The Psalms
From John Piper’s sermon, “Songs that Shape the Heart and Mind” (5/25/08):
“The Psalms, more intentionally than any other book of the Bible, is designed to carry, express, and shape our emotions, to give vent to them—all of them, and shape them, to reign them in, and to free them up, to explode them, and to kill them when they should be killed. It is an amazing gift to the Church. … The Psalms are songs and poems, and songs and poems exist because something more should happen to us than doctrinal refinement.”
The Life of Heresy
From Religio Medici written by Sir Thomas Browne (Boston, MA: Ticknor and Fields, 1862), pages 15-16:
“…for indeed heresies perish not with their authors, but like the river Arethusa, though they lose their currents in one place, they rise up again in another. One general council is not able to extirpate one single heresy: it may be cancelled for the present; but revolution of time and the like aspects from heaven, will restore it, when it will flourish till it be condemned again. For as though there was metempsychosis, and the soul of one man passed into another, opinions do find, after certain revolutions, men and minds like those that first begat them.”
HT: T-Bomb
On Reading
Today my friend Stephen Altrogge interviews yours truly on the topic of reading. You can read the interview here. Thanks for the opportunity, Stephen!
For a broader look at books and reading see my interviews with Josh Sowin (3/26/07) and Guy Davies (2/6/09). While we’re on the subject, here are some links to a short series of posts I wrote last year:
Tip 2: Read with a Pen in Hand [later revised, expanded, and posted on JT’s blog here]
Learning to Walk Holy
In a recent blog comment Tom posted a gem from C. S. Lewis’ twisted little satire Screwtape Letters. It forms a nice complement to the previous Lewis quote. Here we see how Lewis articulates the Christian’s growth in godliness when the desire to obey has vanished but the intention to obey has not. Multiple themes converge here in this rich, little paragraph. I commend it to you for your slow contemplation.
“He [God] leaves the creature [believer] to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot ‘tempt’ to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” (p. 40)
Calvary’s Magnetism
From Arthur J. Gossip’s book on preaching, In Christ’s Stead (1925):
“It was not for nothing that Christ said so confidently that always if men see Him dying for them, He will win [“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32)]. Certainly it has not always been at Calvary that their hearts have been most moved. It makes an interesting study to note how different generations have been won mainly by different things in Christ. … And yet in every age there are always those who cannot come within sight of the Cross without being thrilled and moved and won, for whom that is the deepest and most appealing of all facts. And nobody, surely, can remain face to face with it quite untouched. Get them in sight of Calvary, pause there, saying little, hushed and reverent; enable them to look, to see it, make it real to them, not just an old tale that has lost its wonder and its stab, but a tremendous awful fact.” (142–143)
Tony Reinke 