“What is the purpose of liturgy? It turns out that novelty (free-form 'lack of liturgy') may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant. You know what I mean. Try as one may to exclude it, the question, 'What on earth is he up to now?' will intrude. It lays waste to one's devotion.

There is really some excuse for the man who said, 'I wish they'd remember that the  charge to Peter was: 'Feed my sheep;' not 'Try experiments on my rats,' or even, 'Teach my performing dogs new tricks.'”

~ C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm

“Liturgy is like a strong tree whose beauty is derived from the continuous renewal of its leaves, but whose strength comes from the old trunk, with solid roots in the ground.” ~ Pope Paul VI

“The real 'action' in the liturgy in which we are all supposed to participate is the action of God himself. This is what is distinctive about the Christian liturgy: God himself acts and does what is essential.” ~ Joseph Ratzinger

“Oh, if I could only pray the way this dog watches the meat! All his thoughts are  concentrated on the piece of meat. Otherwise he has no thought, wish, or hope.”
~ Martin Luther, Table Talk

“You wish to know why it is I whom men follow? It is because the eyes of the Most  High have willed it so. He continually watches the good and the wicked, and as  his most holy eyes have not found among sinners any smaller man, nor any more  insufficient and sinful, therefore he has chosen me to accomplish the marvelous  work which God has undertaken.
God chose me because he could find none more worthless, and he wished to  confound the nobility and grandeur, the strength, the beauty and the learning of  this world.”
~ St. Francis of Assisi

“This life therefore is not righteousness but growth in righteousness; not health
but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not what we  shall be but we are growing toward it; the process is not yet finished but it is  going on; this is not the end but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory
but all is being purified.” 

~ Martin Luther

“Rejoice, you just – it is the birthday of the Justifier.
Rejoice, you who are weak and sick –
it is the birthday of the Savior, the Healer.
Rejoice, captives – it is the birthday of the Redeemer.
Rejoice, slaves – it is the birthday of the one who makes you lords.
Rejoice, free people – it is the birthday of the one who makes you free.
Rejoice, all Christians – it is the birthday of Christ.”
~ St. Augustine, 4th century AD

“Some pretend that children, not as yet having 'reason,' ought not to receive  baptism. I answer: That reason in no way contributes to faith...
If God can communicate the Holy Spirit to grown persons, he can communicate it  to young  children. Faith comes of the Word of God, when this is heard; little  children hear that Word when they receive baptism, and therewith they receive  also faith.”
~ Martin Luther, Table Talk

Man's maker was made man that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother's breast; that the Bread might hunger, the Fountain thirst, the Light sleep, the Way be tired on its journey; that Truth might be accused of false witness, the Teacher be beaten with whips, the Foundation be suspended on wood; that Strength might grow in weakness; that the Healer might be wounded; that Life might die.

“The reason God does not like being taken for granted is not only that it robs Him  of glory but it robs me of joy. One of the greatest discoveries I have ever made is  that these two goals – God's goal to be glorified and my goal to be satisfied –
are not at odds. That's the gospel.”
~ John Piper, Treasuring God in our Traditions

“In this world everything is upside down.  That which, if it could be prolonged here,  would be a truancy, is like that which in a better country is the End of ends.
Joy is the serious business of heaven.”
~ C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm

When asked if he could interview anyone from all of history, Larry King said:  “Jesus Christ.”
“And what would you like to ask him?”
Larry King replied, “I would like to ask him if he was indeed virgin-born.
The answer to that question would define history for me.”

We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God's coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God's coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us.
The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics.

“'They say Aslan is on the move – perhaps has already landed.'
And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan
was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words
everyone felt quite different.
Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says
something which you don't understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some
enormous meaning – either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a
nightmare or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the
dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you
could get into that dream again.”
~ C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

“Welcome, in the Lion’s name. Come further up and further in. The further up and the  further in you go, the bigger everything gets. The inside is larger than the outside.”
~ C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.1
So why do it? Because worship is the avenue God has provided for us to get out of that darkness and into his light, to get to know him and delight in relationship with him. So we begin this morning by thanking him for the wondrous opportunity to come before him in worship and praise...]

C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Either sin is with you, lying on your shoulders, or it is lying on Christ, the Lamb of God. Now if it is lying on your back, you are lost; but if it is resting on Christ, you are free, and you will be saved. Now choose what you want. ~ Martin Luther

If you wait until you feel motivated to worship, you might be waiting a long time.
If you are remotely inclined to communicate with God, you might find that words fail and you have nothing to say... What these psalms do is straighten the trajectory of our lives. Using the words he gives us, God gently turns our hearts toward him. Instead of everything bending back into ourselves, we are able to look straight, outside of ourselves, and fix our eyes on Jesus.1 Edward T. Welch, Depression: A Stubborn Darkness, Light for the Path. Welch's comments echo what the author of Hebrews is getting at: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” ~ Hebrews 12:1-2.

“If you have no intention of loving or being loved, the whole journey is pointless...  Open your heart. Someone will come. Someone will come for you. But first you  must open your heart.”
~ Kate DiCamillo, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

“Remember this. When people choose to withdraw far from a fire, the fire continues  to give warmth, but they grow cold. When people choose to withdraw far from  light, the light continues to be bright in itself but they are in darkness. This is also  the case when people withdraw from God.”
~ St. Augustine

If men grow weary of reading and thinking about God's word, simply because they read the same things over and over, I ask: Why do they not weary of daily eating their bread? Of daily drinking wine? Of daily beholding the brilliance of the sun?

“The world is dark, and light is precious. Come closer, dear reader.
You must trust me. I am telling you a story."  
~ Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux

Every part of Scripture is personal – God is relational at the core – and so whatever is said, whatever is revealed, whatever is received is also personal and relational. There is nothing impersonal, nothing merely functional, everything from beginning to end and in between is personal.1 Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book: A Conversation on the Art of Spiritual Reading, p. 27.

I want to pull the Christian Scriptures back from the margins of the contemporary imagination where they have been so rudely elbowed by their glamorous competitors, and reestablish them at the center as the text for living the Christian life deeply and well. I want to confront and expose this replacement of the authoritative Bible by the authoritative self. I want to place personal experience under the authority of the Bible and not over it. I want to set the Bible before us as the text by which we live our lives...
~ Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book: A Conversation on the Art of Spiritual Reading

“It is one thing to praise discipline, and another to submit to it.”
~ Don Quixote

“I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither
right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.”
Martin Luther

“A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's
truth was attacked and yet would remain silent.”
John Calvin

“A perfect faith is nowhere to be found, so it follows that all of us are partly  unbelievers. Yet a man will be justified by faith when, excluded from righteousness  of works, he by faith lays hold of the righteousness of Christ, and, clothed in it,  appears in the sight of God not as a sinner, but as righteous.”
~ John Calvin

“Those who set up a fictitious worship merely worship and adore their own
delirious fancies; indeed, they would never dare so to trifle with God,
had they not previously fashioned him after their own childish conceits.”
~ John Calvin

