Daily Archives: October 22, 2010

From the Morning Scriptures

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As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

–Luke 10:38-42 (TNIV)

We are a scattered people, aren’t we, and today’s world of instant communication, Twitter, Facebook, et al., tends to make us even more scattered. We can’t seem to stop and catch our breath, let alone take some time each day for prayer and Bible study. Martha would have understood. But our Lord reminds her to keep the Main Thing the Main Thing. To do that, Martha had to make time to do so and be intentional about it. So do we.

What in your life leaves you scattered? What are you doing to keep the Main Thing the Main Thing?

More from John Wesley

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Today I post the final excerpts from this week’s featured Anglican theologian and writer, John Wesley. Read Monday’s post for more information on Wesley. I hope you have found his writings edifying.

Today’s writings highlight Wesley’s theology on grace and our stewardship of money. Enjoy.

Wesley on prevenient (preventing) grace:

No man living is entirely destitute of what is vulgarly called natural conscience, But it is not natural: It is more property termed preventing grace. Every man has a greater or less measure of this, which waits not for the call of man. Everyone has, sooner or later, good desires, although the generality of men stifle them before they can strike deep root or produce any considerable fruit. Everyone has some measure of that light, some faint glimmering ray, which, sooner or later, more or less, enlightens every man that comes into the world. So that no man sins because he has not grace, but because he does not use the grace which he has.

—Sermon, On Working Out Our Own Salvation

Wesley on sanctifying grace:

There is likewise great variety in the manner and time of God’s bestowing his sanctifying grace, whereby he enables his children to give him their whole heart, which we can in no wise account for. God undoubtedly has reasons, but those reasons arc generally hid from the children of men. Once more: Some of those who are enabled to love God with all their heart and with all their soul retain the same blessing, without any interruption, till they are carried to Abraham’s bosom; others do not retain it, although they are not conscious of having grieved the Holy Spirit of God. This also we do not understand: We do not herein “know the mind of the Spirit.”

—Sermon, The Imperfection of Human Knowledge

Wesley on using a means of grace in cooperation with the Holy Spirit. Notice that Wesley sees this as a means to an end, rather than an end itself. Notice too that he sees daily discipline as a feature, not a bug:

O begin! Fix some part of every day for private exercises [of prayer and Bible study]. You may acquire the taste for which you have not: What is tedious at first will afterward be pleasant, Whether you like it or not, read and pray daily. It is for your life: there is no other way. Do justice to your own soul: give it time and means to grow. Do not starve yourself any longer. Take up your cross and be a Christian altogether. Then will the children of God rejoice.

—Personal letter

Wesley’s excellent advice on our stewardship of money:

Gain all you can, without hurting either yourself or your neighbor, in soul or body, by applying hereto with uninterrupted diligence and with all the understanding which God has given you. Save all you can, by cutting off every expense which serves only to indulge foolish desire; to gratify either the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, or the pride of life; waste nothing, living or dying, on sin or folly, whether for yourself or your children. And then give all you can, or in other words, give all you have to God. Render to God not a tenth, not a third, not a half, but all that is God’s, be it more or less, by employing all on yourself, your household, the household of faith, and all mankind, in such a manner that you may give a good account of your stewardship when ye can be no longer stewards.

—Sermon, On the Use of Money

And this warning:

O you that have riches in possession, once more hear the word of the Lord! You that are rich in this world, that have food to eat, and clothes to put on, and something over, are you clear of the curse of loving the world? Are you sensible of your danger? Is not your belly your god? Is not eating and drinking, or any other pleasure of sense, the greatest pleasure you enjoy? Do not you seek happiness in dress, furniture, pictures, gardens, or anything else that pleases the eye? Do not you grow soft and delicate, unable to bear cold, heat, the wind or the rain, as you did when you were poor? Are you not increasing in goods, laying up treasure on earth instead of restoring to God in the poor, not so much, or so much, but all that you can spare? Surely, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven!”

