Nothing worth doing
is completed in our lifetime, therefore, we are saved by hope. Nothing true or
beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore,
we are saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished
alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous
from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; therefore, we are
saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness. -Reinhold Niebuhr
Faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving
God. While we are looking at God we do not see
ourselves – blessed riddance. The man
who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures
will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks
away to the perfect One. While he looks
at Christ, the very things he has so long been trying to do will be getting
done within him. It will be God working
in him to will and to do....Now if faith is the gaze of the heart at God, and
if this gaze is but the raising of the inward eyes to meet the all-seeing eyes
of God, then it follows that it is one of the easiest things possible to
do. It would be like God to make the most
vital thing easy and place it within range of possibility for the weakest and
poorest of us....Neither does place matter to this blessed work of believing
God. Lift your heart and let it rest
upon Jesus and you are instantly in a sanctuary though it be a Pullman berth or
a factory or a kitchen. You can see God from anywhere if your mind
is set to love and obey Him. A. W.
Tozer, The Pursuit of God
Canadian geese live here in the
Shenandoah Valley year round, but September brings the mystical flights of the
migrators in their V formation, passing through these environs to warmer wintering
places. Not only geese, but flocks of
other birds as well have the same circadian rhythms. I saw the first flight
of them recently and
knew that summer would soon be coming to an end. Clouds of starlings swarm our
valley twice a
year. Ornithologists inform us that the
North American continent is populated with 200 million of them, descended from
40 introduced from Europe in New York City’s Central Park in the late
1890s. Though a scavenger bird not
protected by wildlife legislation, starlings, too, evoke a mystic bewilderment in
their astonishing burlesque. Who choreographs
all this abracadabra? Baby crickets
began to emerge from my flower garden in late July and now their chatter can be
heard well into the night. Cicadas,
too. A divine Providence overseas all
this evidence of life passages.
Supreme in my thoughts is the
pecking order of all Creation, man and woman designed to reign over and rule
where the Holy Spirit wants to take up residence. This all gives new meaning
to the sacrament
of living, superbly stated in A. W. Tozer’s book, The Pursuit of God: “By
one act of consecration of ourselves to
God” he writes, “ we can make every subsequent act express that
consecration. We need no more be ashamed
of our body –the fleshly servant that carries us through life--than Jesus was of
the humble beast upon which he rode into Jerusalem. ‘The Lord hath need
of [him].’ (Matthew 21:3)
may well apply to our mortal bodies. If
Christ dwells in us, we may bear about the Lord of glory as the little beast
did of old and give occasion to the multitudes to cry, ‘Hosanna in the
highest.’...The knowledge that we are all God’s, that He has received all and
rejected nothing, will unify our inner lives and make everything sacred to us.”
“The whole
conviction of my
life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and
curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the
central and inevitable fact of human existence...Love is the ultimate expression of the will to live. Quotes
from Thomas Wolfe
Autumn Aspins
