DON'T BE A FISH OUT OF WATER

'As a fish lives in the water as in its element, and dies when it is out, so a Christian lives in prayer as in his element, and his heart dies when he is out of it.'

William Bridge in Matthew Bingham, A Heart Aflame for God, p.167.

OUR PATIENT GOD

'To read the Bible well is to become acquainted with God's patience.'
Esau McCaulley, Lent, p.60.

THE LORD'S SUPPER: RITUAL & ENCOUNTER

'Christ doesn't just teach us about himself in the Eucharist; he comes to us and nourishes the weary believer. We can have both. Ritual is both a means of spiritual formation (we learn through repetition) and an encounter (God meets us in the act of worship and praise in the liturgy).'

Esau McCaulley, Lent, p.55.

BECOMING A CHRISTIAN

'To transition from believing you live in a world where death is the end, to one in which an almighty God calls dead things to life.'

Esau McCaulley, Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal, p.7.

BIBLICAL MEDITATION

'Meditation is a middle sort of duty betweeen the word and prayer, and hath respect to both.'

Thomas Manton in Matthew Bingham, A Heart Aflame for God, p.131.

HOPELESS? HOPEFUL PRAYER

His prayers lean upward
on the dark and fall
like flares from a catastrophe.
He is a man breathing the fear
of hopeless prayer, prayed
in hope.

Wendell Berry, from '1994 VI' in A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997, p.181. 

SCRIPTURE AS RAPPORT

'Scripture is the ongoing rapport between heaven and earth.'

Herman Bavinck in Matthew Bingham, A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation, p.91.

HOW BEAUTY CREATES A HUNGER FOR TRUTH

'The beautiful, almost without any effort of its own, acquaints us with the mental event of conviction, and so pleasurable a mental state is this that ever afterwards one is willing to labor, struggle, wrestle with the world to locate enduring sources of conviction - to locate what is true.'

Elaine Scarry in Karen Swallow Prior, You Have a Calling, p.118.

TELLING THE TRUTH

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

Emily Dickinson in Karen Swallow Prioer, You Have a Calling, p.95.

OVERVALUING CHURCH MINISTRY

'This persistent assumption that church work is higher or nobler than "worldy" work (a form of neomonasticism) is the source of all kinds of evil.'

Karen Swallow Prior, You Have a Calling, p.62.