We are frequently advised to read the Bible with our own personal needs in mind, and to look for answers read more

We are frequently advised to read the Bible with our own personal needs in mind, and to look for answers to our own private questions. That is good, as far as it goes... But better still is the advice to study the Bible objectively, ... without regard, first of all, to our own subjective needs. Let the great passages fix themselves in our memory. Let them stay there permanently, like bright beacons, launching their powerful shafts of light upon life's problems -- our own and everyone's -- as they illumine, now one, now another dark area of human life. Following such a method, we discover that the Bible does "speak to our condition" and meet our needs, not just occasionally or when some emergency arises, but continually.

God has called us to shine, just as much as Daniel was sent into Babylon to shine. Let no one read more

God has called us to shine, just as much as Daniel was sent into Babylon to shine. Let no one say that he cannot shine because he has not so much influence as some others may have. What God wants you to do is to use the influence you have. Daniel probably did not have much influence down in Babylon at first, but God soon gave him more because he was faithful and used what he had.

Christmas Eve They were all looking for a king To slay their foes, and lift them high; Thou cam'st, a read more

Christmas Eve They were all looking for a king To slay their foes, and lift them high; Thou cam'st, a little baby thing That made a woman cry.

Feast of Harriet Monsell of Clewer, Religious, 1883 It was not the pleasant things in the world that came read more

Feast of Harriet Monsell of Clewer, Religious, 1883 It was not the pleasant things in the world that came from the devil, and the dreary things from God! It was "sin brought death into the world and all our woe"; as the sin vanishes the woe will vanish too. God Himself is the ever-blessed God. He dwells in the light of joy as well as of purity, and instead of becoming more like Him as we become more miserable, and as all the brightness and glory of life are extinguished, we become more like God as our blessedness becomes more complete. The great Christian graces are radiant with happiness. Faith, hope, charity, there is no sadness in them; and if penitence makes the heart sad, penitence belongs to the sinner, not to the saint.

Feast of Catherine of Siena, Mystic, Teacher, 1380 Can we believe that God ever modifies His action in read more

Feast of Catherine of Siena, Mystic, Teacher, 1380 Can we believe that God ever modifies His action in response to the suggestions of man? For infinite wisdom does not need telling what is best, and infinite goodness needs no urging to do it. But neither does God need any of those things that are done by finite agents, whether living or inanimate. He could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers; or knowledge without the aid of learned men; or convert the heathen without missionaries. Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to cooperate in the execution of His will. "God", says Pascal, "instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality." But it is not only prayer; whenever we act at all, He lends us that dignity. It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so.

Commemoration of Gladys Aylward, Missionary in China, 1970 George Brush, the hero of [Thornton Wilder's] "Heaven's My Destination", read more

Commemoration of Gladys Aylward, Missionary in China, 1970 George Brush, the hero of [Thornton Wilder's] "Heaven's My Destination", a textbook salesman and evangelist extraordinary, is the innocent fool, in the kindliest sense of both the noun and the adjective. He is striving to be the fool in Christ, sowing the inevitable amazement, consternation and wrath that must ensue when Christ's fool runs at large among the worldly wise.

Feast of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, 988 I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who read more

Feast of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, 988 I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God. All the beauty and truth which I had discovered had come to me as a reflection of his beauty, but I had kept my eyes fixed on the reflection and was always looking at myself. But God had brought me to the point at which I was compelled to turn away from the reflection, both of myself and of the world which could only mirror my own image. During that night the mirror had been broken, and I had felt abandoned because I could no longer gaze upon the image of my own reason and the finite world which it knew. God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything.

The chief pang of most trials is not so much the actual suffering itself as our own spirit of resistance read more

The chief pang of most trials is not so much the actual suffering itself as our own spirit of resistance to it.

The ascetic believed that, because he was so holy, the Devil was permitted special liberties with him, and he found read more

The ascetic believed that, because he was so holy, the Devil was permitted special liberties with him, and he found in his increasing agony of effort a token of divine approval. Not along this track lies the path of moral progress. Christianity says: face the evil once for all, and disown it. Then quiet the spirit in the presence of God. Let His perfections fill the field of vision. In particular, let the concrete embodiment of the goodness of God in Christ attract and absorb the gaze of the soul. Here is the righteousness, not as a fixed and abstract ideal, but in a living human person. The righteousness of Christ is a real achievement of God's own Spirit in man.