"When a man’s ways please the LORD, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.' Pr. 16:7

This proverb is vividly illustrated by Jesus ---

"The woman at the well left Jesus to share all that Jesus said to her Samaritan neighbors, who hated the Jews; but the woman's vivid testimony brought many out to see the Jewish prophet. These Samaritans preferred to beat until they drew blood or to murder outright the Jews traveling through their territories, and who later even refused hospitality to Jesus' own disciples. But this time, these Samaritans were gracious, for they had undoubtedly been tamed by the personality of the prophet. Jesus accepted the invitation and "He stayed there two days.” and far more believed because of His word. "The Life of Christ", by Giuseppe Ricciotti.

We must be sure that people "hate" us for true Gospel reasons, and not because we are obnoxious, rude and argumentative.

 

  "To be more against the devil than for God is exceedingly dangerous."

"Those who crusade not for God in themselves, but against the devil in others, never succeed in making the world better, but leave it either as it was, or sometimes even perceptibly worse that it was before the crusade began." 

Aldous Huxley.  

  I'm reading Gary Thomas's book "When to walk away" finding freedom from toxic people. The first chapter covered some important points. Here is a condensed list. 

1. Jesus walked away from others (or let others walk away from him) more than two dozen times in the four gospels. 

2. At times Jesus remained verbally silent when others tried to goad him into a conversation or a foolish controversy. 

3. When people asked Jesus to leave, He usually complied. 

4. Not only does Jesus let others walk away; at the great judgment He will send people away. You won't be able to reach or influence everyone you meet. 

5. Sometimes Jesus walked away for personal refreshment, prayer, or the need to reach others. 

6. Though Jesus came to die the death of a martyr, He repeatedly walked away from persecution, attacks, and violence throughout His adult ministry. In the same way, it can be prudent for us to walk away from verbal, emotional or physical abuse. 

 

  "These six things the Lord hates, yes, seven are an abomination to Him..... one who sows discord among the brethren." 

  "The next consideration regarding vain, and trifling speech is contention; by that I mean, wrangling and perpetual talk proceeding from the spirit of contradiction; a person who is peevish, angry, and has a quarreling disposition, they examine every issue to dispute and busy themselves, and others, with questions and impertinent oppositions.  They are troublesome and they complicate, tangle and twist all wise discourse and throw a cloud upon the face of truth; there is noise but no harmony, fighting but no victory, talking but no learning. They will put every man to flight defending their own position, disturbing the 'rest of truth' and all the dwellings of unity and consent. We can be sure that no person that is clamorous can be wise. They are, in short, "the accuser of the brethren" like the devil; and it is a vile thing for a person to be a tale bearer and sow discord among the brethren: one of the seven things God loudly proclaims He hates." 

Jeremy Taylor. 1600s. 

 

   The most difficult things in life are relational; marriage and child rearing are our biggest challenges, and they demand our very best. To enter marriage or to decide to rear children without educating ourselves is the most foolish thing we can do. "There is safety in a multitude of counselors", and nothing we do impacts the present and the future like marriage and children. It can be the most rewarding thing we ever do, or the most tragic. So we simply must do our due diligence in educating ourselves with books, sermons, wise friends and people we know that have happy and successful families. To neglect this eclipses everything else. 

  

 

  "When David had sinned but in one instance with Bathsheba, interrupting the course of a holy life by one, sad calamity, it pleased God to pardon him, but see upon what hard terms; he prayed long and violently, he wept sore, he was humbled in sackcloth and ashes, he ate the bread of affliction and drank his bottle of tears; he lost his princely sprit, and had an amazed conscience; he suffered the wrath of God, and the sword never did depart from his house. His son rebelled, and his kingdom revolted; he fled on foot, and maintained spies against his own child; he was forced to send an army against him that was dearer than his own eyes, and to fight against him whom he would not hurt for all the riches of Syria and Egypt; his concubines were defied by an incestuous mixture, in the face of the sun, before all Israel; and his child was the fruit of sin, after a seven day's fever, he died, and left him nothing of his sin to show, but sorrow and scourges of the divine vengeance; and after all this God pardoned him finally, because he was for ever sorrowful, and never did the sin again. 

  Now he that has sinned a thousand times for David's once, is too confident if he thinks that all his shall be pardoned at a less rate than  was used to expiate the one mischief of the religious King David."   Jeremy Taylor. 

 Why read poetry? 

  "The great tendency and purpose of poetry is to carry the mind beyond and above the beaten, dusty, weary walks of ordinary life; to lift it into a purer element; and to breathe into it more profound and generous emotion. It reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of early feeling, revives the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the spring-time of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human nature by vivid delineations of its tenderest and loftiest feelings, spreads our sympathies over all classes of society, knits us by new ties with universal being, and through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to lay hold on a future life." 

