Reflections


If you have enemies, good that means you stood up for something.
~ Marshall Bruce Mathers iii, American Rapper—Hip-Hop


You have no enemies, you say? Alas, my friend, the boast is poor. He who has mingled in the fray of duty that the brave endure, must have made foes. If you have none, small is the work that you have done. You’ve hit no traitor on the hip. You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip. You’ve never turned the wrong to right. You’ve been a coward in the fight. ~ Charles Mackay, 1814-1889, Poet / Author


… many ordinary, well-adjusted Christians might imagine that this passage, at the end of John 15, was bordering on the paranoid. The world is going to hate you, says Jesus. The world will persecute you. The world is guilty, and it hates me and my father as well as you! We can imagine someone saying, ‘Look here, how paranoid can you get?’ … But this doesn’t take away from the fact that Jesus’ warnings in this section are not paranoid, even if they may sound like that to a comfortable, armchair version of Christianity. ~ N.T. Wright, scholar, former Bishop of Durham


Hope for the Christian isn’t just confidence in a certain, glorious future. It’s hope in a present providence. It’s hope that God’s plans can’t be thwarted by local authorities or irate mobs, by unfriendly bosses or unbelieving husbands, by Supreme Court rulings or the next election. The Christian hope is that God’s purposes are so unassailable that a great thunderstorm of events can’t drive them off course. Even when we’re wave-tossed and lost at sea, Jesus remains the captain of the ship and the commander of the storm. ~ Elliot Clark, Cross Cultural Church Planter


My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon.
~ Mizuta Masahide (1657-1723), Japanese Poet and Samurai

This Sunday’s readings: John 15:9-17

Reflections

I’ve got a new friend, all right. But what a gamble friendship is! Charlotte is fierce, brutal, scheming, bloodthirsty—everything I don’t like. How can I learn to like her, even though she is pretty and, of course, clever?
~ E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher

You want people to hold you to a high standard, because whenever you degenerate in the multiple ways you’re likely to, they will (metaphorically) whack you on the back of the head and say, ‘clue-up’! You are demeaning yourself and you’re less than what you could be … A true friend wants the best, for the best in you.
~ Jordan Peterson, Psychologist, Author, Speaker

The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.
~Bob Marley (1945-1981), Jamaican musician

In friendship…we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another…the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting–any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can truly say to every group of Christian friends, “Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.” The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.”
~ C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves