I’ve been slow on my posting lately as I prepare for my MA exit exam.  I must translate the concluding myth from the Phaedo from Greek into Latin then write a commentary in Latin.  Needless to say, I have plenty to keep me busy.  Soon enough, though, expect some meditations on the Imitation of Christ.

“All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man  dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a  better language, and every chapter must be so translated. God  employs several translators: some pieces are translated by age, some  by sickness, some by war, some by justice. But God’s hand is in every  translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again  for that library where every book shall be open to one another.”

-from John Donne, Meditation XVII.

“In a very unique setting over Earth’s colorful horizon, the silhouette of the space shuttle Endeavour is featured in this photo by an Expedition 22 crew member on board the International Space Station, as the shuttle approached for its docking on Feb. 9 during the STS-130 mission. Image Credit: NASA -> You can download the full size (5349×4012!) image here.”

(via Monoscope)

I am almost done with Lilith by George MacDonald, and I am loving it.  Here are just a few of my favorite quotes so far:

“‘You have no right to make me do things against my will!’

‘when you have a will, you will find that no one can.’”

“The part of philanthropist is indeed a dangerous one; and the man who would do his neighbour good must first study how not to do him evil, and must begin by pulling the beam out of his own eye.”

“I began to learn that it was impossible to live for oneself even, save in the presence of others–then, alas, fearfuly possible!  Evil was only through good!  Selfishness but a parasite on the tree of life.”

“I saw now that a man alone is but a being that may become a man–that he is but a need, and therefore a possibility.  To be enough for himself, a being must be an eternal, self-existent worm.”

“The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

- G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (via Alan Jacob’s Tumblr)

“The ways by which the truth of the gospel comes  home to the heart and conscience of this or that person are always mysterious.   They cannot be programs and they cannot be calculated. But  where a community is living in alert faithfulness, they happen.”

From The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin.

I can just hear Billy’s voice as I read this, urging us to hold the line.  It appears sometimes that there is no one being saved, that we must do something, start some program, trick a few people in.  But there is hope and encouragement in this: “where a community is living in alert faithfulness, they happen.”

“One  can always travel hopefully if there is a reliable track and good ground  for believing that it leads to the destination. The track on which we walk  is one that disappears from sight before it reaches the destination. We  may have a vision of the peak we are aiming for, but we do not see the  track all the way to it. It goes down into the dark valley of death, and we,  with all our works, go that way. We can go forward with confidence because   Jesus has gone that way before us and has come back from the  deep valley. If he is himself the track, we can go forward confidently  even when the future is hidden.”

From The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, by Lesslie Newbigin.

As many of you know, most of the readers of this blog have had a pretty rough couple of days with recent events. I thought I would use my post today to lighten the air a little bit by posting a humorous poem I wrote about 6 months ago. I will return to my normal content tomorrow. All of the events in the poem actually happened… except the falling in love part. I was in the car with some friends on a trip to Chicago over Christmas break. We got stuck in traffic and kept passing this car full of girls, who were presumably sisters. I was bored and this poem is the result of my antics. (more…)

All too often I see Christians hopping around from church to church. Most of the time, they give the usual reason of “God called me…” Who can argue with that? However, this muddled confusion of wandering sheep couldn’t be further from the heart of God. Instead, the underlying reason for most of this church shopping is that people were challenged with something they didn’t want to own up to at their old church, or they got in a fight with someone that they didn’t want to resolve. Because churches rely on your attendance for their dollars, they do everything they can to seduce individuals who are looking around for a new body. The effect on the way we do church is devastating. I would like to see Christians called back to committed relationships where life is given to the church rather than ‘me’ centered relationships where people suck life from the church. (more…)

If you consider the madness of the Corinthian church, Paul’s priority in addressing her problems is really quite surprising. Most of us would have busted out of the Greeting with all guns blazing at incest and ecclesiastic intoxication (1 Cor. 5 and 11), but Paul recognized a more central, more dangerous problem.

Much like today, believers in Corinth were mixing their faith in Christ with faith in the personality of a ministry. This wasn’t a different religion or a cultish spin-off that Paul was addressing, but men who considered it worth the cost of division to identify with a non-Jesus characteristic.

Does this not happen today? In Corinth it was “I follow Paul” or “I follow Apollos”; in Contemporary Christian America it’s “I follow R.C. Sproul” or “I follow Rick Warren”. Believers inundate themselves with ministry “materials” and migrate from one conference to the next, never actually drinking divine motivation from the secret place with Christ. (more…)