This Sunday’s readings: Luke 1:39-55

Reflections

You and I have been trained by our culture to not believe in the supernatural… a Jewish woman, Mary, had been trained by her culture to not believe that God could ever become a human being. So, though they are different, the barriers she faced against belief in the Christmas message were every bit as big as the barriers you may be facing. And yet a combination of evidence and experience shattered those barriers and she came to faith. That is exactly the way it works now. She doubted, she questioned, she used her reason, and she asked questions—just as we must today if we are going to have faith.
~ Tim Keller, Pastor, Author

People are always clinging to what they want to hear, discarding the evidence that doesn’t fit with their beliefs, giving greater weight to evidence that does.
~ Paula Stokes, Author, The Key to Everything

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Many know how to flatter, few know how to praise.
~ Wendell Phillips, 1811-1884, Orator, Attorney. Abolitionist

I’ll just put two words out there one is community and the other is mentors … one of the biggest Concepts here is community versus networks. A community is a group of real people who are kind of stuck together you can’t just come and go as you please. It takes a while to get in and it’s hard to get out, so you have to get along with each other. [We] need to be embedded in communities and I would say a religious community is the quintessential perfect Community.
~ Jonathan Haidt, 1963- ,Social Psychologist, Author

Confirmation bias is the most effective way to go on living a lie.
~ Christopher James Gilbert, 1987- , Philosopher, Musician

Our misbeliefs often make it impossible for us to realize, and/or to accept, some facts.
~ Mokokoma Frans Mokhonoana, 1985-2023, Social Critic, Satirist

Common sense is what tells us the earth is flat.
~ Stuart Chase, 1888-1985, Social Theorist, Writer

This Sunday’s readings: Luke 1:26-38

Reflections

He looked round again and could hardly believe his eyes. There was the blue sky overhead, and grassy country spreading as far as he could see in every direction, and his new friends all round him laughing. ‘It seems, then,’ said Tirian, smiling to himself, ‘that the stable seen from within and the stable seen from without are two different places.’ ‘Yes,’ said the Lord Digory. ‘Its inside is bigger than its outside.’ ‘Yes,’ said Queen Lucy. ‘In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.’
~ C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

He Who sits upon the sublime and heavenly Throne, now lies in a manger. And He Who cannot be touched, Who is simple, without complexity, and incorporeal, now lies subject to the hands of men. He Who has broken the bonds of sinners, is now bound by an infant’s bands.
~ Cyril of Alexandria, 378-444, Patriarch of Alexandria

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A great man is always willing to be little.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We catch sight of a new key principle — the power of the Higher, just in so far as it is truly Higher, to come down, the power of the greater to include the less. Thus solid bodies exemplify many truths of plane geometry, but plane figures no truths of solid geometry: many inorganic propositions are true of organisms but no organic propositions are true of minerals; Montaigne became kittenish with his kitten but she never talked philosophy to him. Everywhere the great enters the little — its power to do so is almost the test of its greatness.
~ C.S. Lewis, Miracles

When the Christian faith is not only felt, but thought, it has practical results which may be inconvenient.
~ T. S. Eliot, 1888-1965, British writer and social critic

The assumption that the human-divine encounter takes place primarily in the realm of ‘religious experience’… is challenged fundamentally by the heart of the Christian gospel. The earliest Christian…confession…[was] ‘Jesus is Lord’. And ‘Jesus is Lord’ was never merely a statement of personal devotion. It was an announcement of a decisive event of secular human history, that had universal, indeed cosmic implications….
~ Vinoth Ramachandra, Sri Lankan writer and human rights advocate