Against Nothingness

IF you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sine...

"I could never mix in the common murmur of that rising generation against monogamy, because no restriction on sex seemed as odd and unexpected as sex itself. To be allowed, like Endymion, to make love to the moon and then to complain that Jupiter kept his own moons in a harem seemed to me (bred on fairy tales like Endymion's) a vulgar anti-climax. Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one woman. To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once. It was incommensurate with the terrible excitement of which one was talking. It showed, not an exaggerated sensibility to sex, but a curious insensibility to it. A man is a fool who complains that he cannot enter Eden by five gates at once. Polygamy is a lack of the realization of sex; it is like a man plucking five pears in mere absence of mind. The aesthetes touched the last insane limits of language in their eulogy on lovely things. The thistle...

"Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetites of man. He was always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost his chief pleasures; for the chief pleasure is surprise. Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small. Even the haughty visions, the tall cities, and the toppling pinnacles are the creations of humility. Giants that tread down forests like grass are the creations of humility. Towers that vanish upwards above the loneliest start the creations of humility. For towers are not tall unless we look up at them; and giants are not giants unless they are larger than we. All this gigantesque imagination, which is, perhaps, the mightiest of the pleasures of man, is at bottom entirely humble. It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything - even pride.  But wha...

The Lesson of the Moth I was talking to a moth the other evening he was trying to break into an electric light bulb and fry himself on the wires why do you fellows pull this stunt I asked him because it is the conventional thing for moths or why if that had been an uncovered candle instead of an electric light bulb you would now be a small unsightly cinder have you no sense plenty of it he answered but at times we get tired of using it we get bored with the routine and crave beauty  and excitement fire is beautiful and we know that if we get too close it will kill us  but what does that matter it is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while  so we wad all our life up into one little roll and then we shoot the roll that is what life is for it is better to be a part of beauty for one instant and then cease to exist than to e...

Chapter 5 of "Prayer in Practice," which is entitled 'Feelings in Prayer,' is perhaps the best piece of writing on the subject of emotions in the Christian life that I have read. Tugwell begins by noting just how unreliable feelings are: "I may feel inspired without being inspired; I may feel marvelous... but that may be caused simply by a good dinner and an insensitive conscience. Conversely, I may feel awful, but 'if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart." He points out that in our era of "romantic fundamentalism of experience, which will believe only what I can feel on my pulse" that we must realize that we can be seriously deceived about our own experience. Yet, we cannot fall into unending doubt and so we begin by realizing feelings are not infallible and then getting to know ourselves, our feelings, and the ways in which our feelings may 'misfire', well enough that we can discern when to trust. Tugwell lists...

Speaking on meditative, repetitive, prayer: "Of course, it is unlikely that we shall actually find ourselves totally devoid of thoughts! But in this kind of prayer the thoughts simply do not matter. Ignore them, and just get on with saying the prayer. Let them chatter away, accept them in the same way that you can accept any other kind of disturbance, without anxiety, without trying to suppress it, without even latching on to the desire to suppress it or even to the thought 'I am being disturbed'. Just let it be. As likely as not, without any deliberate intention on your part, you will actually find yourself chasing the first thought with a second one, such as 'I must stop this - I'm not supposed to be thinking.' That easily leads to an infinite regression, one thought trying to catch another. there is no need to take any notice of any of them! Thoughts are a bit like spoilt children trying to attract attention to themselves. If you ignore them, refusing to b...

"Our No. 1 'job' in discipleship and ministry is to so live in Christ that we live and serve out of the fullness of Christ. Our No. 2 'job' is to do everything we can to make No. 1 possible. Our No. 3 'job' is not to do the things which hold us back from No. 2 and No. 1." - Darrell Johnson, Speaking at the 2012 Regent Pastors Conference 'Overflow' Response: This weeks pastors conference has been good in many ways. Above all, I have been reminded of the true nature of my position as pastor and the priorities which come with it. If this is not number one in my life and conduct then all else will fall apart. 