William Ellery Channing.   

  Let the church ask itself, which would please its Master best,  

Teaching some ignorant child the way of life, or going to hear a great sermon – visiting and consoling some poor mourner, or going to a prayer meeting – stirring up some weak soul to duty, or seeking for an hour of emotional excitement – going to meeting always, or laboring occasionally for the reclamation of some sad wanderer from the path of virtue?

Timothy Titcomb

 

What is a home? 

"Is it merely a place where fellow-morals meet to eat, drink, and sleep securely beneath a roof? A house is reared to be a HOME: the center where a Family may gather into one; to be a serene retreat, where the tenderest affections may find rest; and within its walls love may have a dwelling place, and the charities of life gain ample scope and happiness; that parents and children may there press one another heart to heart; that sorrows and joys may be freely shared in confidence; that troubled spirits may unburden themselves, and be blessed with pardon and peace; and, in a word, that the great work of training human beings for the duties of the present life and the perfection of another may be begun and carried on." Channing. 

 

"The only power to oppose evil is love. Miserable indeed will your position be if this spirit does not possess you.  

Nothing but Christ's spirit, that which carried Him to His cross, can carry you through your work. This spirit will touch the heart which has hardened itself against all other influences. It will pierce the conscience. It will say to the reckless transgressor, in the only language he can understand, that he is not an outcast from his race; and it will reveal to the desponding sufferer a love higher than your own, and bring back his lost faith in God." William Ellery Channing.

   I hear countless stories about loving Grandparents that reared a Grandchild when the parents were absent because of some tragedy or crisis. They stepped in and took over as mothers, providers, confidants, spiritual leaders, or just to be a shoulder to cry on.   

I see in this photo a devoted Granddaughter whose Grandmother was unable to attend her wedding because of her feeble condition; but this Grandchild broke away at some point on her wedding day to share with her beloved Grandmother.   

 

"And in secret You will make wisdom known to me." Ps. 51:8

  When we quiet our self and set aside a time devoted to God alone, we will most often find He speaks there, and most often through His word. No doubt He will speak through Pastors and the brethren, but like Emerson so eloquently says, they are like --

  "Like a bird which alights nowhere, but hops perpetually from bough to bough, is the Power and Voice of God, which abides in no man and in no woman, but for a moment speaks from this one, and for another moment, from that one."   

 

 

 

  

"They came for condiments, not for corn." Ralph Waldo Emerson.

  I was reading some of Emerson's essays today and this line struck me:  "They came for condiments, not for corn." People, in general, look to the shallows, few want to discover what lies beneath the surface: few care to search the souls of others, but rather, like this quote implies, they prefer to pick through the condiments and disregard the corn; or, to put it another way, they relish the gravy but not the meat. This has so many applications; certainly it's true in the romantic arena; and equally, in the spiritual: where they will listen to you if they hear some clever or novel thought, but as soon as they determine you no longer entertain them, or affirm, or concern them, they leave. 

  "Therefore, this is what the Lord says: “If you return, then I will restore you— You will stand before Me; And if you extract the precious from the worthless, You will become My spokesman."

In this life we will face many great sorrows, some caused by others, and some we cause ourselves. There is no way to avoid all failings and sorrows. And each of us will do things that are "worthless" or have things happen to us. But the promise gives us our answer, "return to Him, and restoration will come", we are to extract the precious from the worthless and make the best use of what remains."

 

All through the Bible we are taught to "flee",  From Potiphar's wife, Sodom, idolatry, sexual sin and on it warns. When we yield and stick our nose where it doesn't belong....... well, the photo needs little interpretation.

 "Seeing the people, Jesus felt compassion for them..." Mt. 9:36

 I like that Jesus "felt" compassion. He "felt love" for the rich young ruler, and He felt compassion and love as he "wept" over Jerusalem. Many times we are told about the emotions of Jesus as we read about His words and actions. Jesus wasn't dispensing truth and healing out of duty being the Savior. He showed us that we are to be personally involved with the needy of the world. We are to pray with them, console their sorrows, share in their griefs, we are to "feel" for them. 

"And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them." Mark 10:16

Any Gospel that lacks emotion is but a husk of Christian truth. 

 

 "One of the most common vindications of God's love is found in the fact that, as much as humans suffer, they enjoy more. We are told that there is a great balance of pleasure over pain, and that it is by what prevails in a system that we must judge of its author. This view is by no mens to be overlooked. 

It is substantially true. There is a great excess of enjoyment, of present good, in life. The pains of sickness may indeed be intenser than the pleasures of health, but health is the rule and sickness the exception. A few are blind, or deaf, or speechless; but almost all of us maintain through the open eye and ear, a perpetual communication with nature and with one another. Some may be broken down with excessive toil; but to the great mass of humanity, labor is healthful, and invigorating and gives a zest to repose, and to the common blessings of life. We all suffer more or less from our connection with imperfect people; but how much more good comes to us from our social nature, from the sympathies and kind offices of family, friends, neighbors, than of pain caused by those who want to do us wrong. The world is not a hospital or an alms house, nor a dungeon. A beautiful sun shines on it. Flowers and fruits deck its fields. A reviving atmosphere encompasses it." Channing. 

Rev. Dr. Tuckerman

   

     Discourse on the life and character of the Rev. Dr. Tuckerman

  "Having laid a good foundation by study, an unerring instinct taught him that study was not his vocation. His heart yearned for active life. He became more and more penetrated with the miseries and crimes of the world. As he sat in his lonely study, the thought of what men endured on the land and the sea withdrew him from his books. He was irresistibly attracted towards his fellow-man, by their sufferings, and still more, by a consciousness that there was something great beneath their sufferings, by a sympathy with their spiritual needs.

In a favored hour the thought of devoting himself to the service of the poor of this city entered his mind, and met a response within which gave it the character of a Divine monition. So deep was the sympathy, so intense the interest, which the poor excited in him, that it seemed as if a new fountain of love had been opened within him. This was no blinding enthusiasm. He saw distinctly the vices which are often found among the poor, their craft, and sloth, and ingratitude. His ministry was carried on in the midst of their frequent filth and recklessness. The coarsest realities pressed him on every side. These were not the scenes to make an enthusiast. But amidst these he saw, now the fainter signs, now the triumphs, of a divine virtue. it was his delight to relate examples of patience, disinterestedness, piety, amidst the severest sufferings. These taught him that in the poorest hovels he was walking among immortals, and his faith in the divinity within the soul turned his ministry into joy. 

  Much of this success was undoubtedly due to his singleness of heart; but much, also, to his clear insight into the principles of human nature which rendered the poor open to good influences, and into the means by which human beings in their condition maybe most effectually approached. And this shows his insight into the temptations, perils, and hearts, of the depressed and indigent; and, whilst exposing their errors and sins, he breathed a never-failing sympathy. 

It is easy to see in these that the great principle which animated his ministry was an immovable faith in God's merciful purposes towards the poor. Their condition, never for a moment, seemed to him to separate them from their Creator. On the contrary, he felt God's presence in the narrow comfortless dwelling of the poor as he felt it nowhere else.  

  His perpetual recognition of the spiritual, immortal nature of the poor, gave to all his intercourse a character of tenderness and respect. He spoke to them plainly, boldly, but still as to the children of the same infinite Father. He trusted in man's moral nature, however bruised and crushed; he was sure that no heart could resist him, if he could but convince it of his sincere brotherly concern. He always spoke encouragingly. He felt that the weight under which the poor man's spirit was already sinking needed no addition from the harshness of his spiritual guide. He went forth in the power of brotherly love, and found it a divine armor. 

He taught us that men in the most unpromising conditions, are to be treated as men; that under coarse jackets, and even rags, may be found tender and noble hearts; and that the heart, even when hardened, still responds to the voice of a true friend and brother. He was indeed too wise a man to give them an abstract form, or speak in technical language. His words were steeped in his heart before they found their way to his lips; and flowing warm and fresh from this fountain, they were drunk in as living waters by the thirsty souls of the poor. 

  A great secret of Dr. Tuckerman's success lay in his strong interest in individuals. It was not in his nature to act on masses by general methods; he threw his soul into individual cases. Every sufferer whom he visited seemed to awaken in him a special affection and concern. He made the worst feel that they had a friend, and by his personal interest linked them anew with their race. 

  Let me add another explanation of his success. He sought for something to love in all; he seized on anything good which might remain in the fallen spirit; on any domestic affection, any generous feeling, which might have escaped the wreck of character. If he could but touch one chord of love, one tender recollection of home, one feeling of shame or sorrow for the past, no matter how faintly, he rejoiced and took courage, like the good physician who, in watching over the drowned man, detects a flutter of the pulse, or the feeblest sign of life. His hope in such cases tended to fulfill itself. His tones awakened a like hope in the fallen. "He did not break the bruised reed, or quench the smoking flax."  

William Ellery Channing; photo by Cedric Hayes, on the streets of Portland Or. 

 

  "If I were asked what strikes me as the greatest evil inflicted by slavery I should say, it is the outrage offered by slavery to human nature. Slavery does all that lies in human power to unmake men, to rob them of their humanity, to degrade men into brutes; and this it does by declaring them to be Property. Here is the master evil. Declare a man a chattel, something which you may own and may turn to your use, as a horse or a tool; strip him of all right over himself, of all right to use his own powers, except what you concede to him as a favor and deem consistent with your own profit; and you cease to look on him as a man. You may call him such; but he is not to you a brother, a fellow-being, a partaker of your nature and your equal in the sight of God. You view him, you treat him, you speak to him, as infinitely beneath you, as belonging to another race. You have a tone and a look towards him which you never use towards a Man. Your relation to him demands that you treat him as an inferior creature. You cannot, if you would, treat him as a Man. That he may answer your end, that he may consent to be a slave, his spirit must be broken, his courage crushed; he must fear you. A feeling of his deep inferiority must be burnt into his soul. The idea of his rights must be quenched in him by the blood of his lashed and lacerated body. Here is the damming evil of slavery; it destroys the spirit, the consciousness of a man. 

I care little, in comparison, for his hard outward lot, his poverty, his unfurnished house, his coarse fare; the terrible thing in slavery is the spirit of a slave, the extinction of the spirit of a man. He feels himself owned, a chattel, a thing bought and sold, and held to sweat for another's pleasure at another's will, under another's lash, just as an ox or horse. Treated thus as a brute, can he take a place among men? A slave! Is there a name so degraded on earth, a name which so separates a man from his kind? And to this condition millions of our race are condemned in the land of liberty."  William Ellery Channing.

  "When one becomes a mother, guilt almost always rears its ugly head. And to be truthful, our lives as humans are filled with mistakes ranging from trivial to catastrophic. But here is the secret about guilt; it is actually pride. Guilt says I could have done better. I should have done better. I am going to be better next time. But that is still self-reliance masquerading as humility. And it paralyzes every one of us if we let it."

Alice Mills , Poema Chronicles. 

Acceptance

Oh to know acceptance

In a feeling sort of way;

To be known for what I am --

Not what I do or say.

It's nice to be loved and wanted

For the person I seem to be,

But my heart cries out to be loved

For the person who is really me!

To be able to drop all the fronts

and share with another my fears,

Would bring such relief to my soul,

Though accompanied by many tears.

When I find this can be done

Without the pain of rejection,

Then will my joy be complete

and feelings towards self know correction.

The past to feeling acceptance of God.

Is paved with acceptance on earth;

Being valued by others I love

Enhances my own feeling of worth.

Oh, the release and freedom He gives

As I behold His wonderful face --

As Jesus makes real my acceptance in Him,

And I learn the true meaning of grace.

A pity it is that so late we find

his love need not be earned;

As we yield to Him all manner of strife

A precious truth has been learned.

Then, as we share with others who search

For love, acceptance, and rest;

They'll find in us the Savior's love.

And experience the end of their quest.

C.R. Solomon

 

Forgive me while I reminisce: the sixties, for all it's rebellion and evil, sowing the wind, and now reaping the whirlwind, there was a freedom and a seeking the unknown, testing the bounds of reality, that indelibly left a mind-set that I would hate to see fade completely or never have experienced.

  If you have never read Francois Fenelon, you are missing a great man of God's insights and wisdom. He lived from 1651 to 1715, a Bishop and wise scholar and teacher. Here is an introduction to what he believed, well worth the read. 

 

  "What then are Fenelon's characteristic views?  We begin with his views of God, which very much determine and color a religious system, and these are simple and affecting. He seems to regard God but in one light, to think of Him but in one character. God always comes to him as the father, as the pitying and purifying friend of the soul. This  spiritual relation of the Supreme Being is his all comprehending, all absorbing attribute. He constantly sets before us God as dwelling in the human mind, and dwelling to reprove is guilt, to speak to it with a still voice, to kindle a celestial ray in its darkness, to distill upon it His grace, to call forth its love towards Himself, and to bow it, by a gentle, rational sway, to chosen, cheerful, entire subjection to His pure and righteous will. Fenelon  has fully received the Christian doctrine of God. He believed in Him as the Universal Father, as loving every soul, loving the guiltiest  soul, and striving with it to reclaim it to Himself. This interest of the Creator in the lost and darkened mind, is the thought which predominates in the writings of the excellent man." 

Black and White

https://www.facebook.com/neededencouragement/videos/588175645713264 

The link above should take you to a short,  insightful, animated video about racial struggles.

Dying to self

 

  In many churches I've attended, there is such an emphasis on our sinful nature that I feel it can lead to self-loathing and self-hatred. Personally I find it repellent and I don't think it's what Jesus meant when He spoke of dying to self. The following is a piece that describes the good within us that God implanted when creating us in His own image. I think it has a balance that rings true. 

  "It is not true that self-love is the worst thing about us or our only driving force or principle, or that it constitutes ourselves any more than other principles, and the wrong done to our nature by such modes of speech, and thinking, needs to be resisted. Our nature has other elements or constituents, and vastly higher ones, to which self-love was meant to minister, and which are at war with its excesses. 

For example, we have reason, or intellectual energy, given to us by God for the pursuit and acquisition of truth; and this is essentially a disinterested principle; for truth, which is its object, and is of a universal, impartial nature. The great province of the intellectual faculty is to acquaint the individual with the laws and order of the divine system, a system which spreads infinitely beyond himself, of which he forms a very small part, which embraces innumerable beings equally favored by God, and which proposes as it sublime and beneficent end, the ever-growing good of the whole. 

Again, human nature has a variety of affections, corresponding to our domestic and most common relations; affections which in multitudes overpower self-love, which make others the chief objects of our care, which nerve the arm for ever-recurring toil by day, and strengthen the wearied frame to forego the slumbers of night. 

Then there belongs to every man the general sentiment of humanity, which responds to all human sufferings, to a stranger's tears and groans, and often prompts to great sacrifices for his relief. 

  Above all, there is the moral principle, that which should especially be called a man's self, for it is clothed with a kingly authority over his whole nature, and was plainly given to bear sway over every desire. This is eminently a disinterested principle. Its very essence is impartiality. It has no respect of persons. It is the principle of justice, taking the rights of all under its protection, and frowning on the least wrong, however largely it may serve ourselves. This moral nature especially delights in, and enjoins, a universal charity, and makes the heart thrill with exulting joy at the sight of hearing of magnanimous deeds, of perils fronted, and death endured, in the cause of humanity." W. E. Channing. 

Christian symptoms of abuse

  It's not uncommon for Christians that are survivors of Complex Trauma from child abuse or domestic violence to display certain symptoms and behaviors before and even after they have been saved. A child, who lives in an abusive home, lives in constant distress, they are victims of profound relational betrayal and profound deception, which is usually repeated and chronic. It's the result of exposure to an inescapably stressful event that overwhelms a persons coping mechanism. Intense fear, helplessness, loss of control, and threat of annihilation. Frequent, lasting trauma. Differing from one traumatic event, but rather repeated danger, that continues. 

  So as a result of chronic and interpersonal trauma, this individual will be extremely vigilant, very watchful for danger all the time, constantly expecting it. This is caused because Brain Development is "use-dependent". What we use gets stronger, and the areas of the brain focused on survival act first and faster than our thinking brain. So our stress response, which is involuntary and automatic, can be based on a learned emotional association, referred to as "fear conditioning." So this fight, flight or freeze response in trauma survivors is hyper-vigilant, scanning for danger, sensing threat, real or imagined, and reacting to threat or danger. So in the Christian survivor they will often have a heightened concern for the dark side, for the satanic, the demonic and all principalities and powers. They have a pessimistic outlook on life because they were victims of profound relational betrayal and profound deception, so if you can't trust your caregivers, who should be devoted to your well-being and should love and nurture you, how then will you ever trust anyone? So every person, party, denomination, political movement different from them is seen as a threat and a danger, they are the enemy. Like the saying, "There's a devil behind every door."  

 So, if this is so, is there no up side? Is there nothing positive? Oh yes! Survivors of abuse have great advantage! A person that had all the benefits of a loving family will see the love of Jesus as an extension of their parents love. It's kind of like watching movies in regular color and then getting H.D., it is a vast improvement and wonderful. But to the trauma survivor, finding the love of Jesus is like going from black-and-white to Blue Ray!!!!!!  The contrast is so great that the hunger and thirst for more of Christ is bursting out of them! They have never felt this love and it changes everything! They have more zeal, more ambition, more willingness to sacrifice, more love and more hope, in Christ. God will not be a debtor, and if His child has suffered greatly, He will bless even more greatly! Of course I'm speaking in generalizations now, for some, they find it a long and slow process to put their trust in God, whom they can't see, when those that they could see betrayed them, but for others, it is literally a death to life experience.  

Sharing

 

I'm struggling to read the Bible! 

This is a universal problem, there are times when the Word is on fire and jumps from the page, and other times it lays there as though it's frozen. I think the two most common causes are, sin we refuse to repent of, and hiding your talent in the ground. 

Repentance of a known sin we are struggling with can cause the Holy Spirit to withdraw leaving the Word cold, and secondly,  if we are not using our "talent" by which I mean our 'ability and capacity to love,' we will also find the Word cold. The two together cause a synergy; when we are involved in a ministry where we can express the love God gives us it will create a hunger for the word, and as we read the Holy Spirit will "highlight" the verses applicable to your work of love. And when we are actively, personally involved in loving people our prayer closet will be charged with God's presence and we will have many to pray for. Isaiah 58:6-12 explains that in detail. 

Now, the third thing we should do is to always have a Christian book that inspires us by our side. We should always try and have a book that will get us out of bed an hour early because we are hungry to get back to it. 

