10 Thursday Oct 2019
Posted in Poetical
Rain fall,
come pattering upon the panes
with your memory of sorrows
–there is ever tomorrow.
O dreary day,
yours is the moment;
paint it gray and grumble
over souls you humble.
Heaven sees,
and God is kind;
clearer come the dawning skies
and mercy with sunrise.
09 Wednesday Oct 2019
Posted in Uncategorized
“But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and abounding in love and faithfulness” (Psalm 86:15, NIV).
Our greatest comfort is the character of God. We stray so easily from Him; if He were not gracious, we would have no hope. But we can always come back to Him, with every need, because He is full of compassion and mercy.
Who do we envision when we pray? Is it the God who abounds in love and faithfulness, who is slow to anger and ready to give mercy?
Our faith must be stronger than our fear.
08 Tuesday Oct 2019
Posted in Quotes
Tags
God, God's Will, Life, Peace, Righteousness, Truth
“Most gracious God, to know and love whose will is righteousness, enlighten our souls with the brightness of Thy presence, that we may both know Thy will, and be enabled to perform it–Amen.”
-Roman Breviary, quoted in Great Souls at Prayer, 346.
02 Wednesday Oct 2019
Posted in Musings
Tags
Weather.com has solemnly promised me that today is the last burning hot day for the foreseeable future (the foreseeable future is ten days). I do hope that this is so. Autumn is officially here, and its about time the weather got with the program.
The main thing wrong with hot weather is that it makes it more difficult to enjoy hot tea; and without hot tea, what separates us from the barbarians?
01 Tuesday Oct 2019
Posted in Musings
Tags
1 Peter, Celebrities, Eternity, God, Gospel, Jesus Christ, Life, Truth
The Christian Post had a little piece about actor Brad Pitt no longer ‘identifying’ as an atheist, which contained a couple of interesting lines.
Towards the beginning, Pitt reflects on his prior claims to atheism, saying, “I called myself an atheist for awhile, just kind of being rebellious.”
Well, yeah. I mean, that’s the heart of the matter, isn’t it? Atheism is the staunchest sort of rebellion, the aggressive denial that there is no God: no one made us, we aren’t here for anything, we’re not going anywhere, and the only laws that mean anything are the laws of nature–all the rest we just made up.
After a little bit, the article refers back to an earlier interview from 2009, apparently during Pitt’s atheist-agnostic phase, where he said, “I don’t think anyone really knows. You’ll either find out or not when you get there, until then there’s no point thinking about it.”
Au contraire.
That kind of logic only applies if the issue is already decided in favor of atheism. If there is no God, then there is, indeed, no point in thinking about it. There’s no point in anything, and thinking about God would be one of the things in which there is no point. There’s also no point in being kind or helping others; everything on our planet will die with the sun (if not sooner), and if by some unlikely chance humanity has developed sufficiently to escape that fate, ultimate dissolution still follows eventually.
But…
If there is a God, then there is a future, an eternity, worth thinking about. If there is a God, there may well be a point in doing and thinking a whole lot of things. Kindness may actually count. If there is a God, then we ought to think about sin and righteousness and judgment. If there is a God, we just might need Him to save us.
The Christian faith is profoundly transcendent. This life isn’t everything, so it means something. The gospel message matters, and so we proclaim it even to people who must face death–because death is not the end. “For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to human standards in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit” (1 Pet. 4:6, NIV). From an atheist perspective, true Christianity looks like a bad deal: you give up a lot of what you might have squeezed out of this life. But from the perspective of eternity, it means true life, spiritual life by the power of the Holy Spirit, and resurrected life when Christ returns.
God sent His Son to bear our sins upon the cross, and rise so that by faith in Him we may be forgiven and receive eternal life.
It bears thinking about.
30 Monday Sep 2019
Posted in Meditations
Tags
“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6, NIV).
Wonderful is the mystery of divine illumination, the light of God sent unto our minds and hearts. Without His light we remain in darkness. In sin, we have a terrible capacity to suppress the truth, to turn away from the light and cling to the darkness. Yet God has given us light; He sent His Son into our darkness–Jesus Christ, the light of the world. Whoever receives Him receives light, and beholds a taste of the glory of God.