"I try to remember that words do not matter to God as much as many of us suppose. They carry less weight than we think.  Our culture seems infatuated by words. By the millions they stream from our radios, televisions, newspapers, internet sites, and yes, books. Drive through any metropolitan area, with its billboards, neon ads, and bannered signs, and you get the strange sensation of driving through a phone book or huge dictionary. Words seem essential. But much that is profound can happen in their absence.  ... Rather than defining prayer as something solely expressed in words, I see it more fundamentally as being present to God. Sometimes words are eminently appropriate. Sometimes they get in the way. Often they simply don't matter. The important thing is to stand before God without our constant chatter, ready to be in heartfelt relationship with him. Where our whole selves are engaged in relationship with God, there prayer will be, even if words are not used." ...

"Both our transformation and the imputation of Christ's righteousness depend on union with Christ. And so does forgiveness, the fact that God doesn't count our sins against us. Because we are one, Christ's life is our life. Because we are one, Christ's qualities are our qualities. Because we are one, we have died in Christ's death, and our sins are no loner ours but are 'swallowed up' by Christ. ... God gives, faith receives. And because God gives even before the hands of faith open to receive, faith never goes away empty-handed. To have faith is to have christ and, with Christ, a new life and forgiveness of sins." - Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge . 151, 153

"Those who follow Christ grieve more over the sin of their offenders than over the loss or offense to themselves. And they do this that they may recall those offenders from their sin rather than avenge the wrongs they themselves have suffered. Therefore they put off the form of their own righteousness and put on the form of those others, praying for their persecutors, blessing those who curse, doing good to the evil-doers, preparing to pay the penalty and make satisfaction for their very enemies that they may be saved. This is the gospel and the example of Christ." - Martin Luther (Quoted by Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, pg. 161-162)

"...it seems to me quite disastrous that the idea should have got about that Christianity is an otherworldly, unreal, idealistic kind of religion that suggests that if we are good we shall be happy - or if not, it will all be made up to us in the next existence. On the contrary, it is fiercely and even harshly realistic, insisting that the kingdom of heaven can never be attained in this world except by unceasing toil and struggle and vigilance: that, in fact, we cannot be good and cannot be happy, but that there are certain eternal achievements that make even happiness look like trash. It has been said, I think by Berdyaev, that nothing can prevent the human soul from preferring creativeness to happiness. In this lies man's substantial likeness to the Divine Christ, who in this world suffers and creates continually, being incarnate..." - Dorothy Sayers, Letters to a Diminished Church. "Creed or Chaos?" I strongly agree with all of this bar one point. Perha...

"Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning. Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow                                         For Thine is the Kingdom Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow                                                     Life is very long Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow                                         For Thine is the Kingdom For Thine is Life i...

"As God lives in his own will, and we live in him, so has he given to us power to will in ourselves. How much better should we not fare if, finding that we are standing with our heads bowed away from the good, finding that we have no feeble inclination to seek the source of our life, we should yet will  upwards toward God, rousing that essence of life in us, which he has given us from his own heart, to call again upon him who is our Life, who can fill the emptiest heart, rouse the deadest conscience, quicken the dullest feeling, and strengthen the feeblest will! Then, if ever the time should come, as perhaps it must come to each of us, when all consciousness of well-being shall have vanished, when the earth shall be but sterile promontory, and the heavens a dull and pestilent congregation of vapors, when man nor woman shall delight us more, nay, when God himself shall be but a name, and Jesus an old story, then, even then, when a Death far worse than 'that phantom of ...

Here are few poignant words from George MacDonald: "What I want to say and show, if I may, is, that a man will please God better by believing some things that are not told him, than by confining his faith to those things that are expressly said... If he is not taught of God in that which he hopes for, God will let him know it. He will receive something else than he prays for... The danger lies not in asking from God what is not good, nor even in hoping to receive it from him, but in not asking him, in not having him of our council... But it is about hopes rather than prayers that I wish to write. What should I think of my child, if I found that he limited his faith in me and hope from me to the few promises he had heard me utter! The faith that limits itself to the promises of God, seems to me to partake of the paltry character of such a faith in my child- good enough for a Pagan, but for a Christian a miserable and wretched faith. Those who rest in such a faith would ...

"Unfortunately for the church, many men see churchgoing as womanly behavior. It's the polar opposite of the risky, dangerous image they try to project. Men don't go to church for the same reason they refuse to carry anything that resembles a purse - it's not something guys do. Imagine this scene one Wednesday night after a long, hot day on the construction site: Bill:  Hey, where you guys going after work? Dean:  I'm going out for a beer.  Jeremy:  I've got tickets to the ball game.  Bill:  How about you, Sam? Sam:  I'm going to Wednesday night church serve.  All:  [ Silence ] Men, do you feel that one in your gut? Dean and Jeremy are planning an evening of manly behavior. But Sam will be doing something  real  men don't do - going to church, and on a weeknight. This is one reason many Christian men hide their faith from other men. They're not ashamed of Christ; they're ashamed of feminization." - David Murrow. ...

     "But if God is so good as you represent him, and if he knows all that we need, and better far than we do ourselves, why should it be necessary to ask him for anything?      I answer, what if he knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God's idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need - the need of himself? What if the good of all our smaller and lower needs lies in this, that they help to drive us to God? Hunger may drive the runaway child home, and he may or may not be fed at once, but he needs his mother more than his dinner. Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need; prayer is the beginning of that communion, and some need is the motive of that prayer. Our wants are for the sake of our coming into communion with God, our eternal need... We must ask that we may receive; but that we should receive what we ask in respect of our lower needs, is not God's end in making...

"Let the preacher tell the truth. Let him make audible the silence of the news of the world with the sound turned off so that in that silence we can hear the tragic truth of the Gospel, which is that the world where God is absent is a dark and echoing emptiness; and the comic truth of the Gospel, which is that it is into the depths of his absence that God makes himself present in such unlikely ways and to such unlikely people that old Sarah and Abraham and maybe when the time comes even Pilate and Job and Lear and Henry Ward Beecher and you and I laugh till the tears run down our cheeks. And finally let him preach this overwhelming of tragedy by comedy, of darkness by light, of the ordinary by the extraordinary, as the tale that is too good not to be true because to dismiss it as untrue is to dismiss along with it that catch of the breath, that beat and lifting of the heart near to or even accompanied by tears, which I believe is the deepest intuition of truth that we have." ...

"There are all kinds of pressures on the preacher, both from within and without, to be all kinds of other things and to speak all kinds of other words. To speak the truth with love is to run the risk always of speaking only the truths that people love to hear you speak, and the preacher's temptation, among others, is to deal with those problems only to which there is, however complex and hard to arrive at, a solution. The pressure on the preacher is to be topical and contemporary, to speak out like the prophets against injustice and unrighteousness, and it is right that he should do so, crucial even, and if he does not goad to righteous action he fails both God and man. But he must remember the ones he is speaking to who beneath all the clothes they wear are the poor, bare, forked animals who labor and are heavy laden under the burden of their own lives let along of the world's tragic life.... The pressure on the preacher, of course, is to speak just the answer. The answ...

I am in the middle of Practicing Resurrection  by Peterson, and I came across this passage which I couldn't resist typing out in full and posting for your enjoyment:       "I soon found that the imagery I had grown up with to form by turns either a romantic or a crusader church had changed. Sermons from the Song of Songs or Ephesians were no longer preached to eroticize or militarize the church. Bible texts were no longer sufficient for these things. new and fresh imagery was now provided by American business. While I was growing up in my out-of-the-way small town, a new generation of pastors had re imagined the church. Tirzah and terrible-as-an-army-with-banners had been scrapped and replaced with the imagery of an ecclesiastical business with a mission to market spirituality to consumers to make them happy. Simultaneously, campaigns targeted outsiders to get them to buy whatever it was that was making us happy.      For me,...

I don't know where I heard it first, but this quote still often bounces around in my head: "Your system is perfectly tuned to produce exactly the results you are getting." Inevitably, when this quote comes up, another quickly follows:  Matthew 7:17-18 "Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit." In other words, as you look around with ever ready critique on the tip of your tongue, remember that the thing you lament is a result of a system in which you are a part.   What got me thinking about this? A third quote: "If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory.  If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves... There's so much talk about the ...