Quotes Dec 8

An older Christian in my life had more peace than me about a hard situation today.
I said, “You have more faith than me.”
He responded, “No, I have more experience with a faithful God.” - howertonjosh@howertonjosh

“My life is dominated by the notion of God...I am a believer – in both God’s presence and His absence...In the end, with all respect, I haven’t the stomach for atheism...It feels like a dead end to me, unhelpful and bad for the business of writing.”
- Nick Cave on God.

When I behold Thy works on high,
The moon that rules the night,
And stars that well adorn the sky,
Those glorious worlds of light;
Lord, what is man, or all his race,
Who dwells so far below,
That Thou shouldst visit him with grace,
And love his nature so? -
Isaac Watts@Wondrous_Cross

The only person whose opinion counts, the creator God of the universe, looks at me and he finds me more valuable than all the jewels in the earth. How can we worry about being snubbed now? How can we care that much about what we look like in the mirror? -Timothy Keller@timkellernyc

“There is but one just use of power, and it is to serve people. Help us to remember it, Lord. Amen.” ~ George H.W. Bush

Quotes Dec 7

“There are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty. These fears, I need hardly say, are completely unjustified.” Edward Heath, prime ministerial TV broadcast, January 1973.

I learned ... that one can never go back, that one should not ever try to go back - that the essence of life is going forward. Life is really a one-way street, isn't it? Agatha Christie

To care passionately for another human creature brings always more sorrow than joy, but one would not be without that experience.   - Agatha Christie, 1890 - 1976

Most successes are unhappy. That's why they are successes - they have to reassure themselves about themselves by achieving something that the world will notice. - Agatha Christie (1890-1976)Remembered Death, 1945.

Quotes Dec 6

'What we love
is what captures us.
Whoever has our love
has the whole of us;
love causes us
to give ourselves away,
as nothing else can.
Our love is like the rudder of a ship -
where it is turned,
there the ship goes.' -John Owen

Infants do not induce, or cooperate in, their own procreation and birth; no more can those who are 'dead in trespasses and sins' prompt the quickening operation of God's Spirit within them . J I Packer

The New Testament word for repentance means changing one's mind so that one's views, values, goals, and ways are changed and one's whole life is lived differently. The change is radical, both inwardly and outwardly; mind and judgement, will and affections, behaviour and lifestyle, motives and purposes, are all involved. Repenting means starting a new life.
J. I. Packer, Concise Theology, PG. 162.

The natural response to denials of Satan's existence is to ask, Who then runs his business.-- J.I. PACKER

Quotes Dec 5

"For what accords better and more aptly with faith than to acknowledge ourselves divested of all virtue that we may be clothed by God, devoid of all goodness that we may be filled by Him, the slaves of sin that He may give us freedom, blind that He may enlighten, lame that He may cure, and feeble that He may sustain us; to strip ourselves of all grounds of glorying that He alone may shine forth glorious, and we be glorified in Him?" -- John Calvin, Letter to the King of France.

A church that does not say the historic creeds on a regular basis is like a nation that does not remember her 'War of independence' or her 'fFight for Freedom'. She has forgotten where she has come from. She has forgotten who she is. She has despised her mother. For the great historic creeds are the wisdom of her mother passed down through the centuries and across the millennia. Ignorance can be excuse to a point, but not ingratitude. Our mother Kirk has left us with a rich inheritance and we would do well to guard the good deposit with thanksgiving. -Jonathan Gibson and Mark Earngey, Worshipping in the tradition. Principles from the past for the present.  in Reformation Worship,P63

If necessary, the ministers of the word are admonished not to go too much beyond the school of their text in their preaching. Rather they should as much as possible take all their ugh teaching, admonishment,exhortaton, rebuke, and comfort from the present text . -Martin Micronius, On the preaching of the word, ch 8 in Reformation Worship,P517

