This Sunday’s readings: John 17:13-19

Reflections

Remember then that there is only one important time, and that time is now. The most important one is always the one you are with. And the most important thing is to do good for the one who is standing at your side. This is why we are here.
~ Jon J. Muth, 1960- , Illustrator/Writer, The Three Questions

We are not sent into this world mainly to enjoy the loveliness therein, nor to sit us down in passive ease; no, we were sent here for action. The soul that seeks to do the will of God with a pure heart, fervently, does not yield to the lethargy of ease.
~ Dorothea Dix, 1802-1887, Nurse, Advocate for Mentally Ill

I would like to buy $3 worth of God please, not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don’t want enough of him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3 dollars’ worth of God please.
~ from collected writings 1971, Wilbur Rees, 1925-2018, Pastor/Author

An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.
~ Walter Bagehot, 1826-1877, English Journalist/Essayist

I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize. I don’t respect that at all. If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life or whatever, and you think that it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward…. How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?
~ Penn Jillette, famed atheist, illusionist and comedian

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