Let the year be given to God in its every moment! The year is made up of minutes: let these be watched as having been dedicated to God! It is in the sanctification of the small that hallowing of the large is secure.
—G. Campbell Morgan, quoted in 12,000 Religious Quotations, compiled by Frank S. Mead
Divine Divination
[P]art of the equipment we need for life in a secular setting is the ability to discern spirits. It takes advanced Christian training to learn to tell the difference between, say, patriotism and chauvinism, between piety that is superficial and piety that is profound, between the mind of humanism and the mind of Christ. Trying to do this in a secular college is like trying to diet at Kentucky Fried Chicken.
—Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., in the Banner (Oct. 16, 1989)
Outside And Involved
You are the church.… I am not the church or the archdiocese of New York. I am its formal official teacher. You are the church—and thousands and hundreds of thousands like you. I want you involved. I believe that Christ wants you involved.
—John Cardinal O’Connor,
preaching at Saint Patrick’s
Cathedral in New York, quoted in
the New Yorker, (March 30, 1987)
Real Thanks-Living
If anyone would tell you the shortest, surest way to happiness and all perfection, he must tell you to make it a rule to yourself to thank and praise God for everything that happens to you. For it is certain that whatever seeming calamity happens to you, if you thank and praise God for it, you turn it into a blessing.
—William Law, quoted in My Heart Sings, compiled by Joan Winmill Brown
Too Much Adrenalin
A constant state of adrenalin arousal, although physically damaging, is often experienced as pleasant excitement and stimulation. And it is this that makes it most dangerous, because we can come to think of the arousal state as “normal” and to depend on the high it gives us to get anything accomplished.
I believe there is a corresponding spiritual danger. Becoming dependent on adrenalin arousal for the good feelings of life can create an association between spirituality and high arousal. In other words, one doesn’t feel “spiritual” unless one is being stimulated by adrenalin arousal.
Many expressions of spirituality have become linked to adrenalin arousal, and this can be very harmful. A great many of the true saints of God have found their peak spiritual experiences in quietness and solitude. But many modern “saints” look for it only in exciting challenges or emotional catharsis.
Rationalists are admirable beings. Rationalism is a hideous monster when it claims for itself omnipotence. Attribution of omnipotence to reason is as bad a piece of idolatry is as worship of stock and stone, believing it to be God.
—Mahatma Gandhi in Gandhi
Frightening Reality
We cannot expect the world to believe that the Father sent the Son, that Jesus’ claims are true, and that Christianity is true, unless the world sees some reality of oneness of true Christians. Now that is frightening. Should we not feel some emotion at this point?
—Francis Schaeffer in The Church Before the Watching World
Beware Ambition
They that soar too high often fall hard; which makes a low and level dwelling preferable. The tallest trees are most in the power of the winds, and ambitious men of the blasts of fortune.
—William Penn in Some Fruits of Solitude
Reality, not perfection
The search for the perfect church is an illusion. Appetite by itself is the sepulcher, the death of reason, judgment, and discipline.
Some form of satisfaction doesn’t even stand a chance unless one settles down at a place and serves. The church is a feast, not a taste, a meal, not a nibble. One sits and serves with the same people week after week, receiving and being received, disappointing and being disappointed, hurting and being hurt, caring and being cared for. Church people are in it for the long haul, not the short term. The ordinary is more crucial than the extraordinary. The glory of church is the routine, not the exceptional.
—C. John Weborg in the Covenant Companion (Nov. 1989)
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