A Call to Arms

It is St. John’s Spirit-appointed task to supplement the work of St. Matthew and St. Luke so that the nativity cannot be sentimentalized into coziness, nor domesticated into drabness, nor commercialized into worldliness. He makes explicit what is implicit in the Gospel stories. The messianic birth takes place out of the womb of God‘s people in a cosmos resplendent with wonder. The entire creation is clothing for God’s people who are, Eve and Mary, mother to Messiah. The visibilities of creation and the invisibilities of salvation cohere in the action. The splendors of creation and the agonies of redemption combine in this event, the center where God in Christ invaded existence with redeeming life and decisively defeats evil. It is St. John’s genius to take Jesus in a manger attended by shepherds and wisemen and put him in the cosmos attacked by a dragon. The consequence to our faith is that we are fortified against intimidation. Our response to the nativity cannot be reduced to shutting the doors against a wintry world, drinking hot chocolate, and singing carols. Rather, we are ready to walk out the door with, as one psalmist put it, high praises of God in our throats and two-edged swords in our hands (Ps. 149:6).

-Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder, 122.

The Risen Christ

In every visit, every meeting I attend, every appointment I keep, I have been anticipated. The risen Christ is in that room already. What is he doing? What is he saying? What is going on?

- Eugene Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant, 127.

House Love

How can we help loving houses when they stand to us for so much...Warmth and protection and a means of expressing ourselves. You love a new house because it stands there waiting to be good to human beings and an old one because it has been.

-Elizabeth Goudge, A City of Bells, 68.

Tsundoku

The Japanese have a word for this affliction: tsundoku. It means those piles of books that you buy, but haven’t yet found time to read; those books that you know you simply can’t live without, which then just stack up, month after month.

-Huw Lewis-Jones, “Mapping Memories” from The Writer’s Map

Alien Abduction

Alien abduction is part of the American poetry of loneliness.

-M. T. Anderson, He Laughed With His Other Mouths, 50.

Man Up

If the only way around distress is to stop loving, well, then, let us be men about it and settle for distress.

-Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, 183.

Two Types of People

It is probably possible to divide the human race into butter-eaters and non-butter-eaters. I’m not sure what the division really says about us (and no wise man should go around looking for more divisions than we already have), but I am sure where my sympathies lie. I find cold butter simply irresistible.

-Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, 151.

Living with Achish

David is more or less doing what he has to do: surviving as best he can under conditions that are decidedly uncongenial to what we’re apt to call “the spiritual life.” He doesn’t stand up in indignation against Achish, confront his Philistine culture of brutality and idolatry. He doesn’t get on his moral high horse and announce to Achish that the only way he can in good conscience serve him is as a noncombatant and offer his company’s good Samaritan experience and expertise in his service. None of that. He lives not only on the money economy of Philistine Gath but also on the moral economy.

The storyteller doesn’t say that this is the right thing to do, simply that this is what David does. And in precisely these conditions, God works out his purposes. God protects David from violating the covenant; he guards David’s faithfulness to his anointing; he works out his salvation. The primary concern of the spiritual life isn’t what we do for God but what God does for us.

...What I want to say is this: God is perfectly capable of working out his purposes in our lives even when we can’t lift a finger to help. Better yet, God is faithfully working out our salvation even when every time we lift a finger it seems to contribute to the wrong side, the Philistine side.

-Eugene Peterson, Leap Over a Wall, 98-99.

Vocation

Man’s real work is to look at the things of the world and to love them for what they are. That is, after all, what God does, and man was not made in God’s image for nothing.

-Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, 19.

Peel an Orange

...Peel an orange. Do it lovingly—in perfect quarters like little boats, or in staggered exfoliations like a flat map of the round world, or in one long spiral, as my grandfather used to do. Nothing is more likely to become garbage than orange rind; but for as long as anyone looks at it in delight, it stands a million triumphant miles from the trash heap. That, you know, is why the world exists at all. It remains outside the cosmic garbage can of nothingness, not because it is such a solemn necessity that nobody can get rid of it, but because it is the orange peel hung on God’s chandelier, the wishbone in His kitchen closet. He likes it; therefore it stays. The whole marvelous collection of stones, skins, feathers, and string exists because at least one lover has never quite taken His eye off it, because the Dominus vivificans has his delight with the sons of men.

-Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, 4-5.

Amateur Lovers

The world may or may not need another cookbook, but it needs all the lovers—amateurs—it can get. It is a gorgeous old place, full of clownish graces and beautiful drolleries, and it has enough textures, tastes, and smells to keep us intrigued for more time than we have. Unfortunately, however, our response to its loveliness is not always delight: It is, far more than it should be, boredom. And that is not only odd, it is tragic; for boredom is not neutral—it is the fertilizing principal of unloveliness.

-Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, 3-4.

Exasperation

At [exasperation's] heart is a self-exaltation over others, and a dissatisfaction with the way God is ordering and orchestrating the events of our lives.

-Sinclair Ferguson, Devoted to God

Morning Prayer

Oh God, the Author of all good,
     I come to thee for the grace another day will require for its duties and events.

I step out into a wicked world,
I carry about with me a wicked heart,
I know that without thee I can do nothing,
     that everything with which I shall be concerned,
     however harmless in itself,
     may prove an occasion of sin or folly,
     unless I am kept by thy power.
Hold me thou up and I shall be safe.

Preserve my understanding from subtlety of error,
     my affections from love of idols,
     my character from stain of vice,
     my profession from every form of evil.

May I engage in nothing in which I cannot implore thy blessing,
     and in which I cannot invite thy inspection.

Prosper me in lawful undertakings,
     or prepare me for disappointments.

Give me neither poverty nor riches;
     feed me with food convenient for me,
     lest I be full and deny thee and say, Who is the Lord?
     or be poor, and steal, and take thy name in vain.

May every creature be made good to me by prayer and thy will;
Teach me how to use the world, and not abuse it,
     to improve my talents,
     to redeem my time,
     to walk in wisdom toward those without, and in kindness to those within,
     to do good to all men, and especially my fellow Christians

And to thee be the glory.

-The Valley of Vision

Imago Dei

For in religion all men are equal, as all pennies are equal, because the only value in any of them is that they bear the image of the King.

-G. K. Chesterton

Who?

And suddenly she was struck by a thought as blinding as a flash of lightning. Who had bought the clothes? Who had bought the furniture, some of it new and some of it so old? Who had arranged all the lovely things in her bedroom? Who had arranged all the things in the other rooms, thinking it all out so carefully so that all her wishes were granted at every point? Who had built the house? Who had planted the garden? Who had made the earth upon which the house stood and in which the flowers bloomed? Who had set the woods about her house, with the wild birds singing in the trees? Who had arched the sky over it, with the sun to give her light by day and the moon and stars by night? Who had--?

-Elizabeth Goudge, Henrietta's House, 149.

Fairytales

'Behave yourself!' said Grandfather sternly, for though he loved all human souls he loved them better when they did not spit. 'And don't you dare to disparage fairy tales. A fairy tale, dear sir, in relating miraculous happenings as though they were normal events of every day, is a humble acknowledgement of the fact that this universe is a box packed full of mysteries of which we understand absolutely nothing at all. You can wonder till you're blue in the face as to how the giraffe got his neck, or the gooseberry puffed himself out, but you don't know. You can't know. Any theory you may evolve about a giraffe's neck, my dear sir, is a fairy tale.'

-Elizabeth Goudge, Henrietta's House, 114-115.

Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 27

Q. What do you understand by the providence of God?

A. Providence is the almighty and ever present power of God by which he upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and property—all things, in fact, come to us not by chance but from his fatherly hand.

On Haircuts

I can tell you through hard won personal experience...it takes time to find the person who understands the way your hair moves and makes it look good, and that person is very very rarely your wife and almost never an attachment to a vacuum cleaner. 

-Judge John Hodgman

A Little Cheese

At that, Phronsie made a little cheese and sat right down on the pavement in an ecstasy.

-Margaret Sidney, Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, 225.

A Habitation of Dragons

I am a poor, weak creature; unstable as water, I cannot excel. This corruption is too hard for me, and is at the very door of ruining my soul; and what to do I know not. My soul is become as parched ground, and a habitation of dragons. I have made promises and broken them; vows and engagements have been as a thing of nought. Many persuasions have I had that I had got the victory and should be delivered; but I am deceived; so that I plainly see, that without some eminent succor and assistance, I am lost, and shall be prevailed on to an utter relinquishment of God. But yet, though this be my state and condition, let the hands that hang down be lifted up, and the feeble knees be strengthened. Behold the Lord Christ, who hath all fullness of grace in his heart, all fullness of power in his hand: he is able to slay all these his enemies. There is a sufficient provision in him for my relief and assistance: he can take my drooping, dying soul, and make me more than a conqueror. He can make the dry, parched ground of my soul to become a pool, and my thirsty, barren heart as springs of water; yea, he can make this habitation of dragons, this heart so full of abominable lusts and fiery temptations, to be a place for grass and fruit for himself.

-John Owen, The Mortification of Sin, 146-147