GOD'S GRACE, HUMAN WEAKNESS

'There is a story frequently told in monastic circles that is attributed in a generic way to "the Fathers". I have not been able to trace it back to an original source. No matter. The story expresses something so universal that it is everyone's. Every one of us can rightly claim to be its author while equally claiming to have it on ancient authority. The story goes like this, with minor variations. 'A pilgrim asked an old monk: "Father, what do you do all day in the monastery?" The old monk replied: "I fall, and I am raised up again. I fall, and I am raised up again."'

Erik Varden, Alight with Hidden Glory, p.51.

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.

BEWARE!

'...the chief intoxicant of spiritual life: self-righteous ingratitude.'
Erik Varden, The Shattering of Loneliness, p.42.

BEING A CHRISTIAN

'The Christian condition is the art of striving to answer a call to perfection while plumbing the depth of our imperfection without despairing and without giving up on the ideal.'

Erik Varden, Chastity, p.120.

DON'T LOSE THE SUPERNATURAL THRUST OF CHRISTIANITY

'Once the supernatural thrust has gone from Christianity, what remains? Well-meaning sentiment and a set of commandments found to be crushing, the finality of change they were meant to serve having been summarily dismissed.'

Erik Varden, Chastity, p.114.

DISTINTIVE CHRISTIANITY

'[Christians] dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all.'

Anonymous in 'The Epistle to Diognetus' from Adam Ramsey, Faithfully Present, p.149.

CREEDS SHOULD TELL THE TRUTH

'The necessary condition for assessing the value of creeds is that we should fully understand that they claim to be, not idealistic fancies, not arbitrary codes, not abstractions irrelevant to human life and thought, but statements of fact about the universe as we know it.'

Dorothy L Sayers, The Mind of the Maker, p.14.

THE PURPOSE OF OUR LIVES

'We are sent into the world for a short time to say - through the joys and pains of our clock-time - the great "Yes" to the love that has been given to us and in so doing return to the One who sent us with the "Yes" engraved on our hearts. Our death thus becomes the moment of return. But our death can be this only if our whole life has been a journey back to the One from whom we come and who calls us the Beloved.'

Henri JM Nouwen, Life of the Beloved, p.79.

GOD'S LOVE FOR US

'Listening to that voice with great inner attentiveness, I hear at my centre words that say: "I have called you by name, from the very beginning. You are mine and I am yours. You are my Beloved, on you my favour rests. I have moulded you in the depths of the earth and knitted you together in your mother's womb. I have carved you in the plasm of my hands and hidden you in the shadow of my embrace. I look at you with infinite tenderness and care for you with a care more intimate than that of a mother for her child. I have counted every hair on your head and guided you every step. Wherever you go, I go with you, and wherever you rest, I keep watch. I will give you food that will satisfy all your hunger and drink that will quench all your thirst. I will not hide my face from you. You know me as your own and I know you as my own. You belong to me. I am your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your lover and your spouse...yes even your child...wherever you are I will be. Nothing will ever separate us. We are one.'"

Henri JM Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World, p.24

THE SELF-INTEREST OF CHRISTIAN SELF-SACRIFICE

'The principle runs through life from top to bottom. Give yourself up and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death or your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end; submit every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in.'

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.225.

THE DAILY STRUGGLE

'...the real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to the other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.'

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.198.

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN A LINE

'God looks at you as if you were a little Christ; Christ stands beside you to turn you into one.'

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.193.

GOD THE SCUPLTOR

'This world is a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.'

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.159.

FROM HIM ALL BLESSINGS FLOW

'Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to its father and saying, "Daddy, please give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present." Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child's present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction.'

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.143.

ENJOYING GOD

'Our job is to go sunbathing in the Father's love! Close your eyes, sit back in your chair and feel the warmth of his love on your skin.'

Tim Chester, Enjoying God, p.39.

WALKING ADVERTS

'A Christian is a mini-advertisement for divine beauty.'
Dane C Ortlund, Edwards on the Christian Life, p.30.

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IS A STORY

'The Christian life is conducted in story conditions. The Bible is basically and overall a narrative - an immense, sprawling, capacious narrative.'

Eugene H Peterson, Eat this Book, p.40.

FROM FEAR TO FAITH

'...the life of a Christian is lived in the tension between "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" and "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."'
Fleming Rutledge, Three Hours, p77.

THE CHRISTIAN'S HEART

'Within the heart are unfathomable depths. There are reception rooms and bedchambers in it, doors and porches, and many offices and passages. In it is the workshop of righteousness and of wickedness. In it is death; in it is life. The heart is Christ's palace: there Christ the King comes to take his rest, with the angels and spirits of the saints, and he dwells there, walking within it and placing his kingdom there. The heart is but a small vessel: and yet dragons and lions are there, and there poisonous creatures and all the treasures of wickedness; rough uneven places are there, and gaping chasms. There likewise is God, there are the angels, there life and the Kingdom, there light and the apostles, the heavenly cities and the treasures of grace. All things are there.'

Macarius in Churck DeGrot, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing your community from emotional and spiritual abuse, p.149.

THE HAPPINESS OF HOLINESS

'They that walk in a way of holiness, do obtain in this world the gratification of those spiritual appetites in a degree for the discoveries of God's glory , and the views of Christ's beauty, and in the incomes of the holy spirit, whereby the soul is filled with joy of the Holy Ghost. They feed on angel's food, on the bread which came down from heaven and have the foretastes of heaven's dainties.' 

Jonathan Edwards in Dane C Ortlund, Edwards on the Christian Life, p.163.