Here are some thoughtful quotes by Gord Carkner from Christian intellectuals and devotional writers
Great Quotes
Made for spirituality we wallow in introspection. Made for joy, we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance. Made for relationship, we insist on our own way. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment. But new creation has already begun. The sun has begun to rise. Christians are called to leave behind in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world. It is time, in the power of the Spirit, to take up our proper role, our full human role as agents, heralds, and stewards of the new day that is dawning. That, quite simply, is what is means to be Christian: to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God’s new world, which he has thrown open before us.
~N.T. Wright, Simply Christian
And just like one of us who wants to be known by others by revealing to them the words in his heart, clothes those words with letters and sounds, so God wanting to be known by us, takes his Word, conceived from eternity, and clothes it with flesh in time…. Therefore, the Father is known in the Son as in his Word and proper image. Now since every created word is some likeness of that Word, and some likeness, though imperfect, of the divinity that is found in everything, either an image or a trace, it follows that what God is cannot be known perfectly through any creature or by any thought or concept of a created intellect. It is in the Word alone, the only-begotten Word, which is a perfect word and the perfect image of the Father, that knows and comprehends the Father.
~Acquinas, Commentary on John, pp.339-40
I have argued that there is a different foundation for reality and thus a different kind of binding commitment symbolized most powerfully in the incarnation. The incarnation represents an alternative way by which word and world come together. It is in the incarnation and the particular way the Word became incarnate in Jesus Christ that we find the only adequate reply to the challenges of dissolution and difference. If, indeed, there is a hope or an imaginable prospect for human flourishing in the contemporary world, it begins when the Word of shalom becomes flesh in us and is enacted through us toward those with whom we live, in the tasks we are given, and in the spheres of influence in which we operate. When the Word of all flourishing—defined by the love of Christ—becomes flesh in us, in our relations with others, within the tasks we are given, and within our spheres of influence—absence gives way to presence, and the word we speak to each other and to the world becomes authentic and trustworthy. This is the heart of the theology of faithful presence.
~James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: the irony, tragedy and possibility of Christianity in the late modern world. OUP, 2010.
Calling: accepting our defining situation as a positive place to stand, rather than a place from which to escape.
If the Church really see itself as the people of God, it is obvious that it can never be a static and supra-historical phenomenon, which exists undisturbed by earthly space and historical time. The church is always and everywhere a living people, gathered together from the people of this world and journeying through the midst of time. The Church is essentially en route, on a journey, a pilgrimage. A Church which pitches its tents without looking out constantly for new horizons, which does not continually strike camp, is being untrue to its calling. The historical nature of the church is revealed by the fact that it remains the pilgrim people of God. It renews and continues the history of the ancient people of the covenant and fulfils it in the new covenant. At the same time it journeys through history, through a time of complex imperfection, towards the final perfection, the eschatological kingdom of God, led by God himself. It is essentially an interim Church, a Church in transition, and therefore not a church of fear but of expectation and hope: a Church which is directed towards the consummation of the world by God.
~From The Church by Hans Kung
Most of the discussion of prayer I had ever heard centered on whether God answers prayer and how we can know that he does. But during the past decade I have come to believe that prayer is not a matter of my calling in an attempt to get God’s attention, but on my finally listening to the call of God, which has been constant and patient and insistent in my inner being. In relationship to God, I am not the seeker, the initiator, the one who loves more greatly. In prayer, as in the whole salvation story … God is reaching out to me, speaking to me, and it is up to me to learn to be polite enough to pay attention. God speaks. The big question is do I answer, do I respond to an invitation that is always open.
~From Speech, Silence, Action! By Virginia Ramey Mollencott
Recognizing that the earth and the fullness thereof is a gift from our gracious God, and that we are called to cherish, nurture, and provide loving stewardship for the earth’s resources. And recognizing that life itself is a gift, and a call to responsibility, joy and celbration, I make the following declarations:
- I declare myself to be a world citizen.
- I commit myself to lead an ecologically sound life.
- I commit myself to lead a life of creative simplicity and to share my personal wealth with the world’s poor.
- I commit myself to join with others in reshaping institutions in order to bring about a more just global society in which each person has full access to the needed resources for the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual growth.