“The knowledge of ourselves not only arouses us to seek God, but also, as it were,
leads us by the hand to find Him.” ~ John Calvin

“Man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until  he has compared himself with God's majesty.” ~ John Calvin

“You must submit to supreme suffering in order to discover the completion of joy.”            ~ John Calvin

“Audacious prayer, which perseveres unflinchingly and ceases not through fear, is well  pleasing unto God. Prayer is the daily business of a Christian.” ~ Martin Luther

“The kingdom of God comes indeed without our prayer, of itself; but we pray in this  petition that it may come to us as well.” ~ Martin Luther

“We should ask God to increase our hope when it is small, awaken it when it is dormant,  confirm it when it is wavering, strengthen it when it is weak, and raise it up when it is  overthrown.” ~ John Calvin

“Anyone who is to find Christ must first find the church. How could anyone know       where Christ is and what faith is in him unless he knew where his believers are?”
~ Martin Luther

Our faith is slight and feeble unless it be propped on all sides and sustained by every means. Therefore, our merciful Lord, according to his infinite kindness, so tempers himself to our capacity that, since we are creatures who do not think about or even conceive of anything spiritual, he condescends to lead us to himself even by these earthly elements, and to set before us in the flesh a mirror of spiritual blessings.1 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion.

“Seeing that a Pilot steers the ship in which we sail, who will never allow us to perish  even in the midst of shipwrecks, there is no reason why our minds should be  overwhelmed with fear and overcome with weariness.” ~ John Calvin

“If he have faith, the believer cannot be restrained. He betrays himself.  He breaks out.  He confesses and teaches this gospel to the people at the risk of life itself.”                 ~ Martin Luther

“I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught,  preached and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank  Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened
the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing;  the Word did everything.”
~ Martin Luther

“I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have  placed in God's hands, that I still possess.”
~ Martin Luther

“You may as well quit reading and hearing the Word of God, and give it to the devil,
if you do not desire to live according to it.”
~ Martin Luther

“He who is not crucianus, if I may coin a word, is not Christianus: in other words, he  who does not bear his cross is no Christian, for he is not like his master, Jesus Christ.”
~ Martin Luther

“Learn to know Christ and him crucified. Learn to sing to him and say: Lord Jesus,
you  are my righteousness; I am your sin. You took on you what was mine; you set on me  what was yours. You became what you were not so that I might become what I was not.”
~ Martin Luther

“It is a matter of necessity that we be destroyed and rendered formless, so that Christ  may be formed within us, and Christ alone be in us.... Real mortifications do not  happen in lonely places away from the society of other human beings. No!
They happen in the home, the market place, in secular life.... 'Being conformed to  Christ' is not within our powers to achieve. It is God’s gift, not our own work.”
~ Martin Luther

“The deplorable, miserable condition which I discovered lately has forced and urged me  to prepare this Catechism, or Christian doctrine, in this small, plain, simple form.  Mercy! Good God! What manifold misery I beheld! The common people, especially in  the villages, have no knowledge whatever of Christian doctrine, and, alas! many  pastors are altogether incapable and incompetent to teach.
Nevertheless, all maintain that they are Christians, have been baptized and receive the  holy Sacraments. Yet they do not understand and cannot even recite either the Lord's  Prayer, or the Creed, or the Ten Commandments; they live like dumb brutes and  irrational hogs; and yet, now that the Gospel has come, they have nicely learned to  abuse all liberty like experts...”
~ Luther's Preface to the Small Catechism

It is a spiritual mystery which cannot be seen by the eye nor be comprehended by human understanding.  Therefore it is represented for us by means of visible signs, according to the need of our weakness.1 John Calvin, Short Treatise on the Holy Supper.

“The cross teaches us to believe in hope even when there is no hope. In fact, there is no  other way to heaven than taking up the cross of Christ. On account of this we must be  careful that the active life with its good works, and the contemplative life with its  speculations, do not lead us astray.
Both are most attractive and yield peace of mind, but for that very reason they hide real  dangers, unless they are tempered by the cross and disturbed by adversaries. The cross  is the surest path of all. Blessed is the man who understands this truth.”
~ Martin Luther

“Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would  risk death a thousand times trusting in it. Such confidence and knowledge of God's  grace makes you happy, joyful and bold in your relationship to God and all  creatures. The Holy Spirit makes this happen through faith. Because of it, you  freely, willingly and joyfully do good to everyone, serve everyone, suffer all kinds  of things, love and praise the God who has shown you such grace.”
~ Martin Luther

“Jesus never concealed the fact that his religion included a demand as well as an offer.  Indeed, the demand was as total as the offer was free. If he offered men his  salvation,
he also demanded their submission. He gave no encouragement whatever to thoughtless
applicants for discipleship. He brought no pressure to bear on any enquirer. He sent  irresponsible enthusiasts empty away. He never lowered his standards or modified his  conditions to make his call more readily acceptable. He asked his first disciples, and he  has asked every disciple since, to give him their thoughtful and total commitment.  Nothing less than this will do.”
~ John Stott, Basic Christianity

“Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go  and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price for which the merchant will sell  all his goods. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the  gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. It is costly because
it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.”
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

When we can't piece together the puzzle of our own lives, remember the best view of a puzzle is from above. Let Him help put you together.
~Terri Guillemets

“Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the  world? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? And if I am  compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I want to see him.”
~ Søren Kierkegaard

“You ask: what is the meaning or purpose of life? I can only answer with another  question: do you think we are wise enough to read God's mind?”
~ Freeman Dyson, The Meaning of Life

“In a few moments the darkness turned into a greyness ahead, and then, almost  before they dared to begin hoping, they had shot out into the sunlight and were in  the warm, blue world again.
And just as there are moments when simply to lie in bed and see the daylight  pouring through your window and to realize that 'it was only a dream: it wasn't  real,' is so heavenly that it was very nearly worth having the nightmare in order to  have the joy of waking, so they all felt when they came out of the dark. All at once  everybody realized that there was nothing to be afraid of and never had been.”
~ C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

“The world is dark, and light is precious. What are we to make of a world where  stars shine bright in the midst of so much darkness and gloom?”
~ Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

It is a serious mistake to think that metaphor is an optional thing which poets and orators may put into their work as a decoration and plain speakers can do without. The truth is that if we are going to talk at all about things which are not perceived by the senses, we are forced to use language metaphorically.1 C.S. Lewis, Miracles.

“It is clear that there must be difficulties for us in a revelation such as the Bible. If  someone were to hand me a book that was as simple to me as the multiplication  table, and say, 'This is the Word of God. In it He has revealed His whole will and  wisdom,' I would shake my head and say, 'I cannot believe it; that is too easy to be  a perfect revelation of infinite wisdom.'
There must be, in any complete revelation of God's mind and will and character  and being, things hard for the beginner to understand; and the wisest and best of  us are but beginners.”
~  R.A. Torrey

“There is a way of reading the Bible that seems to leave God far away, off in the  shadows somewhere. It is all information and technicalities and knowledge, but it  feels like you're sitting with your back towards God. You come up against a  difficulty or question, and you go to books, you ask pastors, friends, strangers on  the internet, anyone but Him. Gradually God gets smaller and dimmer.”
~ Anonymous

“When you read God's Word, you must constantly be saying to yourself,
'It is talking to me, and about me.'”
~ Søren Kierkegaard

“The Bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that  ever existed.”
~ Thomas Paine

“Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand,  but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.”
~ Mark Twain

“It is a mistake to look to the Bible to close a discussion; the Bible seeks to open one.”
~ William Sloane Coffin

“The Word of God is a Person. When you read it, do you see words, or do you see Him?”
~ Jacquelyn K. Heasley

“The most valuable thing the Psalms do for me is to express the same delight in God   which made David dance.”
~ C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

“Never place a period where God has placed a comma. God is still speaking.”
~ Gracie Allen

The writers of Scripture are all masters of metaphor, language as a witness to the interconnectedness of all things visible and invisible. Metaphor is language that stimulates us to an act of imagination in which we become participants in what is being spoken; we acquire an aptitude for dealing with all the interconnected visibles and invisibles inherent in reality.1   Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus is the Way.

“In tribulation, immediately draw near to God with confidence, and you will receive strength, enlightenment, and instruction.”
~ St. John of the Cross (16th century poet)

“'You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you,' said the Lion.”
~ C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus is the way we come to God. Jesus is the way God comes to us. And not first one and then the other but both at the same time. Not God's way to us on Sundays and our way to God on weekdays. It is a two-lane road. The road up and the road down are the same road.1 Jesus Way

In the words of Bonhoeffer's classic book Life Together,
The grace of the Gospel, which is so hard for the pious to understand, confronts us with the truth and says, ‘You are a sinner, a great, desperate sinner; now come, as the sinner that you are to God who loves you. You do not have to go on lying to yourself and others, as if you were without sin; you can dare to be a sinner.’

“Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn't have guessed. That's one of the    reasons I believe Christianity. It's a religion you couldn't have guessed.”

~ C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity

“He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God and himself accordingly.”
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

“In a lonely world like ours, it is tempting to seek community, any community, as a good in itself. In a world like ours, people will be attracted to communities that promise them an easy way out of loneliness. There is then little check on community becoming as tyrannical as the individual ego. Community becomes totalitarian when its only purpose is to foster a sense of belonging in order to overcome the fragility of the lone individual.”
~ Stanley Hauerwas, Resident Aliens

“Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the common life, is not the one who sins still a person with whom I stand under the word of Christ? Therefore, will not the very moment of great disillusionment with my brother or sister be incomparably wholesome for me because it so thoroughly teaches me that both of us can never live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and deed that really binds us together, the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ?”1

Life Together

“Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.”1

Cost of Discipleship

“I define loneliness in two ways. On one level, it is the pain or sadness felt in the absence or loss of meaningful relationships. Yet loneliness is more than that. It is also the inevitable pain or sadness we feel in response to living as pilgrims in a fallen, sinful world that cannot provide the perfect relationships we were designed for. We feel lonely when we are deeply aware of our creaturely incompleteness.”
~ Tom Varney, Loneliness

“Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you.”
~ C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

“One of the facets of a sound Christian faith is to level with God about your doubts or disbelief, your lack of wisdom or strength. God can withstand tough, honest prayers. I try to face my doubts and fears forcefully with confidence that God will forgive me.”

~ Jimmy Carter

“Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.”
~ C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust.
But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.
Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist – in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless – I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality – namely my idea of justice – was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple.”  
~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“The essential act of mercy was to pardon; and pardon in its very essence involves   the recognition of guilt in the recipient... Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful. That is the important paradox. As there are plants which will flourish only in mountain soil, so it appears that Mercy will flower only when it grows in the crannies of Justice.”
~ C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock

“Because many of today's Christians have become so enmeshed with the world, we have determined we can stay as we are, keep all we have, give some, and do some good. When it comes down to it, many people are looking for a little spiritual spit shine and self-help, not transformation.”
~ Bob Roberts Jr., Transformation

“The union between the Father and Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person. I know that among human beings, when they get together in a family, or a club, or a trade union, people talk about the 'spirit' of that family, or club, or trade union. They talk about its 'spirit' because the individual members, when they are together, do really develop particular ways of talking and behaving which they would not have if they were apart. It is as if a sort of communal personality came into existence. Of course, it is not a real person: it is only rather like a person.
But that is just one difference between God and us. What grows out of the joint life of the Father and Son is a real Person, is in fact the Third of the three Persons who are God. This third person is called the Holy Spirit.”
~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“I am glad that in the communion of my church we are baptized as infants, because this emphasizes that the gift of death to this world and birth into the Kingdom of God is, in fact, gift – it is nothing we have earned, or even, as infants, chosen. It is God’s freely bestowed love. It is as radical as that, and it is gift. Through no virtue of our own we are made dead to the old and alive in the new.”
~ Madeline L’Engle

DELMAR: Well that's it boys, I been redeemed! The preacher warshed away all my sins and transgressions. It's the straight-and-narrow from here on out and heaven everlasting's my reward!

EVERETT: Delmar, what the hell are you talking about?

DELMAR: Preacher said my sins are warshed away, including that Piggly Wiggly I knocked over in Yazoo!

EVERETT: I thought you said you were innocent a those charges?

DELMAR: Well I was lyin' - and I'm proud to say that that sin's been warshed away too! Neither God nor man's got nothin' on me now! ...

EVERETT: That's not the issue, Delmar. Even if it did put you square with the Lord, the State of Mississippi is more hard-nosed. ... Baptism! You two are just dumber'n a bag of hammers.
~ O Brother Where Art Thou

“Baptism definitively places our unique and personal name in the company of the Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Because we do not baptize ourselves (it is always something done to us in the name of the three-personed God in community) we are no longer merely by ourselves. We are on our way to understanding our lives comprehensively and in community as children of this three-personed God. We are turned around, no longer going our own way, but living as members of the community that follows Jesus.”
~Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

“It is necessary for us to undergo, by means of water, this preparatory rehearsal of the grace of resurrection, so that we may realize that it is as easy for us to rise again from death as to be baptized with water.”
~ St. Gregory of Nyssa

“The linkage which unites Christians in a common body is a linkage which crosses the boundaries of the centuries as well as the lines of longitude and latitude... The Christian community, the Church, is a massive body spread out across the map of history. It is a body quivering with life in all its members. All its members; not just those passing here and now between birth and death. That is the community the Christian joins at baptism.”
~Harry Blamires

“Baptism is the ordinance that initiates into the fellowship of the visible church. The visible church is a divine institution. It is the house and family of God. It is a divine sanctuary where God's glory is made known. It is the channel along which normally the current of God's saving grace flows. What a privilege it is for parents by divine authority in the reception of the ordinance of baptism to introduce their children into this blessed fellowship.”
~ John Murray, Why We Baptize Infants

