Classic & Contemporary Excerpts from January 15, 1988

Psalm Of A Gardener

Lord of the compost heap

you take garbage

and turn it into

soil good soil

for seeds to root

and grow

with wildest increase

flowers to bloom

with brilliant beauty.

Take all the garbage

of my life

Lord of the compost heap

turn it into

soil good soil

and then plant seeds

to bring forth

fruit and beauty

in profusion.

—Joseph Bayly in Psalms of My Life; calligraphy by Tim Botts

Actions still speak loudest

Here is a little rule I have come to believe: the more dramatic and pious we become about our faith, the more likely it is that we are trying to please the gods of this earth—sometimes disguised in religious robes—rather than the one true and holy God. Jesus couldn’t stomach publicly sanctimonious displays of religiosity. He preferred those whose actions spoke for their faith. That is a thought that should scare us all into judgment.

I have long believed that our checkbook will say more about our true commitment than all the pious words we utter.

—G. Timothy Johnson in The Covenant Companion (Oct. 1987)

Greater love …

Do not be too quick to assume that your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy.

Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you were capable of loving him he would no longer be your enemy.

Do not be too quick to assume that your enemy is an enemy of God just because he is your enemy.

Perhaps he is your enemy precisely because he can find nothing in you that gives glory to God. Perhaps he fears you because he can find nothing in you of God’s love and God’s kindness and God’s patience and mercy and understanding of the weakness of men.

Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God.

For it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice and mediocrity and materialism and sensuality and selfishness that have killed his faith.

—Thomas Merton in Seeds of Contemplation

Confidence game

When we look back on what the masters of the spiritual life have written and said, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that we have been the victim of a confidence trick in our century. Over the past few decades, the evangelical church has been gripped by a series of issues and concerns that have primarily been marginal, or at best of secondary importance. Conferences, seminars, and books on a whole series of “vital concerns” have dominated center stage and determined the agenda in many churches and for many individual Christians. But strikingly absent has been concentration on God Himself. Indeed, on the rare occasions when this absence has not been the case, we have sat up to take notice as though something out of the ordinary were being said!

—Sinclair B. Ferguson in A Heart for God