This Sunday’s readings: Hebrews 12:4-13

Reflections

You will know as much of God, and only as much of God, as you are willing to put into practice.
~ Eric Liddell, The Disciplines Of The Christian Life

One painful duty fulfilled makes the next plainer and easier.
~ Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

The question remains and I ask people all the time: who are you when it starts to go south? Not when you get what you want. We know when you get what you want, you’re gonna smile. Babies do that. Give them a bottle, they’re gonna smile. Give them what they want, they’re gonna smile. But when you don’t get what you want, when it doesn’t go the way you want it to … who are you?
~ Inquoris “Inky” Johnson, motivational speaker, former football player

He who has a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any ‘how’.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I am God’s chosen snob, and if I cannot be with the aristocracy or the intelligentsia I must go down among the proletariat, . . . the natives, because I cannot live with the middle class. … Rich people and poor people aren’t crybabies. They understand suffering, the middle class do not. The rich intrinsically know wealth doesn’t buy happiness. Poor people, of course, know life is hard, but the middle class feel that because of their hard work, because of their efforts, because of their scheduling, because of their goal setting, somehow, they’re shocked when they find out life is hard. Middle class people are the ones that are surprised when life goes wrong.
~ Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), Author

My wife died. I give that to the Lord. My job is gone. All right, I’ll give that to the Lord. But when I get up and I decide this is what I want to do with my day and here and there disappointments come on in, frustrations come in, this or that doesn’t show up, by the middle of the day I am overturned spiritually .. I will not let God train me.
~ John Newton

This Sunday’s readings: Psalm 19:1-14

Reflections

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.
~ Aristotle, 384-322 BC

Past secular creeds were built on the 18th-century enlightenment view of man as an autonomous, rational creature who could reason his way to virtue.
~ David Brooks, The New York Times, 2-3-2015

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
~ Voltaire (1694-1778), French Enlightenment philosopher

It is not enough to be delivered from sin; it is enough to be delivered to righteousness.
~ Edwin Louis Cole, 1922-2002, Author, Founder CMM

Despite the frequent claim that we are living in a secular age defined by the death of God, many citizens in rich Western democracies have merely switched one notion of God for another—abandoning their singular, omnipotent (Christian or Judaic or whatever) deity reigning over all humankind and replacing it with a weak but all-pervasive idea of spirituality tied to a personal ethic of authenticity and a liturgy of inwardness … At the heart of the ethic of authenticity is a profound selfishness and callous disregard of others.
~ Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster in The NY Times, June 29, 2013