Maranatha

I've lifted this proposition from some sermon whose title has escaped me. It was said in reference to the following passage from the gospel according to St. Luke (11:5-8):   And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves;  For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him?  And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee.  I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.      Importunity is called for in prayer, and a key element in importunity—as any toddler vying for his mother's attention knows—is repetition. But it is not as if the Lord were our mother, too busy to pay attention to us at the moment. Why do...

“For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy.” (Leviticus 11:44) What does it mean to be holy? This is something I have been considering recently, and a question, I think, which warrants careful reflection. God tells His people to be holy, as He is holy, and Paul likewise commends the church to holiness in several of his epistles. What, then, is holiness? In Leviticus, the Lord tells the Levites that the things consecrated for use in the temple cannot be used for anything else. They are dedicated, irrevocably committed to temple service. If the temple and its regulations are an image of the new and better covenant, and further of Christ’s work in our lives as His temple, then the dedication of temple objects is a representation of our commitment to the service of the Lord. We are to be vessels for honorable use, devoted fully to the work of God and forsaking all other priorities and plans. “Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is...

"Glory be to God for dappled things –     For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;        For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;  Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;     Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;        And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.  All things counter, original, spare, strange;     Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)        With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;  He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:                                  Praise him." -Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty              Traditionall...

Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor my eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me.  Surely I have behaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned of his mother; my soul is even as a weaned child.  Let Israel now trust in the Lord from henceforth and forever. (Psalm 131) Verse I—What are the things too high for me in which I might exercise myself? What does it mean to exercise myself? The reasons of my suffering? The essence of God, in a sense? How does this relate to philosophy? To seeking God? How can we be both importunate as the man in Luke 15 and be quiet? Verse II—The Psalmist says that he himself quieted himself. How can I quiet myself? By obeying the Psalms? Fasting?  Once again, what we need is to be like a child. Children—at least good ones—sit and listen to their parents. They do not harass their mothers, though they have questions. They patiently wait for answers. Verse III—Who should now...

And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. (Mark 4:9) And these are they which are sown among thorns; such as hear the word, and the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lust of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.  (Mark 4:18-19) Our Lord has warned us that it is hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. In the parable of the sower, he tells us that the deceitfulness  of riches makes barren the Word in our lives. Watching the sunrise this morning, I was struck with the truth of these words afresh.  The sunrise is magnificent. Its glory, however, was obscured this morning by the monotonous apartment buildings, the rows of cars, and the omnipresent power lines which seem to cage and frame all heavenly beauty. In the wealth of our nation, we have built many convenient things. But how have they hidden Beauty! How rich we are—and yet, so p...