SACRED AND SECULAR

e tend to confine the sacred to a fenced-in area, the "spiritual," reserved for church activities. Many people rarely give God a thought apart from an hour on Sunday morning, when they sing songs of praise, listen to a sermon, and then reenter the secular world as if passing through an air lock. My pastor tells me that church members tell off-color jokes in the parking lot that they would never repeat in the sanctuary. When the doors close behind them, they believe they leave sacred space, as if the world neatly divides between secular and sacred.

-- Philip Yancey in Rumors of Another World

 
#2874

RISING AGAIN

What is our death but a night's sleep? For as through sleep all weariness and faintness pass away and cease, and the powers of the spirit come back again, so that in the morning we arise fresh and strong and joyous; so at the Last Day we shall rise again as if we had only slept a night, and shall be fresh and strong.
-- Martin Luther

 
#2873

"COME UNTO ME"

"Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Mathew 29:11 KJV))

"Come unto ME." A call not to join an organization, to follow an ethic, a new teaching, or even a way of life, but a call to meet a Person -- an invitation to come directly to Him, and through Him to God. He is the Door. He is the Way.

God desires to be approached. God can be approached through Jesus. Can anyone hold an intimate conversation with one of the Greek gods or with the Holy Other of the Old Testament? But the Father of Jesus Christ offers Himself to us: "Come unto Me."

And if we come -- "salvation." That is, the burden lifted, the weight removed. "I will give you rest." The release of sin. The removal of every fear. Freedom of conscience. Everlasting life. "Salvation comes only as the result of a vision of God," says D.T. Niles. Jesus brings us the vision of God -- the God Who desires to be approached. "It is not the fear of sin but the love of God which sets men free." (D.T. Niles, Seeing The Invisible)

-- H.S. Vigeveno in Jesus the Revolutionary


 
#2872

SACRIFICE YOURSELF FOR CHRIST

Sacrifice yourself for once for the sake of God's will. It will not be in vain. Sacrifice yourself for truth, for justice. Sacrifice yourself for once against all human sense for something that is truly good. Sacrifice yourself for Christ in all things, and seek the kingdom of God. There is great strength in this… Stand for something; then your joy will be unbroken and lasting.
-- C.F. Blumhardt in Freude im Herrn


#2871

ONLY BY GRACE

Only by grace can we enter, only by grace can we stand
Not by our own endeavors, but by the blood of the Lamb.
Lord, if You marked our transgressions who could stand,
But by Your grace we are saved by the blood of the Lamb.

-- Petra

 
#2870