A Single Layer

'...who can duly adore that love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape?.... the hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and his compulsion is our liberation.' - C. S. Lewis (quoted in the classiest Christian tract I've ever seen.)

About chief of sinners I don't know, but what I know about sinners I know chiefly about me. We did not mean to do the deed, of course. The things we have done wrong seemed, or mostly seemed, small at the time. The word of encouragement withheld, the touch of kindness not given, the visit not made, the trust betrayed, the cutting remark so clever and so cruel, the illicit sexual desire so generously entertained, the angry answer, the surge of resentment at being slighted, the lie we thought would do no harm. It is such a long and tedious list of little things. Surely not too much should be made of it, we thought to ourselves. But now it has come to this. It has come to the cross. All the trespasses of all the people of all time have gravitated here, to the killing grounds of Calvary. Not only about our entanglement in the loss of each but also in the consequence of our deeds, John Donne was right: "No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a ...

People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, "If you keep a lot of rules, I'll reward you, and if you don't I'll do the other thing." I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a Heaven creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is Heaven: that is joy, and peace, and knowledge, and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness....

The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death - we over our lives to death. Thus is begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise godfearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

For those who like to spend their Tuesday mornings listening to Sunday's missed sermons. That might just be me...

'There is nothing I want more in my life than what Jesus bled to obtain.' - John Piper

'One must really be brave to choose love or writing as one's guides, because they may lead one to the space in which the meaning of our life is hidden - and who can say that this space may not be the land of death.' - Demetrios Capetenakis

Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay? Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste; I run to death, and death meets me as fast, And all my pleasures are like yesterday. I dare not move my dim eyes any way, Despair behind and death behind doth cast Such terror and my feeble flesh doth waste By sin in it, which it toward hell doth weigh. Only thou art above, and when towards thee By thy leave I can look, I rise again; But our old subtle foe so tempteth me That not one hour myself I can sustain. Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art, And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart. -John Donne, I . from Holy Sonnets

Only the devil has an answer for our moral difficulties, and he says: 'Keep on posing problems, and you will escape the necessity of obedience.' But Jesus is not interested in the young man's problems; he is interested in the young man himself. He refuses to take those difficulties as seriously as the young man does. There is one thing only which Jesus takes seriously, and that is, that it is high time the young man began to hear the commandment and obey it. -Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Today we remember that we are dust. I was thinking about that in the shower today, thinking of these arms in the earth, shuddering silently into aimless molecules. We are but dust, until he makes us more. Thanks be to the God of our salvation who does not forget us in our death but retrieves us for himself. And in giving ourselves to him, we find our true nature, the one that persists in strength and dignity and honour. This is the season when we rescind everything we have acquired to discover what we were meant to keep all along. Whether it be something abstract (like confidence) or something concrete (like meat on Fridays), we know by the giving-up which are the things we have been given in the generosity of our Father and which are the things we have stolen from under his grace. Personally, I'm rather miserable about it all. But then, there has been an undercurrent of misery beneath all of my license for a while now, and I would trade much for a clean heart. I would trade all I ...