Quotes Dec 4

"[Man,] In his own naturalistic theories, with the uniformity of cause and effect in a closed system, with an evolutionary concept of a mechanical, chance parade from the atom to man, man has lost his unique identity. As he looks out upon the world, as he faces the machine, he cannot tell himself from what he faces. He cannot distinguish himself from other things."~ Dr. Francis Schaeffer, Genesis in Space and Time

.. one of the essential paradoxes of Advent: that while we wait for God,we are with God all along, that while we need to be reassured of God's arrival, or the arrival of our homecoming, we are already at home. While we wait, we have to trust, to have faith, but it is God's grace that gives us that faith. As with all spiritual knowledge, two things are true, and equally true, at once. The mind can't grasp paradox; it is the knowledge of the soul.- Michelle Blake The Tentmaker, 1999, p. 153 (in Ch. 16)

A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes...and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent. -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer ,in a letter:, 1943

Advent is the time of promise; it is not yet the time of fulfilment. We are still in the midst of everything and in the logical inexorability and relentlessness of destiny. To eyes that do not see, it still seems as though the final dice are being cast down here in these valleys, on these battlefields, in these camps and prisons and bomb shelters. Those who are awake sense the working of the other powers and can await the coming of their hour.
Space is still filled with the noise of destruction and annihilation, the shouts of self-assurance and arrogance, the weeping of despair and helplessness. But round about the horizon the eternal realities stand silent in their age-old longing. There shines on them already the first mild light of the radiant fulfilment to come. From afar sound the first notes as of pipes and voices, not yet discernable as a song or melody. It is all far off still, and only just announced and foretold. But it is happening, today.- Alfred Delp, in a Nazi prison shortly before he was hanged for "treason."

Quotes Dec 3

For whomever the Lord has adopted and deemed worthy of his fellowship ought to prepare themselves for a hard , toilsome, and unquiet life, crammed with very many and various kinds of evils. It is the heavenly Father's will s to exercise them as to put his own children to a definite test. Beginning with Christ, his firstborn, he follows his plan with all his children. -Calvin Letters,I:230

God is himself a father and knows what is best for his children. - Calvin to Viret on the death of Jacques Calvin's son, Letters I:231

1 I greet thee, who my sure Redeemer art,
my only trust and Savior of my heart,
who pain didst undergo for my poor sake;
I pray thee from our hearts all cares to take.

2 Thou art the King of mercy and of grace,
reigning omnipotent in every place:
so come, O King, and our whole being sway;
shine on us with the light of thy pure day.

3 Thou art the life, by which alone we live,
and all our substance and our strength receive;
sustain us by thy faith and by thy power,
and give us strength in every trying hour.

4 Thou hast the true and perfect gentleness,
no harshness hast thou and no bitterness:
O grant to us the grace we find in thee,
that we may dwell in perfect unity.

5 Our hope is in no other save in thee;
our faith is built upon thy promise free;
Lord, give us peace, and make us calm and sure,
that in thy strength we evermore endure.
Attributed to Calvin, Sinclair B Ferguson, Some pastors and teachers, p.19

Quotes Dec 1

Muslim leaders had been tolerant and even gracious to Christians, rebuilding the church of Edessa after it was damaged by an earthquake in 679. But in the late seventh century things began to change. Peter Francopan: The silk roads P. 88

All the 101 members of the supreme military leadership, all but ten were arrested; of the 91 detained, all but nine were shot. These included three of the five marshals all the Soviet Union and two of its admirals, as well as the entire senior air force personnel, every head of every military district, and almost every divisional commander. The Red Army was brought to its knees - Peter Francopan: The silk roads P. 362 on Stalin's purges  pre-war.

Lord, I offer my heart to thee, promptly and sincerely. -Calvin's motto quoted in Sinclair B Ferguson, Some pastors and teachers, p.10

By the time he (Calvin0 WAS 26 he was a man on the run; he had become a pilgrim and would live the rest of his life as a refugee. -Sinclair B Ferguson, Some pastors and teachers, p.11