Classic & Contemporary Excerpts from April 18, 1986

No Respecter Of Committees

It’s always a constant consolation to me to realize that although God created man and woman there is no recorded testimony that he created committees. For this alone we worship him.

—John V. Chervokas, How to Keep God Alive from 9 to 5

Pain And Pleasure

Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live.

—M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Timetables And Creativity

The creative urge and inspiration cannot fit into some mechanical schedule. Creative people who do original work do not go out on strike and carry banners against themselves: “I am unfair to myself. I want shorter working hours and more pay.” I don’t care what creative, inventive, or research project anyone is in, when ideas flow and inspiration comes, there is no possibility of fitting it into a prearranged “slot.” It is like trying to pack a box or a trunk with too much, so that strings, shirttails, socks, belts, a sleeve are all trailing out from the edges of the lid while you are sitting on it trying to squash it in!

—Edith Schaeffer, Forever Music

Backing Into Trouble

Men who live in the past remind me of a toy I’m sure all of you have seen. The toy is a small wooden bird called the “Floogie Bird.” Around the Floogie Bird’s neck is a label reading, “I fly backwards. I don’t care where I’m going. I just want to see where I’ve been.”

—The Words of Harry S. Truman, selected by Robert J. Donovan

Resurrection, Not Bookkeeping

You’re worried about permissiveness—about the way the preaching of grace seems to say it’s okay to do all kinds of terrible things as long as you just walk in afterward and take the free gift of God’s forgiveness.…

While you and I may be worried about seeming to give permission, Jesus apparently wasn’t. He wasn’t afraid of giving the prodigal son a kiss instead of a lecture, a party instead of probation; and he proved that by bringing in the elder brother at the end of the story and having him raise pretty much the same objections you do. He’s angry about the party. He complains that his father is lowering standards and ignoring virtue—that music, dancing, and a fatted calf are, in effect, just so many permissions to break the law. And to that, Jesus has the father say only one thing: “Cut that out! We’re not playing good boys and bad boys any more. Your brother was dead and he’s alive again. The name of the game from now on is resurrection, not bookkeeping.”

—Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon and Three

Burned Up?

Anger is a fire; it catches, destroys, and consumes. Let us quench it by long-suffering and forbearance. For as red hot iron dipped into water loses its fire, so an angry man falling in with a patient one does no harm to the patient man, but rather benefits him and is himself more thoroughly subdued.

—Chrysostom, in Homilies on Hebrews

Heart Over Mind

I look upon myself as a dull person. I take more time than others in understanding some things. But I do not care. There is a limit to man’s progress and intelligence; but the development of the qualities of the heart knows no bounds.

—Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi

Where God Is

An atheist and a Christian were engaged in an intense public debate. On the blackboard behind the podium the atheist printed in large capital letters, “GOD IS NOWHERE.” When the Christian rose to offer his rebuttal. he rubbed out the w at the beginning of where and added that letter to the preceding word no. Then the statement read, “GOD IS NOW HERE.”

—Vernon Grounds, Radical Commitment

Learning Hard Lessons

Failures aren’t failures if you learn something from them, and anyway you have to expect some failures with any living things because life is uncertain. You can’t predict it. You can’t control it completely. You don’t know what it is going to do.

—Anne Morrow Lindbergh, War Within and Without

Saints In Shoe Leather

A gilt-edged saint is no good, he is abnormal, unfit for daily life, and altogether unlike God. We are here as men and women, not as half-fledged angels, to do the work of the world, and to do it with an infinitely greater power to stand the turmoil because we have been born from above.

—Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

The Genesis Of Ugly Behavior

Chaperons, even in their days of glory, were almost never able to enforce morality; what they did was to force immorality to be discreet. This is no small contribution. When a society abandons its ideals just because most people can’t live up to them, behavior gets very ugly indeed.

—Judith Martin, Miss Manners’ Guide to Rearing Perfect Children

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