Tuesday's Talk

I wanted to post thoughts from Saturday's prep for worship. I couldn't help but think of this letter that I received from a friend- I don't know- I guess the thoughts of "doing without" made me think more of the sufficiency of Christ and the glory of God- and what our pursuits in this life really should be.

Yikes- I lost the letter- but if you check out her blog- and read the "about me" section and some of the other things she's written, I think you'll know what I mean. http://www.megrachelle.blogspot.com/.

Next, the words from this hymn:

Depths of Mercy, Can There Be

"I have spilt is precious blood
I have trampled the Son of God
Filled with pangs unspeakable
I who yet am not in hell

If I rightly read Thou heart
If Thou all compassion art
Bend thine ear in mercy bow
Pardon and accept me now

Jesus speaks and pleads his blood
He disarms the wrath of God
Now my Father's mercies move
Justice lingers into love."

Just the love of Christ overwhelms us to worship.

Finally, I always like "serious cleaning" because I find stuff. I found a book entitled The Pattern of Christ. It's about the beattitudes. Good stuff. (I think it's a loaner from a friend, so I'm extra glad I found it.)

I love it's description of REAL Christianity in contrast to pharisees/legalists. Here are a few quotes:

"As we watch righteousness being clothed in the flesh and blood of Christ it ceases to be cold and stern and begins to exert the attraction of the desirable. Righteousness moves out of the frozen wisdom of the book of Proverbs into the neighboring poetry of the Song of Song."

"What [Christ] looked for was not the moral achievement, but the moral desire; not the sense of 'having arrived' religiously, but wanting to be on the way; not the claim to possess God, but to hunger after him."

"The only requirement is the honest desire for God, a genuine hunger after the good life he has revealed in Christ. Christ did not found his church for whose who were already satisfied, but for those who were [are] not."

"I may be quite willing to admit that I am not righteous. . . but do I really hunger and thirst after these things?"

"It is not our goodness but our desire for it to which Christ responds. And he responds according to the strength of our desire."

"He looks through the success and failure, the virtues and the vice, the gains and the lapses, and he asks if we really want what he has to offer- HIS righteousness, his life poured out for us. If we hunger and thirst after righteousness, we will be filled." This is an every day, every moment affair.