If, indeed, we all have a kind of appetite for eternity, we have allowed ourselves to be caught up in a society that frustrates our longing at every turn. Half our inventions are advertised to save time—-the washing machine, the fast car, the jet flight—but for what? Never were people more harried by time: by watches, by buzzers, by time clocks, by precise schedules…
If we complain of time and take such joy in the seemingly timeless moment, what does that suggest?
It suggests that we have not always been or will not always be purely temporal creatures. It suggests that we were created for eternity. Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed at it—how fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it is gone? We aren’t adapted to it, nor at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as a proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home.
…Sheldon Vanauken – “A Severe Mercy”, 1977, Harper Collins Publisher.
Hearts that are “fit to break” with love for the Godhead are those who have been in the Presence and have looked with opened eye upon the majesty of Deity. Men of the breaking hearts had a quality about them not known to or understood by common men. They habitually spoke with spiritual authority. They had been in the Presence of God and they reported what they saw there. They were prophets, not scribes: for the scribe tells us what he has read, and the prophet tells us what he has seen. The distinction is not an imaginary one. Between the scribe who has read and the prophet who has seen, there is a difference as wide as the sea. We are today overrun with orthodox scribes; but the prophets, where are they? The hard voice of the scribe sounds over evangelicalism, but the Church waits for the tender voice of the saint who has penetrated the veil and has gazed with inward eye upon the Wonder that is God.
… A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God [1948]
“It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to owe their dependence upon the overruling power of God. To confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon. And to recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures—and proven by all history—that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord.
We know that by His divine law, nations like individuals are subject to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we not justify fear that the awful calamity of Civil War, which now desolates the land, may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins—to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us. And we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace—too proud to pray to the God that made us.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea, and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our benevolent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.”
Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, 1863
Our starting point is Scripture, which we accept as God’s unique and trustworthy revelation. Yet, in seeking with loyalty to conserve this truth from God, we attribute no infallibility to our own evangelical traditions. We desire, rather, to re-examine them radically—that is to say, with a thoroughness which digs down even to their roots. If we seem to the reader to be always sure about the truthfulness of Scripture but sometimes less than sure in our understanding of how to apply it to complex contemporary questions, then he has accurately grasped our mood.
… John R. W. Stott (1921- ), “Obeying Christ in a Changing World”
“Every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And, taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a Heaven creature or into a hellish creature—either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is Heaven: that is, it is joy, and peace, and knowledge, and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”
…. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity [1952]
“Far too often, young people become Christians and then search among the Church’s ranks for real people, and have a hard task finding them. All too often, evangelicals are paper people. If we do not preach these things, talk about them to each other, and teach them carefully from the pulpit and in the Christian classroom, we cannot expect Christians so to act. This has always been important, but it is especially so today because we are surrounded by a world in which personality is increasingly eroded. If we, who have become God’s children, do not show Him to be personal in our lives, then in practice we are denying His existence, and He cannot be anything but grieved.”
…. Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who is There [1968]
Modern civilization is so complex as to make the devotional life all but impossible. It wears us out by multiplying distractions and beats us down destroying our solitude, where otherwise we might drink and renew our strength, before going out to face the world again. “The thoughtful soul to solitude retires,” said the poet of other and quieter times; but where is the solitude to which we can retire today? “Commune with your own heart upon your bed and be still,” is a wise and healing counsel; but how can it be followed in this day of the newspaper, the telephone, the radio and television? These modern playthings, like pet tiger cubs, have grown so large and dangerous that they threaten to devour us all. What was intended to be a blessing has become a positive curse. No spot is now safe from the world’s intrusion. The need for solitude and quietness was never greater than it is today. What the world will do about it is their problem. Apparently the masses want it the way it is, and the majority of Christians are so completely conformed to this present age that they, too, want things the way they are. They may be annoyed a bit by the clamor and by the goldfish-bowl existence they live, but apparently they are not annoyed enough to do anything about it.
… A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), Of God and Men
Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save what Thou art:
Thou my best thought, by day or by night;
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.
Be Thou my Wisdom and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son,
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.
Riches I need not, nor man’s empty praise;
Thou mine inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.
High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all!
… Anonymous medieval Irish hymn
We are separated from one another by an unbridgeable gulf of otherness and strangeness which resists all our attempts to overcome it by means of natural association or emotional or spiritual union. There is no way from one person to another. However loving and sympathetic we try to be, however sound our psychology however frank and open our behaviour we cannot penetrate the incognito of the other man, for there are no direct relationships, not even between soul and soul. Christ stands between us, and we can only get into touch with our neighbors through Him.
… Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), The Cost of Discipleship
Young Pastor in Zimbabwe, Africa, later martyred for his faith in Christ
I’m part of the fellowship of the unashamed. I
have the Holy Spirit power. The die has been
cast. I have stepped over the line. The decision
has been made—I’m a disciple of his, I won’t
look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be
still. My past is redeemed, my present makes
sense, my future is secure. I’m finished and
done with low living, sight walking, smooth
knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, worldly
talking, cheap giving and dwarfed goals.
I no longer need preeminence, prosperity,
position, promotions, plaudits or popularity. I
don’t have to be right, first, tops, recognized,
praised, regarded or rewarded. I now live by
faith, lean in his presence, walk by patience, am
uplifted by prayer, and I labor with power.
… Men’s Devotional Bible, Zondervan, Pg. 1177, 1993 quoted from “Signature of Jesus” by Brennan Manning, Multnomah Press, 1992.
