"I mean you're a man indebted to a dead man. So am I. So was he. That's the story of it. Back of you is Jack Beechum. Back of him was Ben Feltner. Back of him was, I think, his own daddy. And back of him was somebody else, and on back that way, who knows how far? And I'm back of you because Jack Beechum is, and because he's back of me, along with some others. It's no use to want to make it on your own, because you can't..."
Elton laughs. "The line of succession I'm in says you've got to make it on your own. I'm in the line of succession of root, hog, or die."
"That may have been the line of succession you were in, but it's not the one you're in now. The one you're in now is different."
"Well, how did I get in it?" Elton says almost in a sigh, as if longing to be out of it.
"The way you got in it, I guess, was by being chosen. The way you stay in it is by choice."
-Wendell Berry, That Distant Land, 284.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
The Lord is Thy Keeper
The Christian life is not a quiet escape to a garden where we can walk and talk uninterruptedly with our Lord; not a fantasy trip to a heavenly city where we can compare our blue ribbons and gold medals with others who have made it to the winner's circle. The Christian life is going to God. In going to God Christians travel the same ground that everyone else walks on, breathe the same air, drink the same water, shop the same stores, read the same newspapers, are citizens under the same governments, pay the same prices for groceries and gasoline, fear the same dangers, are subject to the same pressures, get the same distresses, are buried in the same ground.
The difference is that each step we walk, each breath we breathe, we know we are preserved by God, we know we are accompanied by God, we know we are ruled by God; and therefore no matter what doubts we endure or what accidents we experience, the Lord will preserve us from evil, he will keep our life.
-Eugene Peterson on Psalm 121, quoted by James Calvin Schaap, "The Professor's Death Song," Books and Culture, Jan/Feb 2011, 37.
The difference is that each step we walk, each breath we breathe, we know we are preserved by God, we know we are accompanied by God, we know we are ruled by God; and therefore no matter what doubts we endure or what accidents we experience, the Lord will preserve us from evil, he will keep our life.
-Eugene Peterson on Psalm 121, quoted by James Calvin Schaap, "The Professor's Death Song," Books and Culture, Jan/Feb 2011, 37.
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