St. Augustine
Hope has two beautiful daughters: their names are anger and courage. Anger that things are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be. (St. Augustine) Posted in Anger, Brokenness, Courage, Hope

Dallas Willard
In the biblical account of our fall from God, we were assigned to earn our bread by the sweat of our face. The sweat comes from our own energies, which is all we have left after losing our roots in God’s own life. But we relentlessly try to earn our bread by the sweat of someone else’s face, even when it might be easier to use our own strength. (Dallas Williard, the Divine Conspiracy, 23) Posted in Autonomy, Brokenness, Humanity, Mankind, Meaning, Sin

Dallas Willard
Recently a pilot was practicing high-speed maneuvers in a jet fighter. She turned the controls for what she thought was a steep ascent — and flew straight into the ground. She was unaware that she had been flying upside down. This is a parable of human existence in our times—not exactly that everyone is crashing, though there is enough of that—but most of us as individuals, and world society as a whole, live at high-speed, and often with no clue to whether we are flying upside down or right-side up. Indeed, we are haunted by a strong suspicion that there may be no difference—or at least that is unknown or irrelevant. (Dallas Willard, The Div

Malcolm Muggeridge
Jesus’ good news, then, was that the Kingdom of God had come, and that he, Jesus, was its herald and expounder to men. More than that, in some special, mysterious way, he was the Kingdom. (Malcolm Muggeridge, Jesus: the Man Who Lives) Posted in Incarnation, Jesus Christ, Kingdom of God

Cyprian
I very much wonder where this practice has originated. This is contrary to the evangelical and apostolic discipline, in some places water is offered in the Lord’s cup. But water by itself cannot represent the blood of Christ. The Holy Spirit also is not silent in the Psalms on the sacrament of these things, when he makes mention of the Lord’s cup and says, “your inebriating cup, how excellent it is.” Now the cup that inebriates is certainly mingled with wine. For water cannot inebriate anybody. And the cup of the Lord inebriates in the same way as Noah also was intoxicated by drinking wine in Genesis. However, the intoxication of the Lord’s cup and blood is