Category Archives: Quotes

Bed in Summer ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Bed in Summer

Robert Louis Stevenson (1885)


#1
Page Number:  14.  Illustrator:  Ruth M. Hallock
Publisher:  Rand McNally & Co.  Date:  1919

 

     In Winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle light.
In Summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

In Washington our summer evenings stay light as late as 10 PM. Fourth of July fireworks shows start late in Seattle. This poem reminds me of my husband and I trying to go to sleep at our normal 9-10 pm time with it being light outside.

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Psalm 1 ~ The Way of the Righteous

 

Psalm 1 (ESV)

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.

The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgement, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

When People are Big and God is Small ~ Welch ~ Quote

The following quote comes from the book, When People Are Big and God Is Small (Overcoming Peer Pressure, Codependency, and the Fear of Man) by Edward T. Welch. The quote comes from chapter 6 – Know the Fear of the Lord –

To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One. (Isa. 40:25)

Some have called this “otherness,” this holiness, of God his transcendence. God is exalted above his people. He lives in a high and lofty place (Isa. 57:15). His judgement and mercy are above us, they are ultimately incomprehensible. As a result, we don’t use a reigning king or queen as our template for knowing God. To say that the Holy God reigns makes it impossible to use earthly kings as the model. The Holy God is unique, greater, and of a different kind than earthly kings. The Holy God is the original; the most glorious of earthly kings are only a dim reflection.

To make the holiness of God even more awesome, the transcendent God has come close to us. It would be one thing to know that God was gloriously transcendent and entirely separate from his creation. In such a situation we could become acccustomed to his lack of intervention in human affairs, and for practical purposes we could become our own gods. But our God is also the Immanent One who has revealed himself and become like us. He said, “I will be your God and you will be my people” (Lev. 26:12). He is near us. He will never leave us or forsake us (Heb. 13:5). He is so close he calls us “friends” (John 15:14). He is so close, the Scripture talks about Christ in you (Col. 1:27). Given his nature, this is virtually impossible for us to grasp. But, by God’s grace, we can grow in knowing his holiness, and this knowledge will both expel the people-idols from our lives and leave us less prone to being consumed with ourselves.

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Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ ~ John Piper

I was really struck by this prayer by John Piper at the end of chapter 11 in this book.

A Prayer

Lord, thicken our skin. Not that we be less tender, but that we be less easily offended. Take away our bent to self-pity. Give us a passion for the truth that is stronger than our inborn passion for being praised. Forgive us, Father, for calling words unloving just because they were tough. Forgive us for attributing malicious motives to people when we don’t know their motives. Help us to learn from Jesus when to be tough and when to be tender. Guard us from justifying merely human anger with the hard sayings of Jesus. But don’t let us become so mushy that we can’t speak a firm word in season. We marvel at the words of our Lord Jesus. How unpredictable he was! No one ever spoke like he did. He is in a class by himself. We bow before him and shut our mouths. We are eager for him to speak – and to speak any way he pleases. We are the silent learners. He is the sinless teacher. We put our hands upon our mouths and take our place at his feet. Do with us as you please, Father. We are not your judge, nor the judge of how your Son speaks. Have mercy on us – tough or tender – and lead us to your everlasting joy. In the name of your Son, our Lord Jesus, amen.”

 Blessings on you this day…

Neighborhood Evening Walk

 Psalm 16:11 ~ You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

 

Proverbs 11:28 ~ Whoever trusts in his riches will fall but the righteous will flourish like a green leaf.

 

Ephesians 5: 1-2 ~ Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ has loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

 

I wish you could smell the wonderful fragrance of this Night Blooming Jasmine. The development that we live in has planted these flowering shrubs in all the common beds. Makes for a wonderful fragrant evening walk…

 

Isaiah 40:8 ~ The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever.

 

Isaiah 44:22 ~ I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you.

Our marine layer mist comes from the Pacific over the Santa Monica Mountains to envelope our mornings…

Photobucket blacked out all my photos and is holding all my photos hostage as of July 2017.

Solzhenitsyn: A Pictorial Record, 1974

 

How easy it is for me to live with you, Lord!

How easy it is for me to believe in you!

When my mind is distraught and my reason fails,

When the cleverest people do not see further than this evening what must be done tomorrow

You grant me the clear confidence

that you exist, and that you will take care

that not all the ways of goodness are stopped.

At the height of earthly fame I gaze with wonder at

that path through hopelessness –

to this point from which even I have been able

to convey to men some reflection of the Light

which comes from you.

And you will enable me to go on doing

as much as needs to be done.

 ~ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38535000/jpg/_38535745_solzhenitsyn_ap_238.jpg

Clinging: The Experience of Prayer, 1984 ~ Emilie Griffin

 

There is a moment between intending to pray and actually praying that is as dark and silent as any moment in our lives. It is the split second between thinking about praying and really praying. For some of us, this split second may last for decades. It seems, then, that the greatest obstacle to prayer is the simple matter of beginning, the simple exertion of will, the starting, the acting, the doing. How easy it is, and yet – between us and the possibility of prayer there seems to be a great gulf fixed: an abyss of our own making that separates us from God.

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Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, C.S. Lewis ~ Quote

If we were perfected, prayer would not be a duty, it would be delight. Some day, please God, it will be. The same is true of many other behaviours which now appear as duties. If I loved my neighbor as myself, most of the actions which are now my moral duty would flow out of me as spontaneously as song from a lark or fragrance from a flower. Why is this not so yet? Well, we know, don’t we? Aristotle has taught us that delight is the “bloom” on an unimpeded activity. But the very activities for which we were created are, while we live on earth, variously impeded: by evil in ourselves or in others. Not to practise them is to abandon our humanity. To practise them spontaneously and delightfully is not yet possible. The situation creates the category of duty, the whole specifically moral realm.

It exists to be transcended. Here is the paradox of Christianity. As practical imperatives for here and now the two great commandments have to be translated “Behave as if you loved God and man.” For no man can love because he is told to. Yet obedience on this practical level is not really obedience at all. And if a man really loved God and man, once again this would hardly be obedience; for if he did, he would be unable to help it. Thus the command really says to us, “Ye must be born again.” Till then, we have duty, morality, the Law. A schoolmaster, as St Paul says, to bring us to Christ. We must expect no more of it than of a schoolmaster; we must allow it no less…

But the school-days, please God, are numbered. There is no morality in heaven. The angels never knew (from within) the meaning of the word ought, and the blessed dead have long since gladly forgotten it. This is why Dante’s Heaven is so right, and Milton’s, with its military discipline so silly.

…In the perfect and eternal world the Law will vanish. But the results of having lived faithfully under it will not.

I am therefore not really deeply worried by the fact prayer is at present a duty, and even an irksome one.

The Transforming Power of Prayer ~ James Houston

I used to think that prayer was a spiritual exercise – something that needed to be worked at, like running or vaulting. But I was never any good at sports, and perhaps I would never be any good at prayer either. After years of feeling useless and guilty, I began to realize the truth of a comment made by one of the early Fathers of the church, Clement of Alexandria. He said that “prayer is keeping company with God.” This began to give me a new focus on prayer. I began to see prayer more as a friendship than a rigorous discipline. It started to become more of a relationship and less of a performance.”

~ James Houston

Quote taken from, Between Heaven and Earth by Ken Gire copyright 1997 by Ken Gire

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