—Sermon, On God’s Vineyard

The Synthesis of the Devotional Life

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Because we cannot reasonably expect to erect a constantly expanding structure of social activism upon a constantly diminishing foundation of faith, attention to the cultivation of the inner life is our first order of business, even in a period of rapid social change. The Church, if it is to affect the world, must become a center from which new spiritual power emanates. While the Church must be secular in the sense that it operates in the world, if it is only secular it will not have the desired effect upon the secular order which it is called upon to penetrate. With no diminution of concern for people, we can and must give new attention to the production of a trustworthy religious experience.

…John Woolman is [also] worth remembering because, more than most Christians, he kept his inner and outer life together. In the happy expression employed by Elizabeth O’Connor, this man of travel engaged, at the same time, in both an inward and an outward journey. The inward journey was marked by an unusual sense of holy obedience. “I have been more and more instructed,” he wrote near the end, “as to the necessity of depending upon the fresh instructions of Christ, the price of peace, from day to day.” The outward journey was marked by an increasing sensitivity to suffering and to an intelligent effort to eliminate as much of this suffering as is humanly possible. What is most remarkable in Woolman’s potent example is the complete bridging of the chasm that so mars our current Christian scene. His devotional experience and his social concern, far from being in conflict, actually required each other. He was acutely conscious of the danger of a social witness that could have become hard and cruel in its denunciation of others. “Christ knoweth,” he said, “when the fruit-bearing branches themselves have need of purging.”

–Elton Trueblood, The New Man for Our Time

Evelyn Underhill: The Spiritual Life

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Our spiritual life is his affair; because, whatever we may think to the contrary, it is really produced by his steady attraction, and our humble and self-forgetful response to it. It consists in being drawn, at his pace and in his way, to the place where he wants us to be; not the place we fancied for ourselves. For a spiritual life is simply a life in which all that we do comes from the centre, where we are anchored in God: a life soaked through and through by a sense of his reality and claim, and selfgiven to the great movement of his will.
Most of our conflicts and difficulties come from trying to deal with the spiritual and practical aspects of our life separately instead of realising them as parts of one whole. If our practical life is centred on our own interests, cluttered up by possessions, distracted by ambitions, passions, wants and worries, beset by a sense of our own rights and importance, or anxieties for our own future, or longings for our own success, we need not expect that our spiritual life will be a contrast to all this. The soul’s house is not built on such a convenient plan: there are few soundproof partitions in it.

–Evelyn Underhill, The Spiritual Life

True Poverty

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True poverty is poverty of heart, which you said was ‘blessed,’ my Saviour Jesus, to which all material things are totally indifferent, for it has broken with them all. As S. Mary Magdalen broke her vase of spices, the heart empties itself utterly of all attachment to transitory things, it is left open wide for God alone. Then God enters in and reigns alone, filling it entirely, and makes subject for ever to himself, for him and in him, the love of all men, his children. The heart knows no other than these two loves; nothing else exists for it and we live on earth as though we were not there, in perpetual contemplation of the one necessity to our souls and in intercession for those that the Heart of Jesus loves.

–Charles de Foucauld, Meditations of a Hermit

The Role of Solitude

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St. Anthony, the “father of monks,” is the best guide in our attempt to understand the role of solitude in ministry. Born around 251, Anthony was the son of Egyptian peasants. When he was about eighteen years old he heard in church the Gospel words, “Go and sell what you own and give the money to the poor…then come and follow me” (Matthew 19:21). Anthony realized that these words were meant for him personally. After a period of living as a poor laborer at the edge of his village, he withdrew into the desert, where for twenty years he lived in complete solitude. During these years Anthony experienced a terrible trial. The shell of his superficial securities was cracked and the abyss of iniquity was opened to him. But he came out of this trial victoriously–not because of his own willpower or ascetic exploits, but because of his unconditional surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. When he emerged from his solitude, people recognized in him the qualities of an authentic “healthy” man, whole in body, mind, and soul. They flocked to him for healing, comfort and direction. In his old age, Anthony retired to an even deeper solitude to be totally absorbed in direct communion with God. He died in the year 356, when he was about one hundred and six years old.

–Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart