This Sunday’s readings: James 1:27-2:7
Reflections
Just as our love for God begins with listening to God’s Word, the beginning of love for other Christians is learning to listen to them.
~ Dietrich Bonhöffer
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
~ Charles H. Spurgeon, 19th Century Baptist Preacher
We sometimes find God’s forgiveness to be offensive: It reveals us to be distressingly like everyone else! (And we are so special.)
~ Thomas W. Currie III, 1946-, Professor of Theology, Author
The Gospel takes away our right, forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving…
~ Dorothy Day, 1897-1980, Journalist and Social Activist
We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously – no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feelings for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner – no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.
~ C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
But the one who is not afraid to admit everything that he sees to be wrong with himself, and yet recognizes that he may be the object of God’s love precisely because of his shortcomings, can begin to be sincere. His sincerity is based on confidence, not in his own illusions about himself, but in the endless, unfailing mercy of God.
~ Thomas Merton, 1915-1968, Writer/Theologian/Am. Trappist Monk
There is no such thing as an innocent reading, we must ask what reading we are guilty of.
~ Louis Althusser, 1918-1990, French Philosopher
True repentance always terminates on Jesus. It does not wallow in self-loathing or delight in self-flagellation. Rather, it allows an honest sense of our sinfulness to drive us toward the depth of Christ’s mercy in the gospel.
~ Kendal Haug & Will Walker, pastors, wrote Journey to the Cross