Quotes from The Mind of the Maker

"...if the M.C.C. (Marylebone Cricket Club) were to agree, in a thoughtless moment, that the ball must be hit by the batsman so that it should never come down to earth again, cricket would become an impossibility. A vivid sense of reality usually restrains sports committees from promulgating laws of this kind; other legislators occasionally lack this salutary realism."

" To complain that man measures God by his own experience is a waste of time; man measures everything by his own experience; he has no other yardstick."

"The poet is not obliged, as it were, to destroy the material of Hamlet in order to create a Falstaff, as a carpenter must destroy a tree-form to create a table-form."

"Our minds are not infinite; and as the volume of the world's knowledge increases, we tend more and more to confine ourselves, each to his special sphere of interest and to the specialized metaphor belonging to it. The analytic bias of the last three centuries has immensely encouraged this tendency, and it is now very difficult for the artist to speak the language of the theologian, or the scientist the language of either. But the attempt must be made; and there are signs everywhere that the human mind is once more beginning to move towards a synthesis of experience."

Dorothy Sayers

Silence and Words

"Silence is indeed the friend and helpmeet of thought and invention; but, if one aims at readiness of speech and the beauty of discourse, he will get at them by no other discipline than the study of words, and their constant practice." Gregory Thaumaturgus

Day 17: Disambiguation—G.E.G.

"Faith believes God to be truthful: hope waits for him to display his truthfulness at the appropriate time....Faith is the foundation on which hope is build: hope feeds faith and keeps it alive. And just as no one can expect or hope for anything from God without first believing his promises, in the same way the weakness of our faith (which, weary, must not falter) must be supported and preserved by persevering hope and expectancy." —John Calvin, Truth for All Time

In Psalm 3 we cactch a glimpse of David as he is overwhelmed by foes surrounding him, foes both of his own household and those without decrying owe and ill. In verse 3 David says, "But you, Oh Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head." He cried aloud to the Lord hoping—in his wearying faith—that these things might me true. Hoping that he will be given the faith to believe more fully. Hoping that God will display His truthfulness at the appropriate time. And then David went to sleep, "I lay down and slept" (verse 5). It's amazing what rest can do to disambiguate an overwhelming situation. Rest for the body. Rest for the soul. Rest for the mind. Rest in the One Who made us and in Whom we are hoping. God can use rest—that time when we actually dispare of our own competency, our own strength—to renew us body, mind, and soul. And in this rest God bestows on us, just as He did to David, the courage a new start and a new day has to offer. "I woke again, for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid..." (verses 5-6). David's hope and expectancy is brought to fruition and faith is renewed. Not only does David truely believe once again in God's promises, but now he has been given the faith and strength to live like it, "Strength belongs to the Lord; your blessing be on your people" (verse 8).


Psalm 3
1 O Lord, how many are my foes!
Many are rising against me;
2 many are saying of my soul,
there is no salvation for him in God. Selah [1]

3 But you, O Lord, are a shield about me,
my glory, and the lifter of my head.
4 I cried aloud to the Lord,
and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah

5 I lay down and slept;
I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.
6 I will not be afraid of many thousands of people
who have set themselves against me all around.

7 Arise, O Lord!
Save me, O my God!
For you strike all my enemies on the cheek;
you break the teeth of the wicked.

8 Salvation belongs to the Lord;
your blessing be on your people! Selah

The Mark of Christ's Elect

"God knoweth that ye are his own. Wrestle, fight, go forward, watch, fear,believe, pray; & then ye have all the infallible symptoms of one of the elect of Christ within you." Samuel Rutherford

Gone With the Wind

Old Miss Fontain could relate to the devastation, weariness, and heartache that Scarlett had experienced. She conveyed as much in her story of the Creek War, seeing each of her family members scalped by the Indians, trying to survive in the woods and on the back roads until she made it 30 miles on foot to Jonesboro. And in that moment of shared experiences, this is what Old Miss Fontain had to say:

Child, it's a very bad thing for a woman to face the worst that can happen to her, because after she's faced the worst she can't ever really fear anything again. And it's very bad for a woman not to be afraid of something....

Since that time I've never been afraid of anything or anybody because I'd known the worst that could happen to me. And that lack of fear has gotten me into a lot of trouble, and cost me a lot of happiness. God intended women to be timid, frightened creatures, and there's something unnatural about a woman who isn't afraid. Scarlett, always save something to fear even as you save something to love.

