Saturday, September 6, 2014

Quips, Questions and Quotes 9-6-14

Words from the week...


If ye keep watch over your hearts, and listen for the Voice
of God and learn of Him, in one short hour ye can learn more
from Him than ye could learn from Man in a thousand years.
    ... Johannes Tauler (ca. 1300-1361)

Jesus came to bring the good news to the poor, not to those who serve the poor! 
I think we can only truly experience the presence of God, meet Jesus, 
receive the good news, in and through our own poverty, 
because the kingdom of God belongs to the poor, 
the poor in spirit, the poor who are crying out for love.
Jean Vanier

Power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love
It seems easier to be God than to love God, 
easier to control people than to love people, 
easier to own life than to love life.
Henri J. M. Nouwen

Not one of us yet knows how to pray. All we have done has only been pottering and guessing and experimenting... God cares not for the length of our prayers, or the number of our prayers, or the beauty of our prayers, or the place of our prayers; but it is the faith in them that tells -- believing that prayer soars higher than the lark ever sang, plunges deeper than diving-bell ever sank, darts quicker than lightning ever flashed. Though we have used only the back of this weapon instead of the edge, what marvels have been wrought! If saved, we are all the captives of some earnest prayer.
    ... Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832-1902)

Fascinating article on Asian-American ethnic identity in the Christian church (or lack thereof)


Study universal holiness of life. Your whole usefulness depends on this. Your sermon ... lasts but an hour or two -- your life preaches all week. If Satan can only make you a covetous minister, or a lover of pleasure, or a lover of praise, or a lover of good eating, he has ruined your ministry for ever. Give yourself to prayer, ... and get your texts, your thoughts, your words, from God.
Robert Murray M'Cheyne, 1813-1843

Humility is not thinking less of ourselves; it is thinking of ourselves less. 
C. S. Lewis

Christ seeks from us deeds not words. Devotion to him is in the first place not sentimental but practical. If the Christian faith has no power to restore or recreate the human will, leading one to deeds of unselfish service, then it stands self-condemned.
C.F. Andrews

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