The classic Christian literature is packed with scriptures and if you look up all their scripture references, you will find so many hidden and tucked away verses you never knew existed. 

Iron sharpens iron, so let your choice of iron be from the Christian men and women who have helped change the world for Christ. Few voices today come close to matching Newton, Fenelon, Jeremy Taylor, William Law, Hannah Hurnard, Elizabeth Elliot, Hannah Whital Smith, C.S. Lewis and countless other classic Christian works, without which I'm sure I would have died on the vine long ago LOL

  

  "It is one of our chief privileges as Christians, that we have in Jesus Christ a revelation of perfect love. This great idea comes forth to us from His life and teachings, as a distinct and bright reality. To understand this is to understand Christianity. To call forth in us a corresponding energy of unselfish, disinterested affection, is the mission which Christianity has to accomplish on the earth. 

  There is one characteristic of the love of Christ: He loved individual man. 

Christ loved man, not masses of men; He loved each and all, and not a particular country and class. The human being was dear to Him for His own sake. Nothing outward in human condition engrossed the notice or narrowed the sympathies of Jesus. He looked to the human soul. That He loved. That divine spark He desired to cherish, no matter where it dwelt, no matter how it was dimmed. He loved man for his own sake, and all men without exclusion or exception." 

William Ellery Channing. 

“Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.”

The Scythian's were the most Savage of the Barbarians, here's a description:

“In what concerns war, their customs are the following. The Scythian soldier drinks the blood of the first man he overthrows in battle. Whatever number he slays, he cuts off all their heads, and carries them to the king; since he is thus entitled to a share of the booty, whereto he forfeits all claim if he does not produce a head. In order to strip the skull of its covering, he makes a cut round the head above the ears, and, laying hold of the scalp, shakes the skull out; then with the rib of an ox he scrapes the scalp clean of flesh, and softening it by rubbing between the hands, uses it thenceforth as a napkin. The Scyth is proud of these scalps, and hangs them from his bridle-rein; the greater the number of such napkins that a man can show, the more highly is he esteemed among them. Many make themselves cloaks, like the hooded cloaks of our peasants, by sewing a quantity of these scalps together. Others flay the right arms of their dead enemies, and make of the skin, which stripped off with the nails hanging to it, a covering for their quivers. Now the skin of a man is thick and glossy, and would in whiteness surpass almost all other hides. Some even flay the entire body of their enemy, and stretching it upon a frame carry it about with them wherever they ride. Such are the Scythian customs with respect to scalps and skins. 

When I read of such barbaric behavior it makes me wonder if one of the reasons the Old Testament was so filled with Divine threatening’s of destruction was because of the times and what methods would reach a people such as these? 

 What an inspiring photo! In a time when marriages fail and fewer are choosing it, as well as having faith in it. Well, some still thrive. 

 

 

  I like this picture; it made me think how important it is to strive every single day in marriage to attain a connection with our spouse where we have a free flow and exchange of our most inner thoughts, hopes, aspirations and goals. No doubt marriage is the most difficult challenge we will ever face. To build a relationship where we each enhance the other's life more and more is a goal I strive for each day. It requires nothing less. 

  

"A great secret of Rev. Tuckerman's success reaching the poor and downtrodden lay in his strong interest in individuals. It was not in his nature to act on the masses by general methods; he threw his soul into particular cases. Every sufferer whom he visited seemed to awaken in him a special affection and concern. 

I remember well the language which he once used in regard to a man who had gone far astray. He said to me with deep emotion, "I want that man's soul; I must save him." 

"He made the worst feel that they had a friend, and by his personal interest linked them anew with their race. He sought for something to love in all. He seized on anything good which might remain in the fallen spirit; if he could be touch on chord of love, one tender recollection of home, one feeling of shame or sorrow for the past, no matter how faintly, he rejoiced and took courage like the good physician who, in watching over the drowned man, detects a flutter of the pulse, or the feeblest sign of life. " 

He did not break the bruised reed, or quench the smoking wick." 

 

 

"The End is coming! Society cannot be improved! It's evils cannot be done away with!"

I reply, "this croaking has little significance to one who believes in Christ, the divinely ordained Regenerator of the world!

God permits evils for this very end, that they should be resisted and subdued. He intends that this world shall grow better and happier, not through His own direct hand, but through the labors and sufferings of our kindness, compassion, generosity and love. The greatness of its crimes and woes is not a ground for despair, but a call to greater effort. On our earth Christ has begun a war with evil. His cross is erected to gather together soldiers for the conflict, and victory is written in blood. The spirit which Jesus Christ breathes has already proved itself equal to this warfare." William Ellery Channing. 

  "If a child is left to grow up in utter ignorance of duty, of its Maker, of its relation to society, and to grow up in an atmosphere of profaneness and intemperance, and in the practice of falsehood and fraud, let not the community complain of his crime. 

Very few can honestly say that they have no time or strength to spend beyond their families. How much time, thought, wealth and strength is wasted, absolutely wasted, by a large proportion of every people! Were the will equal to the power, were there a fraternal concern for the falling and fallen members of the community, what an amount of energy would be spent in redeeming society from its terrible evils without the slightest decrease of exertion at home." William Ellery Channing.  

 

  "Is it not an acknowledged moral truth, that we are answerable for all evil which we are able, but failed to prevent? Were Providence to put us in possession of a remedy for a man dying at our feet, and if we were to withhold it, would not the guilt of his death lie at our door? 

On the same ground, much of the guilt and misery around us must be imputed to ourselves. Why is it that so many children in a large city grow up in ignorance and vice? Because that city abandons them to ruinous influences, from which it might and ought to rescue them. Whence come many of the darkest crimes? From despondency, recklessness, and a pressure of suffering which sympathy would have lightened. Human sympathy, Christian sympathy, were it to penetrate the dwellings of the ignorant, poor, and suffering, and were its voice lifted up to encourage, guide, and console, and its arm stretched out to sustain, what a new world would it call into being!"  William Ellery Channing.  

  "We are blessed to live in a rich country, but as I was reading a piece by William Ellery Channing, he was challenging the people of his day to look more closely at that prosperity. 

  "You talk of prosperity of your city. I know but one true prosperity. Does the human soul grow and prosper here? Do not point me to your thronged streets. I ask, Who throng them? Is it a low-minded, self-seeking, gold-worshiping, man-despising crowd, which I see rushing through them? Do I meet in them, under the female form, the gaily decked prostitute, or the idle, wasteful, aimless, profitless woman of fashion? Do I meet the young man showing off his pretty person as the perfection  of nature's works, wasting his golden hours in dissipation and sloth, and bearing in his countenance and gaze, the marks of a profligate? Do I meet a grasping multitude, seeking to thrive by concealments and frauds? An anxious multitude, driven by fear of want to doubtful means of gain? An unfeeling multitude, caring nothing for others, if they may themselves prosper or enjoy? In the neighborhood of your comfortable or splendid dwellings are there abodes of squalid misery, of reckless crime, of bestial intemperance, of half-famished childhood, or profaneness, of dissoluteness, of temptation for thoughtless youth? And are these multiplying with your prosperity, and outstripping and neutralizing the influences of truth, and virtue? Then your prosperity is a vain show." 

  “ Truth is to be discovered, and Pardon to be won for every man by himself. This is evident from innumerable texts of Scripture, but chiefly from those which exhort every man to seek after Truth, and which connect knowing with doing. We are to seek after knowledge as silver, and search for her as for hid treasures; therefore, from every man she must be naturally hid, and the discovery of her is to be the reward only of personal search. The kingdom of God is an treasure hid in a field; and of those who profess to help us to seek for it, we are not to put confidence in those who say, --- Here is the treasure, we have found it, and have it, and will give you some of it; but rather to those who say, --- We think that is a good place to dig, and you will dig most easily in such and such a way. 

  Farther, it has been promised that if such earnest search be made, Truth shall be discovered: as much truth, that is, as is necessary for the person seeking." John Ruskin. 

 

  These are the hands of a gymnast. They represent hours upon hours of hard work and practice. Paul makes reference of those who seek diligently for an earthly crown and I was convicted and wondered how my spiritual hands compare?

 

“Some...come into holy obedience through the gateway of profound mystical experience.

It is an overwhelming experience to fall into the hands of the living God, to be invaded to the depths of one's being by His presence, to be, without warning, wholly uprooted from all earth-born securities and assurances, and to be blown by a tempest of unbelievable power which leaves one's old proud self utterly, utterly defenseless, until one cries, "All Thy waves and thy billows are gone over me" (Ps. 42: 7). Then is the soul swept into a Loving Center of ineffable sweetness, where calm and unspeakable peace and ravishing joy steal over one.

And one knows now why Pascal wrote, in the center of his greatest moment, the single word, "Fire." 

There stands the world of struggling, sinful, earth-blinded men and nations, of plants and animals and wheeling stars of heaven, all new, all lapped in the tender, persuading Love at the Center. There stand the saints of the ages, their hearts open to view, and lo, their hearts are our heart and their hearts are the heart of the Eternal One. In awful solemnity the Holy One is over all and in all, exquisitely loving, infinitely patient, tenderly smiling. Marks of glory are upon all things, and the marks are cruciform and blood-stained. And one sighs, like the convinced Thomas of old, "My Lord and my God" (John 20: 28). 

Dare one lift one's eyes and look? Nay, whither can one look and not see Him? For field and stream and teeming streets are full of Him. Yet as Moses knew, no man can look on God and live—live as his old self. Death comes, blessed death, death of one's alienating will. And one knows what Paul meant when he wrote, "The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God" (Gal. 220). 

One emerges from such soul-shaking, Love-invaded times into more normal states of consciousness. But one knows ever after that the Eternal Lover of the world, the Hound of Heaven, is utterly, utterly real, and that life must henceforth be forever determined by that Real. Like Saint Augustine one asks not for greater certainty of God but only for more steadfastness in Him. There, beyond, in Him is the true Center, and we are reduced, as it were, to nothing, for He is all.

...Do not mistake me. Our interest just now is in the life of complete obedience to God, not in amazing revelations of His glory graciously granted only to some. Yet the amazing experiences of the mystics leave a permanent residue, a God-subdued, a God-possessed will. States of consciousness are fluctuating. The vision fades. But holy and listening and alert obedience remains, as the core and kernel of a God-intoxicated life, as the abiding pattern of sober, workaday living. And some are led into the state of complete obedience by this well-nigh passive route, wherein God alone seems to be the actor and we seem to be wholly acted upon. And our wills are melted and dissolved and made pliant, being firmly fixed in Him, and He wills in us.”

-from ‘Holy Obedience’

  

"Would you do good according to the Gospel? Do it secretly, silently; so silently, that the left hand will not know what the right hand doeth.   We mean not to sever men from others in well doing, for we have said there are many good objects which can only be accomplished by numbers. But, generally speaking, we can do most good by individual action, and our own virtue is incomparably more improved by it. It is vastly better for example, that we should give our own money with our own hands, from our own judgment, and through personal interest in the distresses of others, than that we should send it be a substitute. Second-hand charity is not as good to the giver or receiver as immediate." Channing.    

Helping others find happiness

 

  "We cannot, in the strict sense of the word, make any person happy. We can give others the means of happiness, together with motives to the faithful use of them, but on this faithfulness, on the free and full exercise of their own powers, their happiness depends. There is thus a fixed, impassable limit to human help and benevolence. It can only make people happy through themselves, through their own freedom and energy.

  We go farther. We believe that God has set the same limit to His own benevolence. He makes no person happy in any other sense than in that of giving them means, powers, motives, and a field of exertion."  William Ellery Channing. 

"No human being exists whose character can be proposed as a faultless model. No process is so fatal as that which would cast all people into one mold. Every human being is intended to have a character of his own, to be what no other is, to do what no other can do. Our common nature is to be unfolded in unbounded diversities. It is rich enough for  infinite manifestations. It is to wear innumerable forms of beauty and glory. Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influences to exert which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach. Let him not then, enslave his conscience to others, but act with the freedom, strength, and dignity of one whose highest law is in his own breast."   William Ellery Channing.  

 

  "It is interesting to observe how the Creator, who has subjected the child at first to parental and family influences, has, even at that age, provided for it's growing freedom, by inspiring it with an overflowing animation, an inexpressible joy, an impatience of limits, a thirst for novelty, a delight in adventure, an ardent imagination, all suited to balance the authority of the old and gradually mingling with the trustful innocence of infancy that questioning, doubting spirit, on which intellectual progress chiefly depends.

  It is only by putting forth this inward and self-forming power that we emerge from childhood. He who continues to be passively moulded prolongs his infancy to the tomb. There is deep wisdom in the declaration of Jesus, that to be His disciple, we must "hate father and mother;" or, in other words, that we must surrender the prejudices of education to the new lights which God gives us; that the love if truth must triumph over the influences of even our parents and our best and earliest friends; that forsaking  the maxims of society, we must frame ourselves according to the standard of moral perfection set before us in the life, spirit, and teachings of Jesus Christ." William Ellery Channing. 

Zeal

  

"For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up." 

He who recollects that the Scriptures speak of a "peace which passeth understanding," and a "joy unspeakable and full of glory," will be more disposed to lament the low state of his own feeling, than to suspect the propriety of sentiments the most rational and scriptural, merely because they rise to a pitch that he has never reached. The Sacred Oracles afford no countenance to the supposition that  devotional feelings are to be condemned as visionary and enthusiastic merely on account of their intenseness and elevation; provided they be of the right kind, and spring from legitimate sources, they never teach us to suspect they can be carried too far. 

David danced before the Lord with all his might, and when he was reproached for degrading himself in the eyes of his people by indulging in such transports, he replied, "If this be vile, I will yet make myself more vile." 

The objects which interest the heart in religion are infinitely more durable and important than all others will not be disputed; and why should it be deemed irrational to be affected by them in a degree somewhat suitable to their value." Robert Hall.