This Sunday’s readings: Luke 1:46-55

Reflections

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

And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away all this artificial scaffolding…
~ Letters of Thomas Jefferson, (Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823)

Those who will never be fooled can never be delighted, because without self-forgetfulness there can be no delight, and this is a great and grievous loss.
~ Alan Jacobs, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis

I’m convinced that the best solutions are often the ones that are counterintuitive—that challenge conventional thinking—and end in breakthroughs.
~ Nathaniel Wyeth, 1911-1990, American Inventor

The secret to freedom from enslaving patters of sin is worship. You need worship [together]. You need great worship [together]. You need weeping worship [together]. You need glorious worship [together]. You need to sense God’s greatness and to be moved by it [together]—moved to tears and moved to laughter [together]—moved by who God is and what He has done for you [together].
~ Tim Keller, Retired Pastor/Author

This Sunday’s readings: Luke 2:25-35; Romans 1:1-4

Reflections

The Bible is God’s anthropology rather than man’s theology.
~ Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972), Rabbi, Theologian

I am just a human being trying to make it in a world that is rapidly losing its understanding of being human.
~ John Trudell, 1946–2015, Author, Actor, Musician

God’s love is precisely what the first Christians did feel. They had experienced Jesus’ love and had become convinced that Jesus was God incarnate. Once that love reached them, it could not be stopped.
~ Huston Smith, 1919-2016, Philosophy Chair at MIT

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882, Essayist, Lecturer

Man’s maker was made man that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother’s breast; that the Bread might hunger, the Fountain thirst, the Light sleep, the Way be tired on its journey; that Truth might be accused of false witnesses, the Teacher be beaten with whips, the Foundation be suspended on wood; that Strength might grow weak; that the Healer might be wounded; that Life might die.
~ Augustine of Hippo, 354-430, Theologian and Philosopher