[We] love truth when it enlightens [us], but hate truth when it accuses [us].

—Augustine

NEW YORK —  As a top prospect for the Oakland Athletics, outfielder Grant Desme might’ve gotten the call every minor leaguer wants this spring. Instead, he believed he had another, higher calling. Desme announced Friday that he was leaving baseball to enter the priesthood, walking away after a breakout season in which he became MVP of the Arizona Fall League.

Good for him.

Read the entire article.

We picture the ‘authoritative’ husband as a domineering figure who makes all the decisions himself, issues commands and expects obedience, inhibits and suppresses his wife, and so prevents her from growing into a mature or fulfilled person. But this is not at all the kind of ‘headship’ which the apostle Paul describes [in Ephesians 5:21-33], whose model is Jesus Christ. Certainly, ‘headship’ implies a degree of leadership and initiative, as when Christ came to woo and to win his bride. But more specifically it implies sacrifice, self-giving for the sake of the beloved, as when Christ gave himself for his bride. If ‘headship’ means ‘power’ in any sense, then it is power to care not to crush, power to serve not to dominate, power to facilitate self-fulfillment, not to frustrate or destroy it. And in all this the standard of the husband’s love is to be the cross of Christ, on which he surrendered himself even to death in his selfless love for his bride.

—John Stott, The Message of Ephesians, 232

Husbands, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest these words from Dr. Stott. Your marriage will profit by them if you do.

O God, the enlightener of all nations, grant your people to enjoy perpetual peace; and pour into our hearts that radiant light which you did shed into the minds of the wise men; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

—Trium Magorum, Gelasian

According to Isaiah, the people who sinned sat in the shadow of death. For these a light arose, not by the merits of their virtues but by the grace of God. There is, therefore, no distinction between the breath of God and the food of the tree of life.

—Ambrose, On Paradise 5.29

[Jesus] told [the Samaritan woman], “Go, call your husband and come back.” “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

—John 4:16-26 (TNIV)

I love this interchange between Jesus and the Samaritan woman because it captures the human condition at its, um, finest. Have you, like the Samaritan woman in today’s passage, ever tried to argue with Jesus or change the subject when he tells you something that makes you uncomfortable or you don’t want to hear? I have. If you have too, I hope it worked for you better than it did for me. 🙂

Hope is necessary for us in these days of exile from heaven. It is our consolation on the journey. When a traveler gets tired of walking along the dusty road, he puts up with fatigue because he hopes to arrive home. Rob him of any hope of arriving and immediately his strength for walking is broken. So too, the hope for heaven which we have now is an important factor easing the pain of our just exile and sometimes harsh journey.

—Augustine, Sermon 158.8

Augustine points us to the need for Christian hope. We live in a broken world and only Christ offers sufficient hope to help us traverse it. If you have not already done so, accept Jesus’ gracious offer and embrace the life and hope that comes with it.

Faith does not waver if it is supported by hope. Take away hope, and faith falters. If you want to go somewhere, will you even begin walking if you have no hope of reaching your destination?

—Augustine, Sermon 359A, 5

He walks as in the presence of God [who has a conversation] with him in frequent prayer and frequent communion; in all his necessities, in all doubtings; that opens all his wants to [God]; that weeps before him for all his sins; that asks remedy and support for his weakness; that fears him as a Judge; reverences him as a Lord; obeys him as a Father; and loves him.

—Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living

Contrast the essential difference of living here with Taylor’s previous observations about Christians who tend to be bean counters. No bean counting here. We see here a holistic pattern of living, of being in the presence of the Living God. Gotta love those Anglican Divines.

It is a very great fault amongst a very great part of Christians, that in their inquiries of religion, even the best of them ordinarily ask but these two questions, “Is it lawful? Is it necessary?” If they find it lawful, they will do it without scruple or restraint; and then they suffer imperfection, or receive the reward of folly: for it may be lawful, and yet not fit to be done.

And as great an error is on the other hand in the other question. He that too strictly inquires of an action whether it be necessary or [not], would do well to ask also whether it be good: whether it be of advantage to the interest of his soul?

If a Christian will do no more than what is necessary, he will quickly be tempted to omit something of that also.

—Jeremy Taylor, Unum Necessarium

I appreciate Taylor’s disdain for bean counting in whatever form it takes when it comes to living a Christian life. If we resort to bean counting, we really have no life at all, let alone abundant life.

Some people stand this day against so many old [church] fathers, so many [church] doctors, so many examples of the primitive church, so manifest and so plain words of the holy scriptures; and yet have they herein not one father, not one doctor, not one allowed example of the primitive church, to make for them…Of all the words of holy scriptures, of all the examples of the primitive church, of all the old fathers, of all the ancient doctors, in these causes they have not one.

—John Jewel, Challenge Sermon

It seems some ways things haven’t changed very much from the 16th century, at least in terms of some who try to create a brave new world.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?” Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

—John 4:7-14

I wonder how many of us underestimate or misunderstand Jesus the way the woman in this story did.