Enjoy the gems!!! . . . from Zuckermann, Eberly, Murray, Chesterton, Olson, and others

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"G K Chesterton", a fool for five minutes, addictions, afternoon and morning, being in a hurry, Don Eberly, getting enough, John Courtney Murray, Mortimer Zuckerman, Roger Olson, truth matters - but. . ., when your mind goes blank, who is the rich person?

Concise and profound – a combination that is hard to beat.  Ponder the following, practice the truth of as many as you can, and honor God with the results.   

• Do not be in a hurry to tie what you cannot untie.
• Graciousness is to examine what is said, not him who speaks.
• God gives the nuts but he does not crack them.
• A guest sees more in an hour than the host in a year.

• He is rich who owes nothing.
• Being intelligent and being kind are not either-or but both-and qualities.
• Forgive, daily, those who caused the wounds that keep you from wholeness.
• He who wants a rose must respect the thorn.

• He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
• Experience is a wonderful thing.  It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. (Mortimer Zuckerman)
• A person is foolish not to be what he can be because he can’t be what he wants to be.

• If your mind goes blank, don’t forget to turn off the sound.
• The vast majority of moral problems that trouble us cannot be eradicated by law. (Don Eberly)
• It is not substance that makes one an addict, but the need to escape from reality.  Thus, recovery is much more than giving up the addictive agent.
• The law, mindful of its nature, is required to be tolerant of many evils that morality condemns. (John Courtney Murray)

• There are two ways to get enough.  One is to accumulate more and more.  The other is to need less. (G.K. Chesterton)
• Truth matters, but not all truth matters equally. (Roger Olson, in Christianity Today, Sept 6, 1999, p. 94)
• Sometimes a handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains.
• Everyone is a volume if you know how to read them.
• The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.

Gutierrez, Chesterton, Blake, Swindoll, Dobson, Lapham, Sheen, King, Norris

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"G K Chesterton", Chuck Swindoll, Fulton Sheen, Gustavo Gutierrez, James Dobson, Jr, Kathleen Norris, Lewis Lapham, Martin Luther King, William Blake

Quite a lineup of authors listed in the title, eh?   And, of course we can’t ignore the ever present “anonymous”!!!

• Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
• To pardon means not to fixate on the past but to create possibilities for persons to change and to realign the course of their lives.  Pardon forges Christian community. (Gustavo Gutierrez)
• Being sinful in unavoidable.  Being penitent is not.
• A great act of faith is to go to sleep, abandoning our identity and turning ourselves over to chaos and night.  We uncreate ourselves as if at the end of the world, becoming, as it were, dead in the hope of resurrection in the morning. (G.K. Chesterton in Lunacy and Letters)

• The true way to overcome evil in class distinctions is not to denounce them as revolutionists denounce them, but to ignore them as children ignore them. (G.K. Chesterton in The Man Who Was Thursday).
• If I get drunk I shall forget dignity, but if I keep sober, I may still desire drink.  Virtue has the heavy burden of knowledge; sin has often something of the levity of sinlessness. (G.K. Chesterton in The Glass Walking Stick)
• We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable. (William Blake)
• Question your doubts as much as you question your faith.

• I know of no other single practice in the Christian life more rewarding, practically speaking, than memorizing Scripture. (Chuck Swindoll)
• It’s important to use your talents, but if that is the end of it, there will be disillusionment.  All of a sudden you will realize that the ladder you have been climbing is leaning against the wrong wall. (James Dobson)
• In contemporary society, it is good to be rich, talented, beautiful, or brave.  But unless you are known to be that, you can’t be a celebrity.  And, if you are not a celebrity, you might as well be dead!!! (Lewis Lapham)
• The wicked may have quick and violent pleasure.  But, steady and abiding joy comes from loving God and neighbor.  Pleasure depends on externals.  Joy comes from a good conscience and the love of God. (Fulton Sheen)

• The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. (Martin Luther King, Jr. in The Strength to Love)
•  “Quench not the Spirit.”  “Grieve not the holy Spirit of God.”  In other words, the God of all power asks us not to hurt Him.
• When churches aspire for relevance, they tend to fall into marketing language, and the language of marketing is meant to mislead. (Kathleen Norris)

After the game . . . Wisdom has two parts . . . Be kinder than necessary

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"G K Chesterton", After the game, he who angers you controls you, if a job takes 10 minutes, Luke T Johnson, Sir William Greenfell, the business of tradition, true friendship, Wisdom has two parts

Excluding Chesterton, Greenfell, and Johnson, the anonymous clan holds the cards in this collection!!

