Reflections

Man makes his plans (selah) and God laughs.
~ Yiddish Proverb

The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
~ Rumi, 13th century Persian poet

Paul paid dearly for his loyalty to the freeness and universality of the gospel.
~ John Stott (1921-2011), British theologian and pastor

…as concerning faith, we ought to be invincible, and more hard, if it might be, than a stone; but as touching charity, we ought to be soft, and more flexible than the reed or leaf that is shaken with the wind, and ready to yield to everything.
~ Martin Luther (1483-1546)

This horror of pain is a rather low instinct and…if I think of human beings I’ve known and of my own life, such as it is, I can’t recall any case of pain which didn’t, on the whole, enrich life. … I can say that I never knew what joy was like until I gave up pursuing happiness, or cared to live until I chose to die. For these two discoveries I am beholden to Jesus.
~ Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990), English journalist

The Church is the Lord’s bride whom He so loves that in her no spot or wrinkle is endurable. For the truth which this analogy serves to emphasize is that Love, in its own nature, demands the perfecting of the beloved; that the mere ‘kindness’ which tolerates anything except suffering in its object is, in that respect, at the opposite pole from Love…You asked for a loving God: you have one…not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way…not the care of a host who feels responsible for his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist’s love for his work and despotic as a man’s love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father’s love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes.
~ C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Suffering, then, is a badge of true discipleship.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

This Sunday’s readings: Acts 27:13-38