Nehemiah 2

The dreams of the night often evaporate in the cool light of the morning. So dreamers have to become thinkers, planners, and workers. People of vision need to become people of action. So Nehemiah, though inspired by his vision of the rebuilt city, had to make a plan. Soon after his arrival in Jerusalem he undertook a personal reconnaissance. By night he went out, examining the walls of Jerusalem. Thus in true leadership vision and action, a dream and a plan go together. —John Stott

Rest

“Rest: the sweet sauce of labor” —Plutarch

“Sleep, silence's child, sweet father of soft rest, prince whose approach peace to all mortals brings Indifferent host to shepherds and kings; sole comforter to minds with grief oppressed”
—William Drummond

Logic

So knavery puts on the face of justice; hypocrisy and superstition wear the vizard of piety; deceit and evil are often clothed in the shapes and appearances of truth and goodness. Now logic helps us to strip off the outward disguise of things, and to behold them and judge of them in their own nature. -- Isaac Watts in his book Logic

The Promise

"Is His promise only a dream?
Is it in our dreaming that we glimpse the fullness of His promise?"
--Frederick Buechner, The Son of Laughter

Jacob and the Persevering Love of God

"Jacob is a particularly important patriarch because he was the father of the chosen people, who came to be known as 'the children of Jacob' or ' children of Israel'. He is introduced in the Old Testament narrative, however, as a man who knew God's promises but could not trust him to keep them, so that he took things into his own hands to engineer their fulfillment. First he tricked Esau in Canaan. Then in Paddan Aram (Mesopotamia) he and his brother-in-law Laban spent their time deceiving one another. Jacob was more a schemer than a believer.

Now, on his return from Paddan Aram, we realize that 'Jacob was left alone' (Genesis 32:24). Yet God refused to leave him alone. He came to him in his aloneness. That night Jacob met God in a decisive and transforming encounter. It was in two stages.



First God wrestled with Jacob. We know that it was God (a theophany) because Jacob later called the place Peniel, meaning 'the face of God'. God wrestled with him in order by love to conquer him and continued the struggle until daybreak without success. Then when he 'saw that he could not overpower him' (v. 25), God touched and dislocated his thigh. A single touch of the divine finger was enough; Jacob surrendered. With us too God begins gently and perseveres in love. But if we still resist, he resorts to more drastic measures until he touches and breaks us.

In the second stage the wrestlers change place, and Jacob wrestles with God. 'Let go,' God said, but Jacob responded, 'I will not let you go until you bless me' (v. 26). It is as if Jacob said to God, 'You promised to bless Abraham, my father Isaac, and me. Now fulfill your promise and bless me!' So 'he blessed him there' (v. 29). God wrestles with us in order to break down our stubbornness; we wrestle with God in order to inherit his promises." —John Stott

In All Fundamental Fairness

I have to admit, the best line ended up coming from Joe Biden in the Vice-Presidential debate this evening:

"Quote, I'm paraphrasing."

Sweet and Bitter

"I know no sweeter way to heaven than through
free grace and hard trials together."
Samuel Rutherford

Monday, Monday.

Monday. A day to look back and wish that it was Saturday or Sunday.

Monday. A day to look forward to the fact that there are only five more days separating us from the next Saturday.

Monday. A day that never fails to remind us that we need to work to pay the bills.

Monday. A day that breeds temptation to hit the snooze button a few more times.

Monday. The second day of the week on most Protestant calendars and the first work day. It is a day of truth. One that sheds some light on why we do what we do. Is it because there are mouths to feed? Is it because work is a necessary evil and we have to earn a living somehow? Or is it because we believe in what we are called to set our hand to? Because we believe that there is purpose in the midst of our daily endeavors?

John Stott in his book Through the Bible Through the Year points out that the "Monday morning blues" bear witness to the fact that we are in need of an authentic Christian philosophy of work. Genesis 2:15 says that, "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." God put the man that He created into the garden that He planted to "work it and take care of it". Why not take care of it Himself? He made the garden. He made the man to take care of the garden. Why not leave out one extra step and do it Himself? Stott goes on to say, "God deliberately humbled Himself to need Adam's cooperation." God could have tended the garden Himself. But He chose not to!

Stott sums up his thoughts on an authentic Christian philosophy of work with this:

"We need, then, to make an important distinction between nature and culture. Nature is what God gives us; culture is what we make of it (agriculture, horticulture, etc.). Nature is raw materials; culture is commodities prepared for the market. Nature is divine creation; culture is human cultivation. God invites us to share in His work. Indeed, our work becomes a privilege when we see it as collaboration with God."

Palin Heard Peggy

In an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan gave some helpful tips to John McCain and Sarah Palin on how to make strides and even win against Barak Obama's suasive rhetoric. Judging by the speech she gave at tonight's Republican National Convention, it seems that Palin took heed, and boy how she did it with style, pith, and wit! The gist of Noonan's article is this:

"America is a huge and lonely country. We are vast, stretch coast to coast, live in self-sufficient pods; modern culture tends us toward the atomic, the fractured and broken up. When two people meet, as they come to know each other as neighbors or colleagues, one of the great easers, one of the great ways of making a simple small human connection is: shared laughter. We are a political nation. We talk politics. So fill that area with humor: sly humor, teasing humor, humor that speaks a great truth or makes a sharp point."

The question has been raised, can Palin take the heat? And if she can, then will she simply make it through the onslaught of political backbiting or will she come out on the other side all the stronger in light of it, making her a candidate that people can envision as vice president? Well, this strait-talking, field-dressing Alaska woman sure did hand the opposition her reply to those questions this evening and did so with humor to boot! Here are a few of my favorite Palin lines and phrases from tonight's speech:

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities."

"That luxury jet [used for the Alaskan governor] was over the top. I put it on eBay."

"...there is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform--not even in the state senate."

"But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot--what exactly is our opponent's plan?"

"Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, he's worried that someone won't read them their rights."

"In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change. They're the ones whose names appear on laws and landmark reforms, not just on buttons and banners, or on self-designed presidential seals."

"My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of 'personal discovery.' This world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn't just need an organizer."

“You know what the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is? Lip stick.”

Palin and TR

In a speech given tonight at the Republican National Convention, former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson presented the following thought provoking and relatively indisputable point of support for Republican Party vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin:

"I can say without fear of contradiction that she is the only nominee in the history of either party who knows how to properly field dress a moose ... with the possible exception of Teddy Roosevelt."

I couldn't find a picture of Palin with a field-dressed moose, but I did find one of her with gutted, but stylish, grizzly!

Two Quotes by Rutherford

O, what need have I to have the ashes blown away from my dying-out fire! I may be a book-man, and be an idiot and stark fool in Christ's way; learning will not beguile Christ: the Bible beguiled the Pharisees, and so may I be misted. Therefore, as night-watchers hold one another waking by speaking to one another, so have we need to hold one another on foot.

Our pride must have winter weather to rot it.

Rejoicing

"Rejoicing is a deliberate and purposeful act of trust."

The Windings and To's and Fro's

"My shallow and ebb thoughts are not the compass Christ saileth by. I leave His ways to Himself, for they are far, far above me...There are windings and to's and fro's in His ways, which blind bodies like us cannot see." —Samuel Rutherford, The Loveliness of Christ

Peroxide

I just posted a comment on Facebook to the effect of "Peroxide: If it don't hurt, it don't work." I meant for it to have a double meaning but wasn't expecting anyone to acknowledge that but myself. Within minutes a friend responded by saying, "Yeah, I think anything worthwhile should sting a little." Today has been a day of odd confirmations and seeming coincidences, so all I could do was laugh.

I was recently reminded that anything worth doing is worth doing badly, in the words of G.K. Chesterton. A simple reminder that if something is worth doing it's simply worth doing—no matter what. Well, there's been quite a lot of doing going on around me recently and I've discovered that where there is diligence in the things worth doing there often follows close behind eminent change. As I have already mentioned, I am not a big fan of change. But in my search to make the best of it, to accept it, to excel in it, I have stumbled upon a rare and unexplainable peace. It is the kind of peace that steels the soul with the reminder that sometimes you know things are right simply because they are hard.

Change often causes me to ask God, "What are You doing?!" Yet it always holds me in awe when I get the answer.

No Safe Investment

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” — C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves