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Random Thoughts (3rd Quarter, 1999)
What is the result of contemplating such astonishing sweetness? To what, I ask, will it deeply attract the thoughtful mind when it considers them carefully?
- Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God (a paraphrase)
It is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord... In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God... Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation.
- Ingmar Bergman
And joy suddenly stirred in his soul, and he even stopped for a minute to take a breath. 'The past,' he thought, ' is linked with the present by an unbroken chain of events flowing out of one another.' And it seemed to him that he had just seen both ends of that chain; that when he touched one end the other quivered.
- Anton Chekhov, "The Student"
"We are frail; we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Forged in the fires of human passion, chokin' on the fumes of selfish rage. And with these our hells and our heavens so few inches apart, we must be awfully small and not as strong as we think we are.
- Rich Mullins
Don't be so humble - you are not that great.
- Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat
Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
- Gore Vidal
I believe in original sin ... I know that I'm capable of craving a cold beer in a village of starving kids ... I understand that selfishness vies for space in our hearts with compassion...
- George Stephanopoulos
Do you not find enough in any on single day to make you stumble? ·do you not find that before the breakfast things are cleared away from the table that you have displayed enough sin to make you ashamed of yourselves? If we were to shut ourselves up in the lone cell of a hermit, temptation would follow us; for as long as we cannot escape ourselves we cannot escape incitements to sin.
- Charles H. Spurgeon
·and Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need ending.
- Moby Dick, Ishmael
What is the result of contemplating such great mercy and mercy so undeserved, such generous and proven love, such unlooked-for condescension, such persistent gentleness, such astonishing sweetness? To what, I ask, will all these wonderfully draw and deeply attract the thoughtful mind when it considers them carefully and is wholly set at liberty from unworthy love? It will despise everything else, everything which will get in the way of that desire. The Bride surely runs eagerly in the odor of these perfumes, and loves ardently (Sg 1:3). Yet even when she has fallen wholly in love she thinks she loves too little because she is loved so much. And she is right.
- Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God
Herein is the difference between a godly fear, or the fear of a godly man, and the fear of a sinner: the one fears the effects of God's displeasure, the other fears his displeasure itself.
- Jonathan Edwards, Miscellanies 277
Contributed by:
Paul Soupiset
Barry Brake
Jeff Lawrence