THE HEAVENS DECLARE

'After the world had been created, man was placed in it as in a theatre, that he, beholding above him and beneath the wonderful works of God, might reverently adore their Author.'

John Calvin in Matthew Bingham, A Heart Aflame for God, p.236.

THE PURPOSE OF SEXUALITY

'The fire of erotic impulse, intrinsic to human nature, can brighten and warm our lives as a source of gladness and fruitfulness. It can also erupt in conflagrations of deadly passion. In a Christian optic, eros is an impulse towards the divine, but it not itself divine. It has its part to play in ordering human existence towards its true goal, the knowledge and love of God. It must not be mistaken for the goal.'

Erik Varden, Chastity, p.160.

WHY BEAUTY MATTER TO US

'The human will to embody beauty is, I suspect, underrated. But it lives in us as a consequence and expression of our iconic nature. He in whose image we are made is Beauty. Beauty is naturally the end towards which we strive.'

Erik Varden, Chastity, p.59.

WHAT GOD LOOKS LIKE

'Do you want to know what God is like, the form in which God reveals himself? Look in the mirror; look at your friends; look at your spouse. Start here: a human being with eyes and ears, hands and feet, eating meals with friends. Walking to the store for a bottle of milk, hiking in the hills and picking wildflowers, catching fish and cooking them on a beach for breakfast with friends.'

Eugene Peterson, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, p.227.

WHAT WE SHARE WITH GOD

'The characteristic common to God and man is apparently...the desire and ability to make things.'

Dorothy L Sayers in Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith, p.6. 

OUR RELATIONAL GOD

'The God, who in his very triune being us both union and communion, has created us for communion with one another and with himself.'

John Wyatt, Transforming Friendship, p.156.

THE VARIETY IN CREATION

'God made a riotous universe of fabulous functionality and superabundant systematicity, a perfect marriage between a tie-die bohemian artist and a round-spectacled besuited mathematician.'

Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory, p.72.

THE SELF-INTEREST IN ATHEISM

'It isn't just that I don't believe in God, and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.'

Thomas Nagel in Alister E McGrath, Through a Glass Darkly, p.173.

HEARING GOD'S VOICE

'Why is it that when when we speak to God we are said to be praying, but when God speaks to us we are said to be schizophrenic?'

Lily Tomlin in Dallas Willard, Hearing God: Building an intimate relationship with the Creator, p.5.

SANCTIFICATION

'It is the universal renovation of our natures by the Holy Spirit into the image of God, through Jesus Christ.'
John Owen in Kelly M Kapic, You're Only Human, p.164.

DIVINE REVELATION THROUGH CREATION

'The God of the Sahara must be vast, boundless, and expansive. The God of quarks must have an unimaginable eye for detail. The God of wombats must have a sense of humor. Everything in creation has theological implications, and one of the joys of being human is figuring out what they are.'

Andrew Wilson, God of All Things: Rediscovering the sacred in an everyday world, p.3.

THE SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CREATION

'The whole outward creation, which is but the shadows of beings, is so made to represent spiritual things.' 

Jonathan Edwards in Dane C Ortlund, Edwards on the Christian Life, p.79.

ULTIMATE JOY

'Ultimate joy comes not from a lover or a landscape or a home, but through them...They point to what is "higher up" and "further back."'

Cornelius Plantinga in Dane C Ortlund, Edwards on the Christian Life, p.77.

WHERE PLEASURE SHOULD LEAD US

'The Christian life is not an an ascetic life, but a life in which every received pleasure draws the mind up to supreme Pleasure, Christ himself, in his resplendent beauty. Joy is fundamentally a vision of God.' 

Dane Ortlund in Julian Hardyman, Jesus, Lover of My Soul, p.162.

WHERE CREATION POINTS US

'Every aspect of creation points in one way or another to some truth about God as he relates to us. Solid and dense though a mountain may be, it is like a shadow of the sheer vastness of God. The whole created order and the whole human world - real though they are, of course - were created to portray spiritual realities greater than themselves.'

Julian Hardyman, Jesus, Lover of My Soul: Fresh Pathways to Spiritual Passion, p.11.

WHERE IS GOD?

'"So God's up there? I say, pointing to all those wonderful stars. "A someone?"
"Everywhere, Ort. He's everything. The trees, the ground, the water. Everything stinks of God, reeks of him."'
Tim Winton, That Eye, The Sky, p.89.

GOD ALONE SATIFIES

'A soul that is capable of God can be filled with nothing else but God; nothing but God can fill a soul that is capable of God.' 

Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, p.43. 

WHAT MAKES DEPENDENCE ON GOD DIFFERENT

'To be unconditionally dependent on another human subject is to be in deep danger of repressive, dehumanizing patterns of relation. To depend on God in the context I have outlined is precisely to be delivered from this. God is not another ego greedy to control.'

Rowan Williams, Being Human, p.83. 

PSALM 23

'...only a few months before I had copied the last verse of the psalm into a notebook: 'But thy loving-kindness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.' It had occurred to me how often the the authors of scripture depict God as a house or shelter in which one might dwell, as if faith were itself a home, affording all the protection, comfort, stediness and sense of belonging that home implies - as if the need for God were homesickness in paraphrase.' 

William Fiennes, The Snow Geese, p.104. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF CREATION IN EVANGELISM

'The path of return to God lies through creation itself...Cultural apologetics involves cultivating spiritual perception, recognizing that creation itself offers glimpses of the divine. Even more, creation ushers us into God's presence as we learn to see God in and through all that he lovingly has made.' 

Paul M Gould, Cultural Apologetics: Renewing the Christian Voice, Conscience, and Imagination in a Disenchanted World, p.83.