Burning Marshwiggle

What will it take to awaken from our stupor?

In Psalm 27:4, David poetically expresses his life’s passion as being where God is, “One thing I ask from the Lord, this I shall seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” In the ancient Hebrew mind, “the house of the Lord” was where they met their God. Then he tells us why he wants to be with God, “To behold the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in His temple.” The Hebrew word “beauty” may also be translated “delightfulness”. God isn’t looking for robots to mechanically do what He wants. He wants us to wonder, to delight in His beauty and the beauty of His creation.

In Genesis 2:9, as God populated the garden where the first people lived, He put trees there, trees that bore food for them to eat. But before the trees’ utility as food, it says He “caused every tree to grow that is pleasing the sight.” God wanted us to behold beauty and, as David knew, He made a way to behold and delight in Him, the supreme beauty!

The doctrine of original sin means…that we are born into an environment where it is easy to do evil and hard to do good; easy to hurt others, and hard to heal their wounds; easy to arouse men’s suspicions, and hard to win their trust. It means that we are each of us conditioned by the solidarity of the human race in its accumulated wrong-doing and wrong-thinking, and hence wrong-being. And to this accumulation of wrong we have ourselves added by our own deliberate acts of sin. The gulf grows wider and wider.

—Bishop Kallistos Ware

The Orthodox Way, rev. ed. (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 1995), 62. Quoted by John Mark Comer in Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus. Become like him. Do as he did. https://a.co/eWUApZb

“We are not asked to believe the Bible, but to believe the One whom the Bible reveals (see John 5:39-40).”
—   Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, May 6.

“And so God took this stubborn people, as a potter might take the worst and lumpiest and most resistant and intractable clay, in order to put it upon the wheel for moulding and shaping into an earthen vessel designed to contain heavenly treasure. God chose Israel, then with all its recalcitrance and intractability, with all its resentment against his love, and subjected them to ordeal by history and judgement. He used their very stubbornness and the judgement they brought upon themselves in order to train them. By elaborate religious ritual and carefully framed laws, by rivers of blood from millions of animal sacrifices, by the broken hearts of psalmists and the profoundest agony of the prophets, by the tragic story of Israelite politics and the shattering of this people again and again and again, God taught the Jews, through centuries and centuries of existence yoked to his word and covenant, until the truth was imprinted upon their conscience and there was burned into their souls the meaning of holiness and righteousness, of sin and uncleanness, of love and mercy and grace, of faithfulness and forgiveness, of justification, atonement, and salvation; the meaning of creation, the kingdom of God, of judgement, death, and at last resurrection; the concept of the Messiah, the suffering servant, and yet prophet, priest and king, and so to the very brink of the gospel.”
—   T. F. Torrance, “Incarnation”. p. 42.

“We can easily imagine, think of, contemplate, and be attracted to the idea of giving our whole selves and lives over to God without actually doing it, and think we have done it because we have imagined it”
—   Peter Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans, p. 234.

We are not asked to believe the Bible, but to believe the One whom the Bible reveals (see John 5:39-40).

–Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, May 6.

“

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

”
—   Martin Niemöller (1892-1984), German pastor and social activist.

“One word, Ma’am,” he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. “One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one more thing to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things-trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s a small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.”
—   C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair