appearance of other laws, supernatural ones... Miracles are consequence of the Creator's love for His creatures." -St Nektarios of Aegina

[lee_merrill]

When we suffer or see people suffering, a cry from the depth of our being come up: "Where is God?" Especially when suffering lasts for years and years, then our morale deteriorates and our situation becomes frustrating. We begin to question even the essential attributes of God: His love, wisdom and faithfulness. I am sure many people, even Christians, are shaken by these doubts when their prayers have gone unanswered for years.

How can our faith be sustained in such circumstances? Our faith will be as deep as the cross is in our belief. People tend to look to heaven in the midst of their suffering and say, Where are you God? They feel that God is on His Throne up there in heaven, far away and uncaring. Those who have the cross as the centre of their theology will not look up to a distant heaven as if to get help for their suffering, but will look to the crucified Jesus down here on Golgotha, and from His suffering, their hearts find healing in the midst of their suffering. (Ghassan Khalaf, pastor in Lebanon, "Bound to be Free")

[Kelp]

We must die
before we die
so that we don't die
when we die
--Ancient saying of Eastern Orthodox monks

[lee_merrill]

That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.
EPHESIANS 3:17

Christ in you, the hope of glory.
COLOSSIANS 1:27


Enter my opening heart;
Fill in with love and peace and light from heaven;
Give me Thyself--for all in Thee is given;
Come--never to depart.
THOMAS WILLIAM WEBB


Wherever thou goest, whatever thou dost at home, or abroad, in the field, or at church, do all in a desire of union with Christ, in imitation of His tempers and inclinations, and look upon all as nothing, but that which exercises, and increases the spirit and life of Christ in thy soul. From morning to night keep Jesus in thy heart, long for nothing, desire nothing, hope for nothing but to have all that is within thee changed into the spirit and temper of the holy Jesus. This new birth in Christ, thus firmly believed and continually desired, will do everything that thou wantest to have done in thee, it will dry up all the springs of vice, stop all the workings of evil in thy nature, it will bring all that is good into thee, it will open all the gospel within thee, and thou wilt know what it is to be taught of God.
WILLIAM LAW

(from Joy and Strength, by Mary Wilder Tileston)

God bless you,
Lee

[Teluog]

"The Bible isn’t mainly about you and what you should be doing. It’s about God and what he has done." Sally Lloyd-Jones

[Kelp]

I am not ashamed to confess publicly that next to theology there is no art which is the equal of music, for she alone, after theology, can do what otherwise only theology can accomplish, namely, quiet and cheer up the soul of man, which is clear evidence that the devil, the originator of depressing worries and troubled thoughts, flees from the voice of music just as he flees from the words of theology. For this very reason the prophets cultivated no art so much as music in that they attached their theology not to geometry, nor to arithmetic, nor to astronomy, but to music, speaking the truth through psalms and hymns.---Martin Luther

[lee_merrill]

"Vae Victis! Down, down, down with the defeated! Victory is the only ultimate fact. Carthage was destroyed, the Red Indians are being exterminated: that is the single certainty. In an hour from now that sun will still be shining and that grass growing, and one of you will be conquered; one of you will be the conqueror. When it has been done, nothing will alter it. Heroes, I give you the hospitality fit for heroes. And I salute the survivor. Fall on!"

The two men took their swords. Then MacIan said steadily: "Mr. Turnbull, lend me your sword a moment."

Turnbull, with a questioning glance, handed him the weapon. MacIan took the second sword in his left hand and, with a violent gesture, hurled it at the feet of little Mr. Wimpey.

"Fight!" he said in a loud, harsh voice. "Fight me now!"

Wimpey took a step backward, and bewildered words bubbled on his lips.

"Pick up that sword and fight me," repeated MacIan, with brows as black as thunder.

The little man turned to Turnbull with a gesture, demanding judgement or protection.

"Really, sir," he began, "this gentleman confuses..."

"You stinking little coward," roared Turnbull, suddenly releasing his wrath. "Fight, if you're so fond of fighting! Fight, if you're so fond of all that filthy philosophy! If winning is everything, go in and win! If the weak must go to the wall, go to the wall! Fight, you rat! Fight, or if you won't fight—run!"

And he ran at Wimpey, with blazing eyes.

Wimpey staggered back a few paces like a man struggling with his own limbs. Then he felt the furious Scotchman coming at him like an express train, doubling his size every second, with eyes as big as windows and a sword as bright as the sun. Something broke inside him, and he found himself running away, tumbling over his own feet in terror, and crying out as he ran.

"Chase him!" shouted Turnbull as MacIan snatched up the sword and joined in the scamper. "Chase him over a county! Chase him into the sea! Shoo! Shoo! Shoo!"

The little man plunged like a rabbit among the tall flowers, the two duellists after him. Turnbull kept at his tail with savage ecstasy, still shooing him like a cat. But MacIan, as he ran past the South Sea idol, paused an instant to spring upon its pedestal. For five seconds he strained against the inert mass. Then it stirred; and he sent it over with a great crash among the flowers, that engulfed it altogether. Then he went bounding after the runaway.

In the energy of his alarm the ex-Fellow of Magdalen managed to leap the paling of his garden. The two pursuers went over it after him like flying birds. He fled frantically down a long lane with his two terrors on his trail till he came to a gap in the hedge and went across a steep meadow like the wind. The two Scotchmen, as they ran, kept up a cheery bellowing and waved their swords. Up three slanting meadows, down four slanting meadows on the other side, across another road, across a heath of snapping bracken, through a wood, across another road, and to the brink of a big pool, they pursued the flying philosopher. But when he came to the pool his pace was so precipitate that he could not stop it, and with a kind of lurching stagger, he fell splash into the greasy water. Getting dripping to his feet, with the water up to his knees, the worshipper of force and victory waded disconsolately to the other side and drew himself on to the bank. And Turnbull sat down on the grass and went off into reverberations of laughter. A second afterwards the most extraordinary grimaces were seen to distort the stiff face of MacIan, and unholy sounds came from within. He had never practised laughing, and it hurt him very much.

(The Ball and the Cross, by G.K. Chesterton)

[Kelp]

Even if we have thousands of acts of great virtue to our credit, our confidence in being heard must be based on God's mercy and His love for men. Even if we stand at the very summit of virtue, it is by mercy that we shall be saved. --St. John Chrysostom

[lee_merrill]

"To each of us there is something which seems simply impossible to get on top of. I know my special foe and all this week I have had to live looking off to Jesus."

- Amy Carmichael

[lee_merrill]

"The grace of God filling the heart with Christ, alone enables us to give up self, and its idols. The more filled we are with him, and his grace and truth, the more readily we can yield up all that his eye condemns."

"For it is only as we are led by the God of all grace that we can really go down, really be nothing, or really admit all his rebukes, and the hollowness of all not given by his grace. Christ enters, and all that cannot live in his company goes out."

"Slowly it may be—unwilling to yield possession—but the inflowing of the blessing through the knowledge and power of Christ, must cleanse the heart, while filling it."

"This indeed is a process, not a thing done at once, once for all. There is conflict. There are sad advantages often gained by the enemy. But just as Christ enters and abides—dwelling in the heart by faith—so are the many suggestions of the enemy driven outside, and kept outside."

(Anonymous)

[Teluog]

"D'oh!"

Homer Simpson

[lee_merrill]

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.

He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity...

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Blessings,
Lee

[Teluog]

A dialogue between an alien and a human on human logic:

man: You don't really understand. You see, all we were trying to do was to make life simpler and more pleasant for everybody.
alien: Simpler? More pleasant?
man: You know--free people from the back-breaking, dawn-till-dusk drudgery that was their lives, provide them with a few more luxuries and a few less sicknesses--give 'em a chance to--
alien: Rise?
man: Yeah, rise, that's it--rise above what they'd always been, what their fathers had been, what they themselves would continue to be without opportunities to change.
alien: Hmm, a noble goal.
man: You bet it was. That's why we invented technology and built great industries--to free man of the time-consuming toil that he was slave to, to allow him the time he needed to develop other interests, more noble ones, like you say.
alien: So he could fulfill himself, I suppose.
man: Right!
alien: And has he--fulfilled himself?
man: Well, some have and some have not.
alien: But surely you're free of the demands of survival.
man: In a way, yes--
alien: Then you're free to fulfill yourself.
man: Like I say it just ain't that simple. Just staying alive today, well, that's no mean task, let me tell you. A lot of people have to work a couple of jobs just to make ends meet--mothers as well as fathers. And when all the work is done and the bills are paid, well, a guy's just plumb worn out and too poor to do what he really wants to.
alien: And what's that?
man: Gee, I don't know.
alien: You don't know?
man: Well, like I say, I haven't given that too much thought--haven't had time to. What with everything else, a guy just can't sit around and philosophize, for cryin' out loud! I mean the rest of the world would just pass him by, wouldn't it?
alien: Would that be so terrible?
man: Terrible? Are you kiddin'? Where're your heads at anyway?
alien: On my shoulder, I presume, where they've always been.
man: Yeah, well let me ask you somethin'. If a guy don't look after number one, then who will? Huh? Answer me that one.
alien: So, you're actually back to where you began--trying to survive.
man: Trying to survive? That ain't the half of it. Today a guy could kill himself trying to survive and still not make it!

From the introduction of Vincent E. Barry's Practical Logic, 1976.