• After the game, the king and the pawn go into the same box.
• The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.
• Keep doing what you have always done, and you will keep getting what you have always gotten.

• If a job takes 10 minutes to do, give it 10 minutes.  If it takes 15 hours, give it 15 hours.  In other words, no more or less than it deserves
• People, including God, come first.
• Be fair and honorable, not for what you get from it, but because it is right.
• Forbidden fruits create many jams.

• He who angers you controls you.
• Kindness is difficult to give away, because it keeps coming back.
• Plan ahead.  It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.
• Wisdom has two parts: 1) Having a lot worth saying, and 2) Knowing when not to say it.

• Happy is the person who can laugh at himself.  He will never cease to be amused.
• Better to sleep on what you plan to do than to be kept awake by what you have done.
• If you have never been amazed by the very fact that you exist, you are squandering one of the greatest facts of all.
• Pity the poor person who, with all the world to fall in love with, he chose himself.

• True friendship has been achieved when silence between them is comfortable.
• Straddling an issue is like straddling the middle of the road – you can get hit from both sides.
• The business of tradition is to ensure the future.  Only when we know how the story has run to this point, can we responsibly decide how the plot might now unfold. (Luke T. Johnson in Scripture and Discernment)
• God’s work does not wait to be done by perfect Christians.

• The measure of our real wealth is how much would we lose if we lost all our money.
• You may forget with whom you laughed, but you will not forget with whom you wept.
• Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion even if he takes care of our horses.  Tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion even if he is our father. (G.K. Chesterton in Orthdoxy)
• Be kinder than necessary. (Sir Wilfred Greenfell)

Little bulbs – let them grow into beautiful and productive plants

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"G K Chesterton", A W Tozer, Eugene Petersen, Henri Nouwen, Henry van Dyke, Karl Barth, Oswald Chambers

 

Hope springs eternal in Minnesota – what better place for it to happen than where snow is measured in feet, not inches!!!  And, where thoughts include the next crop arising from the buried bulbs.  Here are several bulbs longing to sprout in your garden . . . and life. . . .

• Those who live by mercy will always be disposed to practice mercy, especially to a human being which is so dependent on the mercy of others as the unborn child. (Karl Barth in Church Dogmatics, The Doctrine of Creation)
• A hundred touches of kindness come to us every day to tell us that we are not orphans or outcasts upon the earth.  Traces of order, gleams of beauty, provisions of bounty in the natural world are evidence that it is God’s house. (Henry van Dyke in The Upward Path)
• A thankful heart cannot be cynical.  (A.W. Tozer in Signposts)

• God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit isn’t a consulting firm we bring in to give us expert advice on how to run our lives. (Eugene Petersen in Leap Over a Wall)
• Unused truth becomes as useless as an unused muscle. (A.W. Tozer in That Incredible Christian)
• Why is the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible?  Maybe  power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love.  It seems easier to be God than to love God, and easier to control people than to love them. (Mornings with Henri Nouwen)

• Why can’t evangelical scientists agree?  For the same reason people can’t agree on eschatology, baptism, and a whole lot of other questions – imperfect and partial knowledge.
• A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a person; it is constructed to fit a cosmos.  A person can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.  (G.K. Chesterton. Selected Essays of G. K. Chesterton)

• Following Jesus into the desert is going to where our life is not, nor ever will be, completely in our control.  Power, pleasure, and possessions are smashed.  You are miles from the sources of gratification.  You own little or nothing.  You wait with faith and hope for it to pass.

• There is always one fact more in every life of which we know nothing.  Therefore, Jesus says, “Judge not.”  (Oswald Chambers, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount)
• If you are my follower, you once weren’t.  Rejoice in what you now are. (paraphrasing Jesus)

Ready for some more ? ? ?

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"G K Chesterton", Adlai Stevenson, Ammon S Kauffman, Andrew Gide, aphorisms, Archbishop William Temple, Aristotle, Booth Tarkington, C S Lewis, David Goetz, Don Eberly, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Henry Ford, J Wilbur Chapman, Jack Wyman, Jonathan Edwards, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Landon Jones, Nancy Pearcy, Seneca, Spinoza, Walter Lippman

When needing some provocative thoughts that can take you beyond the “now” and “here”, be invigorated by the following aphoristic observations.  They come from some astute people.  Also, they are complimentary, on the house, and beside that, they are free!!!  Enjoy, be blessed, and reflect.

• A rational man acting in the real world may be defined as one who decides where he will strike a balance between what he desires and what can be done. (Walter Lippman)
• Christ brought to the world a new conception of royalty.  He rules by love and not by force.  That, as He expressly said, is the difference between His kingdom and the kingdoms of this world. (Archbishop William Temple)
• A reform is a correction of abuses; a revolution is a transfer of power. (Edward Bulwer-Lytton)
• A spirit of ingratitude is the first step toward apostasy.  (Ammon S. Kauffman)
• Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle. (Philo of Alexandria)A wise man does not try to hurry history.  (Adlai Stevenson)
• A young person who wishes to remain a strong atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. (C.S. Lewis, referring to the impact of GK Chesterton)
• Christianity has not been tried and found wanting;   it has been found difficult and not tried. (G.K. Chesterton)
• All excellent things are as difficult as they are rare. (Spinoza)
• All the water in the world, however hard it tried, could never sink a ship unless it got inside.
• Behavior unchallenged is encouraged.
• Any group with authority to tell a culture’s creation story, functions as a kind of priesthood.  (Nancy Pearcy.  (Christianity Today, May 22, 2000)
• A generation is the primary agent of social change . . . Reform is thus brought organically into a society.  People don’t change, generations do. (Landon Jones in Great Expectations)
• Cherish your happy moments.  They are a fine cushion for old age. (Booth Tarkington)
• Anything that dims my vision of Christ or takes away my taste for Bible study, or cramps my prayer life, or makes Christian work difficult is wrong for me, and I must, as a Christian, turn away from it.(J. Wilbur Chapman)
• Are you more concerned with the quality of your goals or the quantity of your goods?
• Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist the better. (Andre Gide)
• Be it resolved:  First, that every man should live to the glory of God.  Second, that whether others do this or not, I will. (Jonathan Edwards)
• Concentrating on the politicians while ignoring the culture and the public sentiment it shapes, is myopic and futile.  (attributed to Don Eberly in Christianity Today, October 25, 1999)
• Be the change you wish to see in the world (Gandhi)
• Biblical spirituality is earthy, face-to-face, and often messy. (David Goetz in “Suburban Spirituality,” Christianity Today,  July 2003)
• A hungry man listens not to reason nor cares for justice, nor is bent by any prayer. (Seneca)
• By failing to grasp both the nature and the limits of politics, we can more easily be beguiled by its promises.  (Jack Wyman, in Christianity Today, October 25, 1999)
• By words, the mind is winged. (Aristophanes)
• Civilization is nothing else but the attempt to reduce force to being the last resort. (Jose Ortega y Gasset)
• Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.  (Henry Ford)

 

 

Chesterton on humility and creeds

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"G K Chesterton", creeds, humility, pride

“So far as a man may be proud of a religion rooted in humility, I am very proud of my religion; I am especially proud of those parts of it that are most commonly called superstition.

“I am proud of being fettered by antiquated dogmas and enslaved by dead creeds (as my journalistic friends repeat with so much pertinacity), for I know very well that it is the heretical creeds that are dead, and that it is only the reasonable dogma that lives long enough to be called antiquated.”

 ( From Autobiography (1936) )

 

QUESTION — Why is Chesterton correct, or mistaken?

 

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