This Sunday’s readings: John 17:6-19

Reflections

Love calls you to be silent when you want to speak, and to speak when you would like to be silent. Love calls you to act when you would really like to wait, and to wait when you would really like to act. Love calls you to stop when you really want to continue and it calls you to continue when you feel like stopping. Love requires you to lead when you really would like to follow, and to follow when you really want to lead. Love again and again calls you away from your instincts and your comfort. Love always requires personal sacrifice. Love calls you to give up your life.
~ Paul David Tripp (1950-present), American pastor, author and speaker

The strewn and tangled wreckage that litters our lives is the precious raw material from which great beginnings are forged.
~ Craig D. Lounsbrough, Counselor/Author

The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.
~ Elisabeth Elliot (1926-2015), author, speaker, missionary

“But how?” my students ask. “How do you actually do it?”
You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on the computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind—a scene, a locale, a character, whatever—and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind.”
~ Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

What Paul understands by sanctification (is) the learning in the present of the habits which anticipate the ultimate future.
~ N.T. Wright, Former Bishop of Durham