Vision

“The Brothers Karamazov” is a great book by Dostoevsky. The theme is “What would life be like without God?” There are people living consistently as if there is no God. One of the brothers is a priest and he says:

This is what is true. I believe like a child, that suffering will be healed and made up for; that all the humiliating, absurdity of human contradictions will vanish, like a painful mirage; that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all of the hearts, for all of the comforting of all the resentments for all the atonement for the crimes against humanity, for all the blood that has been shed, that will make not only possible for us to forgive but to justify all the acts that have happened.

That is a huge vision of future things, that when Christ returns, He is going to bring all things – injustice, bloodshed, violence, pain and suffering, He is going to bring all those things back together and put it under one thing, the Head, that is Christ. He is going to use a Church to do that.

~ from sermon notes written by Matt Cassidy, Grace Covenant Church, Oct 14, 2012

Sobering

It is incongruous for an heir of heaven to be a great friend with the heirs of hell. It has a bad look when the servant is too intimate with the king's enemies. Even small inconsistencies are dangerous. Just as small thorns make great blisters and little moths destroy fine clothes,so little frivolities and little indiscretions will rob your testimony of a thousand joys.

Professing Christian on the fence, you do not know what you are losing by your conformity to the world. It cuts the tendons of your strength and makes you crawl when you ought to run. So for your own comfort's sake and for the sake of your growth in grace, if you are a Christian, be a Christian, and be a marked and distinct one.

~Alasdair Begg

supplication

Take not roundness
from the acorn; light
from fire; nor color

from the midnight
rose.

And take not thy
Holy Spirit from
us.

from Jess' blog. 

Resistance