THE SORROW OF NOT YET SEEING JESUS

'"Truly, truly, I say to you, ...you will be sorrowful," Jesus said. Well, ...we're sorrowful about lots of things, you and I, God knows. It goes with the territory, sorrow. We carry it about with us the way a snail carries it shell; it is one of the homes we live in - sorrow about our country and about our pillaged earth, sorrow that youth grows old and beauty fades. Sorrow about death - about all the undone things the dead leave behind them as we will leave undone things behind us too when our time comes, like a pair of old shoes broken in to to take us on some blessed journey we never got around to taking, maybe the most crucial journey of our lives. But as Christians we inherit this special refinement of sorrow that Jesus speaks of, this sorrow for connoisseurs - which is the sorrow of not seeing plainly the One we need most to see.' 

Frederick Buechner, 'A Little While' in A Room Called Remember, p.99. 

WE GO TO CHURCH ON OUR SEARCH FOR JESUS

'Sunday after Sunday we go to church because we are looking for Jesus in some uncertain way or another - of all the reasons we have, I think this is the heart of them. We go to church looking for him because not just maple woods and silence and the occasional testimony of his saints speak to us of him, but becuase the spirit of him is so at large in the air we breathe that almost anything we see can turn into the shadow of him if we're not careful or if we are creaful - a piece of bread, a glasss of wine. We go to church looking for Jesus in some uncertain way because in some uncertain way we have seen him, have seen enough of him to suspect that if there is anyone who can lighten the dimness of us, he is the one who can - the Light of the World; the light, if we could only see him, even of our own dim inner worlds.' 

Frederick Buechner, 'A Little While' in A Room Called Remember, p.98. 

THE TOPSY-TURVY INCARNATION

'When Quirinius was governor of Syria, in a town called Bethlehem, a child was born who, beyond the power of anyone to account for, was the high and lofty One made low and helpless. The One who inhabits eternity comes to dwell in time. The One whom none can look upon and live is delivered in a stable under the soft, indifferent gaze of cattle. The Father of all mercies puts himself at our mercy.' 

Frederick Buechner, 'Emmnauel' in A Room Called Remember, p.61. 

TOP BOOKS OF 2018

In the order I enjoyed them: 

• HFM Prescott, The Man on a Donkey 
• Brad & Drew Harper, Space at the Table: Conversations Between an Evangelical Theologian and His Gay Son
• Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ  
• John Bew, Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee
• George Eliot, Adam Bede 
• John D Inazu, Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Through Deep Difference 
• Rankin Wilbourne, Union with Christ: The Way to Know and Enjoy God 
• Thomas Savage, The Sheep Queen: A Novel 
• Hermione Lee, Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life 
• Karen Swallow Prior, On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books 

WHERE FEAR DRIVES US

'"We all live in the hands of God."

"I tell myself that every time I'm really frightened. Unfortunately that's the only time I do think it."' 

William Maxwell, 'The French Scarecrow' in Over By the River and other stories, p.122. 

PERSONALITY AS VOCATION

'Without deemphasisizing the value of the Bible in knowing my calling, I have come to understand an even more basic place in which God's will for me has been communicated. That is in the givens of my being. My temperament, my personality, my abilities, and my interests and passions all say something about who I was called to be, not simply who I am. If I really believe that I was created by God and invited to find my place in his kingdom, I have to take seriously what God had already revealed about who I am.' 

David G Benner, The Gidt of Being Yourself, p.92. 

CHRISTIAN IDENTITY

'Some Christians base their identity on being a sinner. I think they have it wrong - or only half right. You are not simply a sinner; you are a deeply loved sinner. And there is all the difference in the world between the two.' 

David G Benner, The Gift of Being Yourself, p.60. 

SELF-KNOWLEDGE

'...to know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around.' 

Flannery O'Connor, 'The Fiction Writer & His Country' in Mystery & Manners, p.35. 

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

'When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock - to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.' 

Flannery O'Connor, 'The Fiction Writer & His Country' in Manners & Mystery, p.34. 

THE ESSENCE OF HUMILITY

'Once, when asked by a student at a lecture, "Miss O'Connor, why do you write?" she answered, "Because I am good at it." At first glance, this reply might seem conceited or proud. But the truth is that knowing what we are good at and what we are not, doing what we are supposed to do, and not what we aren't, being what we are supposed to be and not what we aren't, is the essence of true humility.' 

Karen Swallow Prior, On Reading Well, p.236.