This Sunday’s readings: Matthew 11:7-15

Reflections

Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.
~ Mae West, 1893-1980, Actress/Playwright

You will never be entirely comfortable. This is the truth behind the champion – he is always fighting something. To do otherwise is to settle.
~ Julien Smith, 1971- , CEO, Author, The Flinch

We just wanna be the happy bums that we are. That’s all.
~ Mike Patton, musician

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Lukewarm people do not live by faith; their lives are structured so they never have to. They don’t have to trust God if something unexpected happens—they have their savings account. They don’t need God to help them—they have their retirement plan in place. They don’t genuinely seek out what life God would have them live—they have life figured and mapped out. They don’t depend on God on a daily basis—their refrigerators are full and, for the most part, they are in good health. The truth is, their lives wouldn’t look much different if they suddenly stopped believing in God.
~ Francis Chan, Author/Preacher

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.
~ Noam Chomsky, 1928- , Public Intellectual, ‘Father’ of modern Linguistics

Patty: I’ll be the good guy.
Shermy: I’ll be the bad guy.
Patty: What are you going to be, Charlie Brown?
Charlie Brown: I’ll be sort of in-between; I’ll be a hypocrite!
~ Charles M. Schulz, The Complete Peanuts, Vol. 1: 1950-1952

“You all know,” said the Guide, “that security is mortals’ greatest enemy.”
~ C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress

This Sunday’s readings: Luke 14:25-27

Reflections

Reading: C.S. Lewis excerpt, Counting the Cost

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So many people come to church with a genuine desire to hear what we have to say, yet they are always going back home with the uncomfortable feeling that we are making it too difficult for them to come to Jesus.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

The believer’s cross is no longer any and every kind of suffering, sickness, or tension, the bearing of which is demanded. The believer’s cross must be, like his Lord’s, the price of his social nonconformity. It is not, like sickness or catastrophe, an inexplicable, unpredictable suffering; it is the end of the path freely chosen after counting the cost. It is not, like Luther’s or Thomas Muntzer’s or Zinzendorf’s or Kierkegaard’s cross, an inward wrestling of the sensitive soul with self and sin; it is the social reality of representing in an unwilling world the Order to come.
~ John Howard, 1939- , former Australian politician

I think too often people, even Christians, really short-change what salvation really is about. We picture it as really nothing more than us walking on streets of gold in white robes, and always smiling…but still being our puny little selves, just a bit cleaner. Needless to say, I don’t think we really grasp what God is up to.
~ Joel Edmund Anderson, from blogpost, Nov 14, 2015, counting the cost

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

Let us think often that our only business in this life is to please God. Perhaps all besides is but folly and vanity.
~ Brother Lawrence, 1614-1691, lay brother in a Carmelite monastery in Paris

The thing at bottom is this, that men have low thoughts of God, and high thoughts of themselves; and therefore it is that they look upon God as having so little right, and they so much.
~ Jonathan Edwards, 1703-1758, New England pastor and theologian