Absence extinguishes small passions and increases great ones, as a wind will blow out a candle, and blow in a fire.” - Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680

The dry times in the lives of Christians are enlightening and revealing. Those who, like a candle, have but a casual and comfortable relationship with Jesus Christ tend to flame out once the winds of adversity come.

In contrast, those whose passions are fueled by an unquenchable fire deep within are driven by the same winds to seek the face of God and pursue him even though it seems futile. Though the winds may blind us, God remains faithful to give us sufficient vision for the next necessary step.


Rabbi Zusya said that on the Day of Judgment, God would ask him, not why he had not been Moses, but why he had not been Zusya.” - Walter Kaufmann

We know, as Christians, that God has predestined us to be conformed to the image of Christ, but in our quest to facilitate that we often focus on an esteemed believer and try to be like him or her. Some of us may even create a visual image of what we imagine Jesus must have been like and pattern ourselves after it.

But this is not what God desires. Each of us is to be a unique display of what God originally intended a person to be; that is, as Christ is formed in us we begin to reveal Christ in a manner impossible for anyone else. It is not that Christians should be the same but that each of us should be reflecting who we might have been had sin never been a part of our lives.


Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their product that they do on advertising and they wouldn’t have to advertise.” - Will Rogers

There’s a message here for local churches. If we were to spend as much energy - and even money - on doing church as Scripture tells us to do church, we wouldn’t have to advertise or have special programs or promotions to get the attention of the lost. We would be so attractive that they would be drawn to us without us having to go out of our way to make them notice us.

The church needs to go to the lost, but she needs to go in ministry and mission, not with marketing and machinations. We need to show them our love for God, one another, and them, not just talk about it.


Bad artists always admire each other’s work.”
- Oscar Wilde

It is tempting, of course, to think of Hollywood and their fawning all over one another’s work, but this mirror works for Christians, too. How often are we guilty of blindly praising or defending pastors, teachers, or theologians of our own denominational or doctrinal ilk? Not only would the world hold us in higher regard if we were graciously honest in disagreeing with our friends, but our theological opponents would also take us more seriously.

Sometimes our heroes are just wrong, even about important things. Ryrie, Piper, Calvin, Wesley, Stanley, Swindoll - you name someone and they’ve had their errors. Why pretend otherwise?


No Comment:

We talk about the American Dream, and we want to tell the world about the American Dream, but what is that dream, in most cases, but the dream of material things? I sometimes think the United States for this reason is the greatest failure the world has ever seen.” - Eugene O’Neill


The control man has secured over nature has far outrun his control over himself.” - Ernest Jones


It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being.” - John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)


The real danger is not that computers may begin to think like men, but that men may begin to think like computers.” - Sydney J. Harris


2 Cor 1.13