Sunday June 18, 2023 — Summer in the Psalms: Psalm 8—The Self (Who are we?)

This Sunday’s readings: Psalm 8

Reflections

When I have gazed into these stars, have they not looked down upon me as if with pity from their serene spaces, like eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the little lot of man?
~ Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1881, Scottish writer and historian

The ultimate test of our spirituality is the measure of our amazement at the grace of God.
~ D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, 1899-1981, Welsh medical doctor and preacher

Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.
~ Brennan Manning, from Abba’s Child: The Cry of the Heart

Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They are keeping up with their friends and family, but they are also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand.
~ Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook

In fact, what is called the secular mentality consists simply of those who, so to speak, mortgage themselves to the world. They use their talents to amass wealth, carry on enterprises. They try to make a name for themselves, but themselves they have not become. Spiritually speaking, they have no self, no self with which they can venture anything, no self before God.
~ Soren Kierkegaard

“Who are you?”
“No one of consequence.”
“I must know.”
“Get used to disappointment.”
~ William Goldman, The Princess Bride

Sunday June 11, 2023 — Summer in the Psalms: Psalm 3 — Prayer (for our Fears)

This Sunday’s readings: Psalm 3

Reflections

Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.
~ Bruce Lee (1940-1973), actor, director and martial artist

Know, at the end of the day, following Jesus is not necessarily designed to be safe. Safety is a natural desire but it can keep us from being like Jesus in the midst of an unsafe world.
~ The Art of Neighboring by Jay Pathak and Dave Runyon

Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
~ C.S. Lewis: The Screwtape Letters

It seems that genuine Christianity can survive anything but comfort, privilege and ease.
~ Anonymous, 33 AD

Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.
~ Epictetus, 135 AD, Stoic Philosopher

To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self…. And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one’s self.
~ Søren Kierkegaard

“The essence of sin is disordered love.” Disordered loves means that we often love the less-important things more, and the more-important things less than we ought to, and this wrong prioritization leads to unhappiness and disorder in our lives. … “The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.”
~ Nick Cady, American Pastor, on Augustine’s disordered loves