Sunday, 23 March 2025

GRIEF

'...grief, as I said, is a state as well as a process. And as with love, time simultaneously both stops and moves. You want it to stop - to be a state, so that you can hold on as much as possible to the image and memory of the lost loved one; but you also want it to be a process, one which will convey you out of this strange new land of pain before your spirit breaks.'
Julian Barnes, Changing My Mind, p.56.

THE REACH OF SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS

'Self-righteousness can feed upon doctrines, as well as upon works....'
John Newton in Tony Reinke, Newton on the Christian Life, p.258.

PASSING ON THE COMFORT

'Some of our afflictions perhaps befall us for the sake of our people, that we may be reminded and enabled to speak their feelings, by what we feel ourselves. In this way the tongue of the learned is acquired and skill to speak a word in season to the weary.'
John Newton in Tony Reinke, Newton on the Christian Life, p.237.

ASSUARANCE

'Assurance is not the eradication of indwelling sin, but the honest and humbled awareness of it.'
Tony Reinke, Newton on the Christian Life, p.222.

HONESTY ABOUT PRAYER

'I sometimes think that the prayers of believers afford a stronger proof of a depraved nature, than even the profaneness of those who know not the Lord. How strange is it, that when I have the fullest convictions that prayer is not only my duty—not only necessary as the appointed means of receiving those supplies, without which I can do nothing, but likewise the greatest honour and privilege to which I can be admitted in the present life—I should still find myself so unwilling to engage in it.
However, I think it is not prayer itself that I am weary of, but such prayers as mine. How can it be accounted prayer, when the heart is so little affected,—when it is polluted with such a mixture of vile and vain imaginations—when I hardly know what I say myself—but I feel my mind collected one minute, the next, my thoughts are gone to the ends of the earth.
If what I express with my lips were written down, and the thoughts which at the same time are passing through my heart were likewise written between the lines, the whole taken together would be such an absurd and incoherent jumble—such a medley of inconsistency, that it might pass for the ravings of a lunatic. When he points out to me the wildness of this jargon, and asks, is this a prayer fit to be presented to the holy heart-searching God? I am at a loss what to answer, till it is given me to recollect that I am not under the law, but under grace—that my hope is to be placed, not in my own prayers, but in the righteousness and intercession of Jesus. The poorer and viler I am in myself, so much the more is the power and riches of His grace magnified in my behalf.
Therefore I must, and, the Lord being my helper, I will pray on, and admire his condescension and love, that He can and does take notice of such a creature—for the event shows, that those prayers which are even displeasing to myself, partial as I am in my own case, are acceptable to him, how else should they be answered? And that I am still permitted to come to a throne of grace—still supported in my walk and in my work, and that mine enemies have not yet prevailed against me, and triumphed over me, affords a full proof that the Lord has heard and has accepted my poor prayers–yea, it is possible, that those very prayers of ours of which we are most ashamed, are the most pleasing to the Lord, and for that reason, because we are ashamed of them. When we are favoured with what we call enlargement, we come away tolerably satisfied with ourselves, and think we have done well.'
John Newton in Tony Reinke, Newton on the Christian Life, p.205.

I SHALL NOT WANT

'All shall work together for good: everything is needful that he sends; nothing can be needful that he withholds.'
John Newton in Tony Reinke, Newton on the Christian Life, p.194.

JESUS' PASTORAL CARE

'...with the eye, and the ear, and the heart of a friend, he attends to their sorrows; he counts their sighs, puts their tears in his bottle; and when our spirits are overwhelmed within us, he knows our path, and adjusts the time, the measures of our trials, and every thing that is necessary for our present support and reasonable deliverance, with the same unerring wisdom and accuracy as he weighted the mountains in scales and hills in a balance, and meted out the heavens with a span.'
John Newton in Tony Reinke, Newton on the Christian Life, p,.202.

Sunday, 23 February 2025

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.

THE INTIMACY OF BEING TRULY SEEN

'To be seen in truth is an intimate experience. Sight can in fact be more intimate than touch. As any pastor knows, people often go out in search of sexual adventure because they do not feel seen, suffer from this fact and crave a substitute. The risk is that pleasure serves, then, to exacerbate sadness and make loneliness worse. Intimacy does not have to be sexual. Sex can stand in intimacy's way.'
Erik Varden, Chastity, p.158.

Friday, 21 February 2025

THE ESCHATALOGICAL LIMITS TO BINARIES

'There is an eschatological thrust in the desire to overcome binary oppositions. Christ came to make the two one (cf. Ephesians 2.14, Galatians 3.28). Trouble ensues when human beings try to accomplish overcoming unaided. Christianity entertains hope of transcending human dichotomies not through pendular alterations, but through a transfiguration in love that realizes our thirst for infinity through graced communion with Infinite Being.'
Erik Varden, Chastity, p.124.