CHRISTMAS DAY Jesus came! - and came for me. Simple words! and yet expressing Depths of holy mystery, read more

CHRISTMAS DAY Jesus came! - and came for me. Simple words! and yet expressing Depths of holy mystery, Depths of wondrous love and blessing. Holy Spirit, make me see All His coming means for me; Take the things of Christ, I pray, Show them to my heart today.

When compassion for the common man was born on Christmas Day, with it was born new hope among the multitudes. read more

When compassion for the common man was born on Christmas Day, with it was born new hope among the multitudes. They feel a great, ever-rising determination to lift themselves and their children our of hunger and disease and misery, up to a higher level. Jesus started a fire upon the earth, and it is burning hot today, the fire of a new hope in the hearts of the hungry multitudes.

For the Christian, heaven is where Jesus is. We do not need to speculate on what heaven will be like. read more

For the Christian, heaven is where Jesus is. We do not need to speculate on what heaven will be like. It is enough to know that we will be for ever with Him. When we love anyone with our whole hearts, life begins when we are with that person; it is only in their company that we are really and truly alive. It is so with Christ. In this world our contact with Him is shadowy, for we can only see through a glass darkly. It is spasmodic, for we are poor creatures and cannot live always on the heights. But the best definition of it is to say that heaven is that state where we will always be with Jesus, and where nothing will separate us from Him any more.

Verily, we know not what an evil it is to indulge ourselves, and to make an idol of our will... read more

Verily, we know not what an evil it is to indulge ourselves, and to make an idol of our will... Once I would make much ado, if I saw not the world carved and set in order to my liking; now I am silent, when I see God... is fattening and feeding the children of perdition. I pray God, I may never find my will again.

My windows open to the autumn night, In vain I watched for sleep to visit me, How should sleep dull read more

My windows open to the autumn night, In vain I watched for sleep to visit me, How should sleep dull mine ears, and dim my sight, Who saw the stars, and listened to the sea? Ah, how the City of our God is fair! If, without sea, and starless though it be, For joy of the majestic beauty there, Men shall not miss the stars, nor mourn the sea.

Feast of John and Charles Wesley, Priests, Poets, Teachers, 1791 & 1788 He was but a heathen that said, read more

Feast of John and Charles Wesley, Priests, Poets, Teachers, 1791 & 1788 He was but a heathen that said, If God love a man, He takes him young out of this world; and they were but heathens, that observed that custom. to put on mourning when their sons were born, and to feast and triumph when they died. But thus much may we learn from these heathens, that if the dead, and we, be not upon one floor, nor under one story, yet we are under one roof. We think not a friend lost, because he has gone into another room, nor because he has gone into another land: and into another world, no man has gone; for that Heaven, which God created, and this world, is all one world... I spend none of my faith, I exercise none of my hope, in this, that I shall have my dead raised to life again. This is the faith that sustains me, when I lose by the death of others, or when I suffer by living in misery myself: that the dead and we are now all in one Church, and at the resurrection, shall be all in one Choir.

I wish they would remember that the charge to Peter was "Feed my sheep", not "Try experiments on my rats", read more

I wish they would remember that the charge to Peter was "Feed my sheep", not "Try experiments on my rats", or even "Teach my performing dogs new tricks".

Feast of David, Bishop of Menevia, Patron of Wales, c.601 Is a mediator between the eternal spirit and the read more

Feast of David, Bishop of Menevia, Patron of Wales, c.601 Is a mediator between the eternal spirit and the finite an unreality, an intrusion? The mystic soul may impatiently think so, but the moral soul finds such mediation the way to reality; and the mystic experience is not quite trustworthy about reality. The pagan gods had no mediators, because they were not real or good gods; but the living God has a living Revealer. To know the living God is to know Christ; to know Christ is to know the living God. We do not know God by Christ but in Him. We find God when we find Christ; and in Christ alone we know and share his final purpose. Our last knowledge is not the contact of our person with a thing or a thought; it is intercourse of person and person.

Feast of Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, Teacher, 367 Commemoration of Kentigern (Mungo), Missionary Bishop in Strathclyde & Cumbria, 603 Continuing read more

Feast of Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, Teacher, 367 Commemoration of Kentigern (Mungo), Missionary Bishop in Strathclyde & Cumbria, 603 Continuing a short series on Romans 8: [Of v. 18] The glory to come far outweighs the affliction of the present. The affliction is light and temporary when compared with the all-surpassing and everlasting glory. So Paul, writing against a background of recent and (even for him) unparalleled tribulation, had assured his friends in Corinth a year or two before this that 'this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison' (2 Cor 4:17). It is not merely that the glory is a compensation for the suffering; it actually grows out of the suffering. There is an organic relation between the two for the believer as surely as there was for the Lord.