“Christianity is about water: 'Everyone who thirsteth, come ye to the waters.' It's about baptism, for God's sake (literally). It's about immersion, about falling into something elemental and wet. Most of what we do in worldly life is geared toward our staying dry, looking good, not going under. But in baptism, in lakes and rain and tanks and fonts,
you agree to do something that's a little sloppy because at the same time it's also holy, and absurd. It's about surrender, giving in to all those things we can't control; it's a willingness to let go of balance and decorum and get drenched.”
~ Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies

“The Christian hope is not, despite popular impressions, that we will simply ‘go to heaven when we die’.  As far as it goes, that statement is all right; after death those who love God will be with him, will be in his dimension.  But the final Christian hope is that the two dimensions, heaven and earth, at present separated by a veil of invisibility caused by human rebellion, will be united together, so that there will be new heavens and a new earth.
Heaven isn’t, therefore, an escapist dream, to be held out as a carrot to make people better behaved; just as God isn’t an absentee landlord who looks down from a great height to see what his tenants are doing and to tell them they mustn’t.  Heaven is the extra dimension, the God-dimension, of all our present reality and the God who lives there is present to us, present with us, sharing our joys and our sorrows, longing as we are longing for the day when his whole creation, heaven and earth together, will perfectly reflect his love, his wisdom, his justice, and his peace.”
~ N. T. Wright, Following Jesus

“We humans, with our deep-seated pretensions to being gods, are endlessly preoccupied with worrying and tinkering with matters of salvation as if we were in charge of it. But we are not. God carries out the work of salvation; not, to be sure, without our participation, but it is God's work done in God's way.”
~ Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

“All good which could be thought or desired is to be found in Jesus Christ alone. For He was humbled to exalt us, He became a slave to free us, He became poor to enrich us, He was sold to redeem us, made captive for our deliverance, condemned for our absolution; He was made a curse for our blessings, an offering for sin for our righteousness, He was marred that we might be restored. He died for our life.
By Him harshness is softened, anger appeased, darkness made light, injustice justified, weakness made strong, dejection consoled... assaults assailed, effort weakened, combat combatted, vengeance avenged, torment tormented, damnation damned, ruin ruined, hell held prisoner, death done to death and immortality made immortal!”
~ John Calvin, Preface to the French Bible,1539

“God pours life into death and death into life without a drop being spilled.”
~ Anonymous

[“How, then, do we prepare ourselves for death? By living each day in the full awareness of being children of God, whose love is stronger than death. Speculations and concerns about the final days of our life are useless, but making each day into a celebration of our beloved-ness as sons and daughters of God will allow us to live our final days, whether short or long, as birthing days. The pains of dying are labor pains.  Through them, we leave the womb of this world and are born to the fullness of the children of God.”
~  Henri J.M. Nouwen]

“And Aslan said, 'If the Witch knew the true meaning of sacrifice, she might have interpreted the deep magic differently. That when a willing victim who has committed no treachery is killed in a traitor's stead, the stone table will crack,
and even death itself would turn backwards.'”
~ C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

We think, analyze, and wonder. We toss our lives over and over again in our hearts, trying our best to make sense of the mystery of our own story and recognizing the scary reality that there's little we are actually in charge of...
Yet we long for our lives to make sense. What you are actually discovering is that you were hardwired to be connected to Another. Every human being is on a quest for God; the problem is we don't know that, and in our quest for stability, we attempt to stand on an endless catalog of God-replacements that end up sinking with us.1

Paul Tripp,  A Shelter in the Time of Storm, pp. 32-33.

“Is – is he a man?” asked Lucy.
“Aslan a man!” said Mr Beaver sternly. “Certainly not. ... Aslan is a lion –
the Lion, the great Lion.”
“Then he isn't safe?” said Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe.
But he's good...”1

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

If the Holy Spirit – God's way of being with us, working through us, and speaking to us – is the way in which continuity is maintained between the life of Jesus and the life of Jesus' community, prayer is the primary way in which the community actively receives and participates in that presence and working and speaking. Prayer is our way of being attentively present to God who is present to us in the Holy Spirit.
Prayer begins when God addresses us. First God speaks; our response, our answer, is our prayer. This is basic to understanding the practice of prayer; we never initiate prayer, even though we think we do. Something has happened. Someone has spoken to us, before we open our mouths, whether we remember or are aware of it or not. Just as we learn to speak our mother tongue by first being immersed in the language of our mothers and fathers, siblings and others, so we learn prayer in response to what is being said to us, over and over, by the Holy Spirit in Scripture and song, in story and sermon, in heart-whispers and bold witness.
In Luke's Gospel, five prayers articulate a language of listening and believing,
a language of receptive and responsive participation as God speaks the life of Jesus and the Jesus community into existence. They have been installed as basic elements in our life together, keeping us attentive and responsive to the Holy Spirit in and among us through the practice of prayer.
So this morning we pray the second of these five prayers – Mary's response to the angel Gabriel's message that she was to give birth to the Son of God!  Known as the Magnificat, or the “Song of Mary,” it is a canticle (song) that echoes a number of Old Testament passages (see 1 Samuel 2:1-10).
Mary's prayer takes us into a large, extensive world of God's promised word in the process of fulfillment. It is a world large with creation and wonder, history and salvation. Prayer enlarges our imagination and makes us grateful, joyful participants in what has been and is yet to come.1]

Eugene Peterson,  Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places pp. 272-276.

When we are frightened by the greatness of the universe, we are (almost literally) frightened by our own shadows: for these light years and billions of centuries are mere arithmetic until the shadow of man, the poet, the maker of myth, falls upon them.  I do not say we are wrong to tremble at his shadow; it is a shadow of the image of God.1

C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock

“Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch. I was there when it was written.” ~ Aslan

“Everyone dies. Not everybody really lives.”
~ William Wallace

Lent should never be morose—an annual ordeal during which we begrudgingly forgo a handful of pleasures. Instead, it ought to be approached as an opportunity. After all, it is meant to be the church's springtime, when out of the darkness of sin's winter, a repentant, empowered people emerges.1

Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter.

Lent should never be morose—an annual ordeal during which we begrudgingly forgo a handful of pleasures. Instead, it ought to be approached as an opportunity. After all, it is meant to be the church's springtime, when out of the darkness of sin's winter, a repentant, empowered people emerges.1

Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter.

“Nothing, how little so ever it be, if it is suffered for God's sake, can pass without  merit in the sight of God.”
~ Thomas à Kempis

There the Lord opened the sense of my unbelief that I might at last remember my sins and then turn with all my heart to the Lord my God, who had regard for my low estate, and took pity on my youth and ignorance, and watched over me before
I knew Him, and before I was able to distinguish between good and evil, and guarded me, and comforted me as would a father his son.

Preface to St. Patrick's Confession

“Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone,
but in every leaf in springtime.”
~ Martin Luther

This title, “Praises,” catches our attention because it is inaccurate. Most psalms are complaints. They are calls of help by helpless and hurting men and women. They are wrung out of desperate conditions. A life of prayer forces us to deal with the reality of the world and of our own lives at a depth and with an honesty that is quite unheard of by the prayerless, and much of that reality we would certainly avoid if we could. Do we really want to feel this deeply? If we knew that was where prayer takes us, would we have ever signed on?
“Praises” as a title is not statistically accurate but it is accurate all the same. It is accurate because it accurately describes the end, the finished product. All prayer, pursued far enough, becomes praise. Any prayer, no matter how desperate its origin, no matter how angry and fearful the experiences it traverses, ends up in praise. It does not always get there quickly or easily – the trip can take a lifetime – but the end is always praise. “Praises,” in fact, is the only accurate title for our prayer book, for it is the goal that shapes the journey: “The end is where we start from.”1

Eugene Peterson, Answering God, pp. 121-122.

No matter how much we suffer, no matter our doubts, no matter how angry we get, no matter how many times we have asked in desperation or doubt, “How long?,” prayer develops finally into praise. All prayer, pursued far enough, becomes praise.

Eugene Peterson, Answering God

“And he departed from our sight that we might return to our heart, and there
find Him. For He departed, and behold, He is here!”
~ St Augustine

The most obvious answer is that we're in a hurry and not used to listening. We're trained to use our minds to get information and complete assignments; but the God revealed to us in Jesus and our Scriptures is infinitely personal and relational. Unless we take the time to be quiet, in a listening way, in the presence of God,
we never get to know him. The same question is why so few married couples really know their spouses. People get divorced after 20 years of marriage, and the rejected spouse says, “I never knew this was coming. I thought everything was fine.” But there was not much listening in those 20 years...

Eugene Peterson, Why Can't I Hear God?

A dehumanized Jesus allows us to develop a practice of love that has nothing to do with actual people. A dehumanized Jesus is a lot easier and more pleasant to love than a difficult spouse, or an angry teenager, or a rude neighbor, or an insufferably boring brother-in-law – all of them so very, very human...


Christ Plays, Eugene Peterson

Many people assume that spirituality is about becoming emotionally intimate with God. That’s a naïve view of spirituality. What we’re talking about is the Christian life. It’s following Jesus. Spirituality is no different from what we’ve been doing for two thousand years just by going to church and receiving the sacraments, being baptized, learning to pray, and reading Scriptures rightly. It’s just ordinary stuff. It’s a way of life, a life of openness, honesty, a certain transparency.1

Eugene Peterson, interview in “Christianity Today,” March 2005.

“If we think anything less than God will satisfy our deepest longings and desires,    we will live in a constant state of frustration and angst.”
~ Jim Holland

A consuming, selfless desire to give to God is the heart and essence of worship.
It begins with the giving first of ourselves, and then of our attitudes, and then of our possessions – until worship is a way of life.

John MacArthur

“Shun spirituality that does not require commitment. Personal commitment to the  God personally revealed in Jesus is at the heart of real spirituality ...
Spirituality without commitment is analogous to sexuality without commitment –  quick and casual, superficial and impersonal, selfish and loveless – eventually a  parody of its initial promise. Deprived of commitment, sexuality degenerates into  addiction, violence, or boredom. Deprived of commitment, spirituality, no matter  how wise or promising, has a short shelf life.”
~ Eugene Peterson, Subversive Spirituality

Whether we really have found God's peace will be shown by how we deal with the sufferings that will come upon us. There are many Christians who do, indeed, kneel before the cross of Jesus Christ, and yet reject and struggle against every tribulation in their own lives.
They believe they love the cross of Christ, and yet they hate that cross in their own lives. And so in truth they hate the cross of Jesus Christ as well, and in truth despise that cross and try by any means possible to escape it…
They have basically merely sought peace with the world, believing possibly that by means of the cross of Jesus Christ they might best come to terms with themselves and with all their questions, and thus find inner peace of the soul.
They have used the cross, but not loved it. They have sought peace for their own
sake. But when tribulation comes, that peace quickly flees them. It was not peace with God, for they hated the tribulation God sends…
But those who love the cross of Jesus Christ, those who have genuinely found peace in it, now begin to love even the tribulations in their lives, and ultimately will be able to say with scripture, “We also boast in our sufferings.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I do not think of Christ as God alone, or man alone, but both together.
For I know he was hungry, and I know that with five loaves he fed five thousand.
I know he was thirsty, and I know that he turned water into wine.
I know that he was worshiped by angels, and I know that he was stoned by Jews.
I know that he died, and I know that he raised the dead.
By reason of these things I know that he is both God and man.

John Chrysostom of Antioch, a 4th century preacher and early church father

“Something is wrong here, dreadfully wrong. We feel it in our bones.
The most conspicuous event in history that arouses within us this  spontaneous sense of violation, of outrageous sacrilege, is the suffering  and death of Jesus, a suffering and death in which eventually we will  all find ourselves involved, whether we like it or not.”
~ Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays

“Jesus was the only one that ever raised the dead and he shouldn’t have done it.  He’s thrown everything off balance. If he did what he said, there’s nothing for you  to do but throw away everything and follow him, and if he didn’t, there's nothing  for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you've got left the best way you can.”
~ Flannery O’Connor

In worship God gathers his people to himself as center. Worship is a meeting at the center so that our lives are centered in God and not lived eccentrically. We worship so that we live in response to and from this center, the living God.
Failure to worship God consigns us to a life of spasms and jerks, at the mercy of every advertisement, every seduction, every siren. Without God as our focus of worship, we live manipulated and manipulating lives. We move in either frightened panic or deluded lethargy as we are, in turn, alarmed by specters and soothed by placebos.
If there is no center, there is no circumference. People who do not worship God are swept into a vast restlessness, with no steady direction and no sustaining purpose.

Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination.

“It costs God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert  rebellious wills cost him crucifixion. You must make your choice. Either this man  was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut  him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at  his feet and call him Lord and God.”
~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Within the last two centuries (especially in liberal theology), we see a horror of any idea that God might actually act in the world. We want God banished upstairs so we can get on with running the world downstairs. But with the resurrection, we have God saying, “No, I want to put things downstairs to rights, thank  you very much. I started doing it with Jesus and you'd better get in line.”

N.T. Wright

“The way of Jesus cannot be imposed or mapped – it requires an active  participation in following Jesus as he leads us through sometimes strange and  unfamiliar territory, in circumstances that become clear only in the hesitations  and questionings, in the pauses and reflections where we engage in prayerful  conversation with one another and with him.”
~ Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way

“Glory” is a light-filled word spilling out the extravagant brightness that marks      God's presence among us. It is also used to ascribe honor and dignity and “weightiness” to mountains and weather and men and women, but the most  prominent use in our Scriptures is in relation to God.
“No one has ever seen God” (John 1:18), but we do see his glory, the bright   splendor that marks God's presence, present among us here and now: at Sinai,
in the tabernacle, in the temple, and, most of all and most personally, in Jesus.1

Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places.

“Mercy is a command of God, yet it cannot simply be a response to a demand.
It must arise out of hearts made generous and gracious by an understanding and  experience of God’s mercy. It is the hearts of the congregation that must be melted  until they ask, 'Where is my neighbor?'”
~ Tim Keller, Ministries of Mercy

“Though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by  our sins, or our indifference; and it is therefore quite relentless in its  determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at  whatever cost to Him.”
~ C.S. Lewis

“Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment.”
~ C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Keeping Lent is potentially dangerous, precisely because of this focus on the heart. After all, it is much easier to read a book on prayer than to spend time leisurely speaking with our heavenly Father. It is much easier to fast from certain foods than it is to turn from idols of the heart. It is much easier to write a check than to spend time in ministries of mercy. Consequently, Lent is easily trivialized. The point of Lent is not to give up chocolate; it's to give up sin!

Craig Higgins, On Keeping A Holy Lent.

The feeling of being, or not being, forgiven and loved, is not what matters. If there is a particular sin on your conscience, repent and confess it. If there isn't, tell the despondent devil not to be silly. One must always get back to the practical and definite. What the devil loves is that vague cloud of unspecified guilt feeling (or unspecified virtue) by which he lures us into despair (or presumption). 'Details, please?' is the answer. The sense of dereliction cannot be a bad symptom, for our Lord Himself experienced it in its depth – 'Why hast thou forsaken me?'”

~ C.S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

Prayer is either a sheer illusion or it is a personal contact between embryonic, incomplete persons (ourselves) and the utterly concrete Person. Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine.
In prayer God shows Himself to us. What He does is learned from who He is.

C.S. Lewis, The World's Last Night

Eugene Peterson in Answering God:
What takes place is that what has happened to us, in us and around us – the facts that stream into us through our genes and our culture and our meetings  – are metabolized into daily life. Prayer takes our genetic, cultural, and social experience and gets it circulating in our bloodstream as faith and hope and love, building muscles, lubricating our elbows and knees, replacing dead skin with fresh, repairing lesions.

“In a few moments the darkness turned into a greyness ahead, and then, almost  before they dared to begin hoping, they had shot out into the sunlight and were in  the warm, blue world again.
And just as there are moments when simply to lie in bed and see the daylight  pouring through your window and to realize that 'it was only a dream: it wasn't  real,' is so heavenly that it was very nearly worth having the nightmare in order to  have the joy of waking, so they all felt when they came out of the dark. All at once  everybody realized that there was nothing to be afraid of and never had been.”
~ C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

If I was saved by my good works then there would be a limit to what God could ask  of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with “rights” – I would have  done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if I am a sinner  saved by sheer grace – then there's nothing he cannot ask of me.

~ Tim Keller, The Reason for God

“You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease – that is, to watch a girl  undress on the stage. Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a  theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting  the cover so as to let every one see; just before the lights went out, that it  contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that  country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? And would not  anyone who had grown up in a different world think there was something equally  queer about the state of the sex instinct among us?
One critic said that if he found a country in which such strip-tease acts with food  were popular, he would conclude that the people of that country were starving.  He meant, of course, to imply that such things as the strip-tease act resulted not  from sexual corruption but from sexual starvation. I agree with him that if, in  some strange land, we found that similar acts with mutton chops were popular,  one of the possible explanations which would occur to me would be famine.”
~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“I want to make it as clear as I possibly can that the centre of Christian morality is  not sexual morality. If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme
vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the  least bad of all
sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in
the wrong, of bossing and patronizing and spoiling sport, and back-biting; the
pleasures of power, of hatred.
For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to
become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the
worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church
may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither...”
~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“A perfect faith is nowhere to be found, so it follows that all of us are partly  unbelievers. Yet a man will be justified by faith when, apart from righteousness
of works, he by faith lays hold of the righteousness of Christ, and, clothed in it,  appears in the sight of God not as a sinner, but as righteous.”
~ John Calvin

“The question is not, 'Can someone lead a good life without Christianity?'
The question is, 'Can I?'”
~ C.S. Lewis, Readings for Meditation and Reflection

Victor Hugo: “Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”

“Anger is a useful diagnostic tool. When anger erupts in us, it is a signal that  something is wrong. Something isn't working right. There is evil or incompetence  or stupidity lurking about...
What anger fails to do, though, is tell us whether the wrong is outside us or inside  us. We usually begin by assuming that the wrong is outside us – our spouse or our  child or our God has done something wrong, and we are angry. But when we track  the anger carefully, we often find it leads to a wrong within ourselves.”
~ Eugene Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant

[Throughout the ages, the Christian church has confessed both its sin and its faith. But what if you're not sure if you believe? Perhaps this will help...
My friend Meredith will be confirmed next week. She is terrified. She thinks she might run away. She says she would be less scared if she were getting married or being crowned the queen of England.
She says she is not having new doubts, just the same ones she has every Sunday, only magnified.“Every time I stand up to say the Creed, I wonder if I can say I believe these things,” she says.
I tell her what I told her two years ago when she told me she wasn't enough of a Christian to go to church. I told her, “Go to church for a while and one day you may look down and discover you've become a Christian.”
I tell her there is a Hasidic story. A student goes to his teacher and says, “Rabbi, how can I say 'I believe' when I pray, if I'm not sure I believe?”
His rabbi has an answer: “'I believe' is a prayer meaning, 'Oh, that I may believe!'”
~ Lauren Winner, Girl Meets God, p. 271]

“We must ask ourselves the hard questions as often as we dare. How will the world  change if we do not question it?”
~ Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

Luke's Gospel begins with a visitation of the Holy Spirit that results in conception; the book of Acts begins similarly, also with a visitation of the Holy Spirit that results in conception. In the Gospel it is Jesus, the Savior, who is conceived. In Acts it is the church, the company of the saved, that is conceived. The two Holy Spirit conceptions are meant to be understood as parallel beginnings to parallel narratives: both Jesus Christ and the community of Jesus Christ similarly conceived by the Holy Spirit...
But the births themselves (and this is important to observe) are completely natural. The Holy Spirit, however miraculous in the conception of life itself, doesn't seem to shortcut or skip anything that is human. There is nothing in a Holy Spirit-conceived life that exempts that life from the common lot of humanity. It didn't skip anything in Jesus, and it doesn't skip anything in us...
We are not to lose sight of the fundamental Jesus story line: what the community does and says and prays is continuous with what Jesus does and says and prays. This is the same Jesus story that we read in the Gospel but without Jesus being visibly and audibly present. The Holy Spirit is God's way of being present and active among us in the same way he was in Jesus.1

Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, pp 268-270.

“Man's good opinion of himself makes him think it quite possible to win God's favor by his own religious performances; his bad opinion of God makes him unwilling and afraid to put his case wholly into His hands.
The object of the Holy Spirit's work is to alter man's opinion of himself and so to reduce his estimate of his own character that he should think of himself as God does, and so cease to suppose it possible that he can be justified by any excellency of his own. The Spirit then alters his evil opinion of God, so as to make him see that the God with whom he has to do is really the God of all grace.”
~ Horatius Bonar

If the Holy Spirit – God's way of being with us, working through us, and speaking to us – is the way in which continuity is maintained between the life of Jesus and the life of Jesus' community, prayer is the primary way in which the community actively receives and participates in that presence and working and speaking. Prayer is our way of being attentively present to God who is present to us in the Holy Spirit.
Prayer begins when God addresses us. First God speaks; our response, our answer, is our prayer. This is basic to understanding the practice of prayer; we never initiate prayer, even though we think we do. Something has happened. Someone has spoken to us, before we open our mouths, whether we remember or are aware of it or not. Just as we learn to speak our mother tongue by first being immersed in the language of our mothers and fathers, siblings and others, so we learn prayer in response to what is being said to us, over and over, by the Holy Spirit in Scripture and song, in story and sermon, in heart-whispers and bold witness.
In Luke's Gospel, five prayers articulate a language of listening and believing,
a language of receptive and responsive participation as God speaks the life of Jesus and the Jesus community into existence. They have been installed as basic elements in our life together, keeping us attentive and responsive to the Holy Spirit in and among us through the practice of prayer.1

Eugene Peterson,  Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places pp. 272-276.

It is quite right that you should feel that 'something terrific' has happened to you. Accept these sensations with thankfulness as birthday cards from God, but remember that they are only greetings, not the real gift. The real gift is the gift of the Holy Spirit.
The sensations are merely the response of your nervous system. Don't depend on them. Otherwise when they go and you are once more emotionally flat, you might think that the real thing had gone too. But it won't. It will be there when you can't feel it. May even be most operative when you can feel it least.
This is the push to start you off on your first bicycle: you'll be left to lots of dogged pedaling later on. And no need to feel depressed about it either. It will be good for your spiritual leg muscles. So enjoy the push while it lasts, but enjoy it as a treat, not as something normal. He will still be there, even when you can't feel it.

Some thoughts by C.S. Lewis, from a letter to a friend who had just found Jesus:

"The poet's job is to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, in such a beautiful  way that people cannot live without it; to put into words those feelings we all have  that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name. The poet's job is to find a  name for everything; to be a fearless finder of the names of things; to be an  advocate for the beauty of language, the subtleties of language."     ~ Jane Kenyon

We wake up each morning to a world we did not make.  There is so much here – around, above, below, inside, outside.  Even with the help of poets and scientists we can account for very little of it.  We are fascinated by this endless proliferation of sheer Is-ness – color and shape and texture and sound.
After awhile we get used to it and quit noticing.  We get narrowed down into something small and constricting.  Somewhere along the way this exponential expansion of awareness, this wide-eyed looking around, this sheer untaught delight in what is here, reverses itself:  the world contracts; we are reduced to a life of routine through which we sleepwalk.1

Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places.

[When the disciples talked to Jesus about problems in their prayer life, this is what he gave them – six short sentences of spiritual dynamite:

I don't think you could say more dangerous words than those found in the Lord's Prayer.  Here are the radical words I have been alluding to: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).
I must admit that I don't always greet God's kingdom with delight.  There are things that I want in my life, and I not only want them, but I know how, when, and where I want them!  I want my life to be comfortable.  I want my schedule to be unobstructed and predictable.  I want the people around me to esteem and appreciate me.  I want control over the situations and relationships in my life.  I don't want to suffer.  I don't want to live without.
What I am saying is that I want my kingdom to come and my will to be done.
“Thy kingdom come” is a dangerous prayer, for it means the death of your own sovereignty.  It means your life will be shaped by the will of another.  It means that you will experience the messiness, discomfort, and difficulty of God's refining grace.  It means surrendering the center of your universe to the One who alone deserves to be there.  It means loving God above all else and your neighbor as yourself. It means finally living for the one glory that is truly glorious, the glory of God.
And it is only God's grace that can produce this kind of heart.
~ Paul David Tripp, Whiter Than Snow

[Throughout the ages, Christians have confessed their faith together – both as a way of summarizing their beliefs and identifying with other Christians who have gone before. This is why creeds play an important part in worship at All Souls. But what if you're not sure if you believe? Perhaps this will help...
My friend Meredith will be confirmed next week. She is terrified. She thinks she might run away. She says she would be less scared if she were getting married or being crowned the queen of England.
She says she is not having new doubts, just the same ones she has every Sunday, only magnified. “Every time I stand up to say the Creed, I wonder if I can say I believe these things,” she says.
I tell her what I told her two years ago when she told me she wasn't enough of a Christian to go to church. I told her, “Go to church for a while and one day you may look down and discover you've become a Christian.”
I tell her there is a Hasidic story. A student goes to his teacher and says,
“Rabbi, how can I say 'I believe' when I pray, if I'm not sure I believe?”
His rabbi's answer: “'I believe' is a prayer meaning, 'Oh, that I may believe!'”
~ Lauren Winner, Girl Meets God]

“All God's giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they  reckoned on God being with them.”
~ Hudson Taylor

“We never know how much real faith we have until it is put to the test in some
fierce storm; and that is the reason why the Savior is on board. If you are ever to
be strong in the Lord and the power of His might, your strength will be born in
some storm.”
~ Anonymous

With a weak faith and a fearful heart, many a sinner stands before the Lord.
It is not the strength of our faith, but the perfection of Christ's sacrifice that saves! No feebleness of faith, no dimness of eye, no trembling of hand can change the efficacy of Christ's blood. The strength of our faith can add nothing to it, nor can the weakness of our faith take anything from Him. Faith (weak or strong) still reads the promise, “the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.”
If at times my eye is so dim that I cannot read these words, through blinding tears or bewildering trials, faith rests itself on the certain knowledge of the fact that
THE PROMISE IS THERE, and the blood of Christ remains in all its power and suitableness upon the altar, unchanged and unaffected.1

Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness.

You need me every moment. Your awareness of your constant need for me is your greatest strength. Your neediness, properly handled, is a link to my presence...
Your inadequacy presents you with a continual choice – deep dependence on me,
or despair. The emptiness you feel within will be filled either with problems or with my presence. Make me central in your consciousness by praying continually:
simple short prayers flowing out of the present moment. Keep on asking and you will receive, so that your gladness may be full and complete (John 16:24).

~ Sarah Young, Jesus Calling

“It is not repentance that saves me; repentance is the sign that I realize what God  has already done in Christ Jesus.”
~ Oswald Chambers

“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
Costly grace is the kingly rule of Christ. It is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.”
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

If we want to keep company with followers of Jesus throughout the ages, we have to radically revise our imaginations and memories in order to take this in: to see sacrifice, offering, weakness, and suffering as essential, not an option, to our salvation...
Salvation: Jesus on the cross, his body and blood in the Eucharist, the bread and wine in me, Christ in me. And all of this going on every day in me and in those around me. This is the action – salvation! – at the heart of everything in creation, history, and community. This is what makes a holy world, a holy people, a holy time. There are a few who knowingly and willingly participate...1

Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus is the Way.

Deep in our hearts we all know that the typical places we look for security really offer us little of what we seek. Deep and lasting security, resilient hope, and sturdy rest of heart and mind can only be found vertically. You will only know the rest for which you seek when you begin to embrace the astounding reality of who you are as a child of God. If you are God's child, you are the object of the love of the Person who rules everything that there is to rule.1

Paul David Tripp, A Shelter in the Time of Storm: Meditations on God and Trouble.

The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret... Our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation.1

C.S. Lewis,  The Weight of Glory.

“This is the Jesus who entered the bloody history of Israel, and the human race. Jesus didn't enter a world of sparkly Christmas cards or a world of warm spiritual sentiment. Jesus enters a world of real pain, of serious dysfunction, a world of brokenness and political oppression.
Jesus was born an outcast, a homeless person, a refugee, and finally he becomes a victim to the powers that be. Jesus is the perfect savior for outcasts, refugees, and nobodies. That's how the church is described in Scripture time and time again – not as the best and the brightest, but those who in their weakness become a sign for the world of the wisdom and power of God.”                                                                                                                                                                
~ Joy Carroll Wallis

Explanation pins things down so that we can handle them and use them – obey and   teach, handle and guide.  Imagination opens things up so that we can grow into maturity – worship and adore, follow and trust. Explanation defines and holds down; imagination expands and lets loose.  Explanation puts us in harness; imagination catapults us into mystery.  Explanation reduces life to what can be used; imagination enlarges life into what can be adored.1
So we begin by asking God to speak to our imaginations:

Eugene Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant.

Baptism definitively places our unique and personal name in the company of the Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Because we do not baptize ourselves (it is always something done to us in the name of the three-personed God in community) we are no longer merely by ourselves. We are on our way to understanding our lives comprehensively and in community as children of this three-personed God. We are turned around, no longer going our own way, but living as members of the community that follows Jesus.

Repent is the no and follow the yes of the baptized life. Repent is an action word: change direction. You are going the wrong way, thinking the wrong thoughts, imagining everything backward. We begin the resurrection life not by adding something to our lives but by renouncing the frenetic ego life...
And then follow. Follow Jesus. Keeping company with Jesus, observing what he does and listening to what he says, develops into a life of answering God, a life of responding to God, a life of prayer.1
With that in mind, we set out to understand Jesus, so we can decide whether or not we really want to follow where he leads. Sound interesting? Then let's go...]

Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places.

The linkage which unites Christians in a common body is a linkage which crosses the boundaries of the centuries as well as the lines of longitude and latitude... The Christian community, the Church, is a massive body spread out across the map of history. It is a body quivering with life in all its members. All its members; not just those passing here and now between birth and death. That is the community the Christian joins at baptism.1

Harry Blamires

Prayer is what develops in us after we step out of the center and begin responding to the center, to Jesus. We follow Jesus, joining the company of his followers, cultivating a life of prayer in Jesus' name, finding that the Spirit is praying in us and through us to the Father.1

Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places.

We must assert that there can be only one Christian family, only one Christian faith, hope and baptism, and only one Christian body, because there is only one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  You can no more multiply churches than you can multiply Gods.  Is there only one God?  Then he has only one church.... The unity of the church is as indestructible as the unity of God himself.  It is no more possible to split the church than it is possible to split the Godhead.1

John R.W. Stott, The Message of Ephesians.

“How can you trust God after an event like this? The Christian answer to issues of suffering and tragedy always has to do with the Cross.
Imagine you are an admirer and companion of Jesus Christ during his ministry.
He is such a powerful worker of miracles that disease and hunger are almost banished from the countryside when he is present. He is such a powerful teacher and spiritual guide that thousands of people hear him gladly and get hope. Then suddenly this man who is the one to help the whole country is cruelly, unjustly cut off in the very midst of his life.
What if you stood at the foot of the cross in front of this apparently senseless act of violence and tragic waste of life, and you said, 'I can never, ever trust God again after an event like this!' And what if you went home and completely renounced all belief in God saying, 'This proves that God is either a monster or indifferent or he doesn't exist'?  If you did that, you would have been missing the greatest act of God's love and redemption in history.”
~ Tim Keller, Reflections on September 11

The Cross means that God is so committed to ending the suffering and brokenness of the world that he would himself become embroiled in it and pay the ultimate cost. And if we ask: “Why isn't the suffering over yet?” the answer is: “We don't know, but here's the proof that he's committed to it – the cross!” Only Christianity has a God who has suffered, proving his commitment to us in our brokenness.1

Tim Keller, Current and Historical Reflections on September 11.

God is good and he is generous. It is harder to be surprised by the goodness and generosity of God when you feel so miserable. The goal of the gospel is simply to remind you of the truth. Your job is simply to believe.

Ed Welch, Depression: A Stubborn Darkness, Light for the Path. See John 6:28-29: Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

“To be free from worry and to be free from trouble are not the same thing. Christ commands us not to be anxious, but does not promise that we will be immune to all misfortune. On the contrary, there are many indications that he knew all about calamity...
He said of the sparrows, ‘Not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will.’  But sparrows do fall to the ground and get killed.  His promise is not that they would not fall, but that this would not happen without God’s knowledge and consent. People fall too...
A Christian’s freedom from anxiety is not due to some guaranteed freedom from trouble, but to the confidence that God is our Father, that even suffering is within the orbit of his care, and that ‘in everything God works for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose’ (Romans 8:28).”
~ John R.W. Stott, The Sermon on the Mount

“We cannot be too careful about the words we use; we start out using them and they end up using us. Our imaginations become blunted. We end up dealing only with surfaces, functions, roles... And every time depersonalization leaks in, life leaks out. But souls are not sieves; souls brim with life: 'Bless the Lord, O my soul!'”

~ Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

Worship is a response to God's word in the context of the community of God's people. Worship in the biblical sources and in liturgical history is not so much something a person experiences, it is something we do, regardless of how we feel about it, or whether we feel anything about it at all. The experience develops out of the worship, not the other way around.
In the Bible, worship is defined and shaped by God's authoritative and clear word. Nothing is dependent on feelings or weather. All is determined by Scripture and Jesus. God has revealed who he is and demands obedience. Worship is the act of attending to that revelation and being obedient to it.
Authentic worship means being present to the living God who penetrates the whole of human life. The proclamation of God's word and our response to God's Spirit touches everything that is involved in being human: mind and body, thinking and feeling, work and family, friends and government, buildings and flowers.
Sensory participation is not excluded – how could it be if the whole person is to be present to God? But as rich and varied as the sensory life is, it is always defined and ordered by the word of God...
It is the difference between cultivating something that makes sense to an individual, and acting in response to what makes sense to God.1

Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus is the Way.

The inertia of sin is inward. It causes me to shrink my world down to the size of my life. It causes me to worship daily at the altar of my wants, my needs, and my feelings. Sin puts me at the center of my existence; the one place that neither I nor any other human being should be.1

Paul Tripp, A Quest for More: Living for Something Bigger Than You.

We pray because it is the only language we have for speaking to the God revealed in Jesus. It is also the only language we have for listening to the commands and blessings and guidance that God provides through Jesus. When language has to do with God and us, us and God, we call it prayer.1

Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus is the Way.

God in action, in colorful, kaleidoscopic imagery. God creating, still. God saving, still. And all of it going on at once – impossible to sort the items out, organize them alphabetically, and select what we want – a vast simultaneity in which we are caught up.”1

Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus is the Way.