- I commit myself to occupational accountability, and in so doing I will seek to avoid the creation of products which will cause harm to others.
- I affirm the gift of my body, and commit myself to its proper nourishment and physical well-being.
- I commit myself to examine continually my relations with others, and to attempt to relate honestly, morally and lovingly to those around me.
- I commit myself to personal renewal through prayer, meditation and study.
- I commit myself to responsible participation in a community of faith
~From Visions for a Hungry World by Thomas Pettepiece
The enjoyment of God should be the supreme end of prayer; and it is that enjoyment of God that we feel not only saved but safe; we are conscious of truly belonging to God.
We all have experiences of desiring, experiences which are also accompanied by a feeling of great well-being. These experiences are experiences of being touched by the creative desire of God who desires us into being and continues us in being.
The desire I experience is that of God creating me now in all the particulars of my present existence. It is the deepest desire within me and is in tune God’s one intention in creating the universe. That desire can become the ruling passion of my life, if I let it.
Insofar as this desire reigns in our heart, we also desire to live out our lives in harmony with this desire, to live in harmony with God’s creative purpose for us, to choose what will be more in tune with our desire for union with God.
~From Finding God in All Things: a Companion to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius by William Barry
Grad Student Prayer
Dear God, you know my situation, my stressors and anxieties, self-doubt, my obsessions, the academic expectations that seem so impossible. You know that I complain too much and show appreciation and gratitude too infrequently. But your love and wisdom are much greater than all this angst that surrounds me, greater than the intense competition from my peers, or my fears about publication and future employment. Thank-you so much for the incredible opportunity to sharpen my skills, to pursue truth and beauty, to experience growth of character. Forgive me when I get too full up with my own concerns and forget to care about those around me, when I miss that special opportunity of grace. You know me more deeply than I know myself; you call me to live in joy and wonder under your sovereign care. Keep my heart alive with expectancy of that encounter, that burst of insight, that friend who needs my support. You are Life, a communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Fill my life and my research with your Holy Spirit so that I might this day be led into paths of fruitful service and dialogue.
Anonymous
It is your desire for God and your capacity to reach for more of God than you have right now that is the deepest essence of who you are. There is a place within each one of us that is spiritual in nature, the place where God’s Spirit witnesses with our spirit about our truest identity. Here God’s Spirit dwells with our spirit, and here our truest desires make themselves known. From this place we cry to God for deeper union with him and with others.
~Ruth Haley Barton, Sacred Rhythms.
Union with God can only be secured by love. And subjection to him can only be grounded in humility. And humility can only be the result of genuinely knowing and believing the truth—that is, the truth of God and of myself. I must continually discover how vital it is to lay hold of God and to hold him fast, for it is from him that I derive my being and without whom I am nothing.
~Bernard de Clairvaux, The Love of God
O Holy Spirit of God, visit now this soul of mine, and tarry within until eventide. Inspire all my thoughts. Pervade all my imaginations. Suggest all my decisions. Lodge in my will’s most inward citadel and order all my doings. Be with me in my silence and in my speech, in my haste and in my leisure, in company and in solitude, in the freshness of the morning and in the weariness of the evening; and give me grace at all times to rejoice in thy mysterious companionship.
~A Diary of Prayer by John Baillie
What is important is that prayer should reach down to the core of our being, the point of unity of our identity. This is something deeper than and underlying all our intellectual and emotional activity. It is from here, if anywhere, that our thoughts and feelings can be ‘taken captive’ in Christ (II Cor. 10:5)…. It is when this deep centre is filled with the peace of Christ that our lives are ‘kept’ in and by him.
Simon Tugwell Prayer in Practice
We need a good story, a moral landscape of admonition and promise, for people who have sustained a bad Fall, but nevertheless seek a better city; and en route that the story should tell them who is their neighbour, how to find a way home after prodigal expenditure in a waste land, and how to recognize a pearl of great price when they see it.
Christian sociologist David Martin, Christian Language in a Secular City.
We must train our thinking, our imagination, our understanding to begin with God not ourselves. P.T. Forsyth, The Soul of Prayer
