A Reflection

It is a marvelous thing, the grace of Jesus Christ, and how just contemplating Him makes sinful desires melt away.

On Half-heartedness and Corruption

"How often the priest had heard the same confession - Man was so limited he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died; the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death. It was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization - it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt."

- Graham Greene, The Power and The Glory.

Beyond Love

" 'Understand,' he said, 'that it isn't love. I've been in love, but this is not the same. This is not my feeling, but some external force taking possession of me. I left because I decided it could not be, you understand, like a happiness that doesn't exist on earth; but I have struggled with myself and I see that without it there is no life. And I must resolve...' "

- Konstantin Levin, Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy.

Winged Victory

The Miracle of Existence

"Nothing could be more miraculous than the fact that we have a consciousness that makes the world intelligible to us and are moved by what is beautiful."

-Marilynne Robinson

Isaiah 55:12

"If I am alive this time next year,
Will I have arrived in time to share?
Mine is about as good this far;
I'm still applied to what You are.

And I am joining all my thoughts to You
And I'm preparing every part for You.

I heard from the trees a great parade.
And I heard from the hills a band was made.
Will I be invited to the sound?
Will I be a part of what You've made?

And I am throwing all my thoughts away
And I'm destroying every bet I've made
And I am joining all my thoughts to You
And I'm preparing every part for You."

"All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands" by Sufjan Stevens.

My Need

"Grace is love in its princely and sovereign form, love to the indifferent and the disloyal, whose one claim is their need."

- H. R. Mackintosh

Have We Forgotten?

"If our Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence, then we cannot help regarding the cross as an ordinary everyday calamity, as one of the trials and tribulations of life. We have forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship.