Meditations of the day

[FineLinen]

The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love", and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. "Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest "well pleased". ~ C.S. Lewis

 

[FineLinen]

"The foundation of discipleship is not in your decision to follow Jesus but in His you did not choose Me." ~FineLinen

hymeis eklegomai ou eklegomai με

"Our Lord's conception of discipleship is not that we work for God, but that God works through us." ~Oswald Chambers

 

[FineLinen]

“Nothing teaches us about the preciousness of the Creator as much as when we learn the emptiness of everything else.” ~Charles Spurgeon

“Jesus calls us to his rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort.” ~ A. W. Tozer

 

[FineLinen]

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.“ ~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

 

[FineLinen]

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” ~ C.S. Lewis

 

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"Grace cannot prevail until our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and collapsed." ~Robert F. Capon

 

[FineLinen]

"Whenever I find a spark of that hidden fire that will sooner or later consume the old and create the new, I am drawn to it with love and hope, regarding it as a sign of my future home." ~Friedrich Schleiermacher

 

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“The radical significance of Christ's substitutionary Priesthood does not lie in the fact that His perfect Self-offering perfects and completes our imperfect offerings, but that these are displaced by His completed Self-offering. We can only offer what has already been offered on our behalf, and offer it by the only mode appropriate to such a substitutionary offering, by prayer, thanksgiving, and praise.” ~T.F. Torrance

 

[FineLinen]

"The gospel of a God found in broken flesh, humility, and measureless charity has defeated all the old lies, rendered the ancient order visibly insufficient and even slightly absurd, and instilled in us a longing for transcendent love so deep that-if once yielded to-it will never grant us rest anywhere but in Christ." ~David Bentley Hart

 

[FineLinen]

Today's word is not Hebrew or Greek, it's Inuit!

The word is issumagijoujunnainermik.

When missionaries first shared the gospel with the Inuit tribes in Alaska, they couldn't find any word in the Inuit language for forgiveness. So, they took a number of Inuit words and joined them to form a new word -- Issu-magi-jou-jun-nai-ner-mik -- and it became the Inuit word for forgiveness.

The individual words are "Not-being-able-to-think-about-it-anymore."

 

[FineLinen]

"Virtue is only a conflict by which we get the mastery of our failings; that, by which every man proves his peculiar power of understanding the will and spirit of God, is only a silent working of the inner man." ~Friedrich Schleiermacher

 

[FineLinen]

“God draws near to us in such a way as to draw us near to himself within the circle of His knowing of himself.” ~ Thomas F. Torrance

 

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“Faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God. To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love.” ~A.W. Tozer

 

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"God is extraordinary. He transforms common bushes into fire that are not consumed. However, only those who pause to worship Him with their shoes off, see." ~D.E. Johnson

 

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“If hell were put into His cup; He seized it, and in one tremendous draught of love, He drank damnation dry.” ~ Charles Spurgeon

"I think it well to turn a little to one side that I may ask to observe adoringly the fountain-head of our salvation, which is the grace of God. Because God is gracious, therefore sinful men are forgiven, converted, purified, and saved. It is not because of anything in them, or that ever can be in them, that they are saved; but because of the boundless love, goodness, pity, compassion, mercy, and grace of God. Tarry a moment, then, at the well-head. Behold the pure river of water of life, as it proceeds out of the throne of God and of the Lamb! ~ Charles Spurgeon

 

[FineLinen]

“Hope knows that if great trials are avoided great deeds remain undone and the possibility of growth into greatness of soul is aborted.” ~ Brennan Manning

 

[FineLinen]

The lotus

To blossom, the lotus flower must grow through mud and dirty pond water. But it blooms anyway.

Though conditions are tough, the lotus heeds the call of the sun each morning, breaks the surface of the water and blooms untouched by the mud; each petal remains clean and pure. Closing at night, it sinks below the water’s surface, only to resurface again in the morning.

 

[FineLinen]

“Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.” ~N.T. Wright

 

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"To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible." ~Thomas Aquinas

 

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“Every reason for someone’s boasting in themselves dwindles into insignificance before God.” ~ François Du Toit

“Father paid a non-negotiable price to redeem his own. He bought the whole field because only he knew the treasure it holds. Jer. 1:5, 2 Cor. 4:7 and Matt. 13:44.” ~François Du Toit