God is able to make light shine in the darkness. He is able to illumine shadowed hearts, to drive ignorance from darkened minds, and to instill the grace of understanding, the grace of faith in the light of the Son.
Lord, give us light ever brighter, ever new, that we may behold your glory.
26 Thursday Sep 2019
Posted in Poetical
Here’s three cheers for the Welsh Brew Tea,
who, summoned under a Summer sun
fulfills his oath faithfully,
putting to rout tension.
Faithful, vigilant, Welsh Brew Tea,
Receive my encomium to thee!
Here’s three cheers for the Welsh Brew Tea,
who comes in Autumn no laggard,
but stalwart in his steaming station
leaves my brow less haggard.
Faithful, vigilant, Welsh Brew Tea,
Receive my encomium to thee!
Here’s three cheers for the Welsh Brew Tea,
who, welcomed on a Winter’s day,
slackens not in his sworn duty
to chase the chill away.
Faithful, vigilant, Welsh Brew Tea,
Receive my encomium to thee!
Here’s three cheers for the Welsh Brew Tea,
who sprightly springs at Spring tea-time
to invigorate the languid day
with essences sublime.
Faithful, vigilant, Welsh Brew Tea,
Receive my encomium to thee!
25 Wednesday Sep 2019
Posted in Contra Mundum, Musings
I saw a clip of that poor girl at the United Nations. She said something very true at the beginning: she should have been in school. The fact that adults have done a singularly bad job at addressing pollution is not a good reason to be putting children in the spotlight as activists.
Children are to be taught, nurtured, loved, protected. They are not to be killed in abortion clinics, mutilated as experiments in a social agenda, or sent out as soldiers in a culture war.
I do not mean that children shouldn’t learn about civic responsibility and social work. By all means, take them with you to serve at the local food shelf. Let them march beside you–let them learn under your wing. But don’t hold them up with a microphone to spurt angry recriminations at their elders–even if those elders are guilty. I don’t think it helps your cause; more importantly, I don’t think it does their souls any good.
We have developed an activist culture that thrives on outrage, substitutes sloganeering for critical thought, and is riddled with a self-aggrandizement. I would like for future generations to be wiser, kinder, more generous, and more socially conscious than generations before; I would like for them to step forward boldly and repair the damage that others who came before them have done.
But I do not think it is likely, not if we continue on this present course. Sending children out to be young crusaders is no way to teach them how to be good men and women. Our grandparents knew more about community, charity, generosity, and honor than we do. If we teach our children to scorn the past, we will not prepare them to make a better future.
I do not blame the young activists. They are teenagers, moved by that glorious youthful drive to take the world by the horns; it is a beautiful thing. I do blame the parents, who have not the wisdom to protect their children and guide them into adulthood.
She should have been in school.
24 Tuesday Sep 2019
Posted in Meditations, Musings
Tags
Christianity, Depression, Faith, Father, God, Hope, Life, Media
It is easy to become overwhelmed by the tragedy of life. Every day the news tells us about losses, griefs, horrors and inhumanities. We have each our pains, and if our hearts are not hardened we have others’ pains to bear as well. How can we face this world of sadness and separation?
We need a Father who can make everything all right. Those who have had good fathers know something of this: he seems able to do anything and knows everything, he can pick you up and make you feel safe, he’s your protector and provider. Those who have tried to be good fathers know that this is what you give to your children: you make for them a world within the world, a world of love and safety and joy, a world where they are protected and provided for and loved.
But we outgrow our fathers, even the best of fathers. We discover the world outside the world they made for us, and we make our way in that world and come to know its darkness and danger and despair. We come to see that our fathers were pointing us towards someone bigger than themselves, that fatherhood is a picture of the ultimate human need, natural for creatures and tragic because of sin.
We need a King who can put things right. We need a Savior who can forgive us. We need a Father, who can enfold us in His embrace and wipe the tears from our eyes, who can make things okay.
We need God.
And God has reached down to us. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (Jn. 3:16, NIV).
There is a King; He has come, and He is coming again. His kingdom is among us, and it will be complete. He is going to fix things. “‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev. 21:4).
There is a Father for us.
23 Monday Sep 2019
Posted in Poetical
