gahhhhhhhh

I've been reading this passage over and over again for the past week:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him, and cried out, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.'" And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

John 1:1-18

interesting

"...Jesus was saying that the law isn't what is important. Love is what is important. If we love God, love our neighbor, and love ourselves (in that order), then we can live far above any set of rules or regulations. We have freedom to live apart from any legalistic standards when we live by the spirit of love. Paul echoed this form of 'freedom with responsibility' when he wrote:

"Everything is permissible" - but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible" - but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others. (1 Corinthians 10:23-24).

Paul was saying that you can do most anything, but it isn't always in your best interest or in the interest of others. Focus not on what is 'allowed,' but on what is best for all involved.

QUESTIONS OF COMPROMISE: don't ask
-Are my actions lawful?
-Will anyone find out?
-Would anyone condemn me?
-Is this socially acceptable?
-How can I get what I want?
-Will this hurt anyone?

QUESTIONS OF INTEGRITY: do ask
-Are my actions loving to others?
-Is this something I'd be proud of?
-Is this my highest standard?
-Is this in line with my convictions?
-What is my motive for wanting this?
-Will this benefit others?
We must look beyond the movements to the motivations behind our actions. By doing this, we no longer have to concern ourselves with the law because we are acting by a higher standard, a standard of love." -Shannon Ethridge

a classic

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. 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. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." -the great C.S. Lewis

faithful

Trusting God's plan has been a challenge lately, and this song always helps.



Morning by morning I wake up to find
the power and comfort of God's hand in mine.
Season by season I watch Him amazed,
in awe of the mystery of His perfect ways

All I have need of his hand will provide.
He's always been faithful to me

I can't remember a trial or a pain
He did not recycle to bring me gain.
I can't remember one single regret
in serving God only and trusting His hand

This is my anthem, this is my song, the
theme of the stories I've heard for so long.
God has been faithful, he will be again.
His loving compassion, it knows no end.

being good

from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

"Even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam - he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts. And that has practical consequences. As long as the natural life is in your body, it will do a lot towards repairing that body. Cut it, and up to a point it will heal, as a dead body would not. A live body is not one that never gets hurt, but one that can to some extent repair itself. In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble - because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out.

That is why the Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or - if they think there is not - at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it."

pretty song

It's in Emma and I think it was originally written by Handel.



Did you not hear my lady
Go down the garden singing
Blackbird and thrush were silent
To hear the alleys ringing

Oh, saw you not my lady
Out in the garden there
Shaming the rose and lily
For she is twice as fair

Though I am nothing to her
Though she must rarely look at me

Though I can never woo her
I'll love her 'till I die

Did you not hear my lady
Go down the garden singing
Silencing all the songbirds
And setting the alleys ringing

Surely you heard my lady
Out in the garden there
Rivaling the glittering sunshine
With the glory of golden hair.

Thomas Merton, man.

If I could, I would type the entire Seeds of Contemplation into this blog entry, but I'll have to be satisfied with a little snippet:

"Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self.

This is the man that I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy.

My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the radius of God's will and God's love - outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.

We are not very good at recognizing illusions: least of all the ones we have about ourselves - the ones we are born with and which feed the roots of sin. For most of the people in the world, there is no greater subjective reality than this false self of theirs, which cannot exist. A life devoted to the cult of this shadow is what is called a life of sin.

All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life trying to accumulate pleasures and experiences and power and honor and knowledge and love, to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something objectively real. And I wind experiences around myself and cover myself up with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface.

But there is no substance under the things I have gathered together about me. I am hollow, and my structure of pleasures and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me that I am a mistake.

The secret of my identity is hidden in the love and mercy of God."