A word to the wise - 

"Just as faces differ in appearance, so people differ in character, and one person's strengths cannot be expected in another. A man who is calm, self-disciplined, and faithfully does his duty may not be deeply moved by sympathy or warm friendship. Don't expect him to greet you with great enthusiasm or display an affectionate, expressive heart. 

On the other hand, someone known for passionate zeal, unwavering integrity, and boldness in confronting evil may also be blunt, lacking social polish and tact, sometimes wounding others by speaking hard truths without gentleness.

One fault of modern society is that people of different classes and professions have become so alike that distinctive characters are less common. We have fewer eccentrics, but also fewer truly original people. Everyone is expected to know a little about everything and to conform to fashionable manners, leaving little room for deep expertise or strong individuality. The result is a society that is polished, but often dull and uniform.

Let us study human nature. The person who understands it knows what to expect from each individual—wise advice from one, heartfelt sympathy from another, and pleasant company from someone else. Such a person understands the motives and weaknesses of others and can make allowance for them as naturally as an engineer accounts for friction or a navigator for a compass's slight imperfections."

Anna Latitia Barbauld. 

 I've begun watching "A Woman of Substance," the story of Emma Harte, a young woman who begins life as an impoverished Yorkshire maid in the early 1900s. 

Within the first two episodes I was completely captivated by her. She is tender-hearted, sweet, innocent, and quietly determined to rise above grinding poverty.

There are scenes in which she is utterly humiliated by the wealthy, overbearing employers whose home she serves as a lowly maid. 

They are blind to her dignity, character, and worth. At times she is reduced to tears and helplessness, and I found myself overwhelmed with compassion, weeping with her and for her.  

My heart nearly burst with compassion for her, and I found myself thinking, It's just a movie. Yet everything within me longed to help her.

Then it dawned on me that, although I cannot help Emma Harte, I have the privilege each week of bringing words of faith, hope, and solace to the men and women in the jail. 

Though each person's story is different, many have endured circumstances just as brutal—and often far worse.

I may be qualified only to serve "the crumbs from the Master's table," but even those crumbs can bring life and healing.

We often want the rewards others enjoy

without paying the price they paid to obtain them.

This passage reminds us that every worthwhile pursuit has its own cost. Wealth, knowledge, purity, influence, integrity, and peace each require different sacrifices,

and no one can possess them all in equal measure.

The wise person chooses what is truly worth pursuing, gladly accepts its cost, and does not envy those who have chosen a different path.

"Are godliness and knowledge the pearl of great price?

This too may be purchased—

by steady application and long, solitary hours of study and reflection.

Give these, and you shall become godly and wise.

"But," says the scholar,

"what a hardship it is that many a sinful and uneducated man, who cannot even read the motto on his own coach, should make a fortune and gain distinction, while I have little more than life's ordinary comforts."

And yet, was it to make a fortune that you spent the bright hours of youth in study and retirement?

Was it to become rich that you wore yourself out over the midnight lamp, drawing sweetness from the Bible and literatures classics?

If so, you have mistaken your path and misdirected your efforts.

"What reward, then, have I for all my labor?"

What reward?

A holy life and a broad and cultivated mind, freed from vulgar fears, restless passions, and prejudice; able to understand and interpret the works of God and of man.

A rich and flourishing intellect, filled with inexhaustible stores of reflection and delight.

A perpetual spring of fresh ideas, and the quiet dignity of superior understanding.

Good heaven! What greater reward could you ask?

"But is it not a reproach to Providence that such a mean and dirty fellow should amass wealth enough to buy half a nation?"

Not at all.

He made himself a mean and dirty fellow for that very purpose.

He paid for it with his health, his conscience, and his freedom.

Will you envy such a bargain?

Will you hang your head because he surpasses you in wealth and display?

Lift it with quiet confidence and say to yourself:

I do not possess these things because I have neither sought nor desired them.

I possess something better. I have chosen my portion, and I am content.

You are a modest person. You love quiet and independence, and possess a reserve that makes it impossible for you to elbow and push your way through the world or proclaim your own merits.

Be content, then,

with sweet communion with Christ,

with a modest life,

the esteem of close friends,

the approval of a blameless heart,

and the peace of an honest and generous spirit.

Leave the world's glittering honors to those more willing to scratch and scramble for them."

I'm aware this isn't doctrinal perfection, but the overall message is echoed through the entire Bible.

 

"The writer of stories has one advantage over those who entertain with clever wit or vivid poetry. 

Wit depends on surprising combinations of ideas, 

and poetry requires an imagination that can appreciate its brilliance. 

But stories drawn from ordinary life speak to everyone, 

because everyone recognizes the people and experiences they portray. 

We may not all share a poet's imagination, but we all understand the realities of everyday life.

The same principle applies to preaching. 

A sermon may display deep theology, elegant language, or remarkable insight, 

but if it never connects with the ordinary experiences of life, 

it will remain beyond the reach of many listeners. 

Jesus, the Master Preacher, did not merely explain heavenly truths—

He clothed them in the familiar scenes of everyday life: 

seeds and soils, shepherds and sheep, fathers and sons, vineyards and fishing nets. 

He brought eternal realities into the common experiences of ordinary people.

The preacher's task is not to dilute truth but to embody it in everyday life. 

Doctrine must descend from the mind to the heart. 

People understand grace when they see forgiveness, 

faith when they witness trust in suffering, 

and repentance when they recognize the story of their own wandering. 

The greatest sermons are not those that merely impress the intellect, 

but those that help people recognize themselves and, through that recognition, 

see Christ more clearly."

“Few can reason, but all can feel.” 

The idle and the gay relieve the restlessness of leisure, and diversify the round of life, 

by a rapid series of events pregnant with rapture and astonishment.

 

It is no surprise that the mind is charmed by imagination and drawn to pleasure. 

But that we willingly listen to the groans of misery, 

delight in scenes of profound anguish, 

chill our hearts with imagined fears, 

and fill our eyes with fictional sorrow 

seems a paradox of the human heart—

believable only because it is universally experienced. 

Many explanations have been offered for why the mind to riot and delight in this kind of intellectual luxury. 

Some believe we bear our own troubles more patiently 

after seeing lives marked by even greater suffering, 

just as the faintest twilight seems bright after emerging from deep darkness. 

Others, with greater subtlety, suggest we willingly take on imagined sorrows 

in order to savor the awareness of our own...

It would exceed the limits of this paper to examine these views in detail. 

Let it be remembered, however, that we are often more drawn to scenes 

that stir our passions and curiosity 

than those that merely delight the imagination. 

So far from being indifferent to the sufferings of others, we become, for a time, 

forgetful of our own. 

Nor should those who pride themselves on wisdom 

be too quick to condemn works 

that engage both the imagination and the heart. 

They teach us to think by teaching us to feel; 

they stir the mind through powerful emotions 

and keep thought from growing stagnant 

by introducing fresh ideas and perspectives.

 Anna Laetitia Barbauld.

 "Below is something my son wrote in 2008 after the death of an old man named Fred and what it taught him.

"It’s not a glowing account of neighborhood impact and world conquering reach. It’s the proclamation of triumphant victories discovered in not being the heroes you thought you were going to be. It’s the peace found in hiding in the shadow of God’s hand, while He gets the glory.

You Wouldn’t Let Me Be the Hero

I am not sure what exactly drew me to you

I know what it wasn’t...the smell, your teeth, your unwashed clothes.

I remember seeing you in the gym, the way you would not work out, your meandering path through the machines, your lack of work out attire etiquette.

We were from two different sides of humanity’s moon, mine had more light, yours seemed to be full of shadows.

You always seemed like the kid on the far corner of the playground. The one at the empty table....like one person on the seesaw.

Was it fate that made us neighbors?

Destiny, purpose or plan?

Or was it simply a cosmic serendipity?

Whatever the case...somehow I became your pastor. Not in the typical way people claim a person as theirs, but in an off handed, distant way...Kind of like a young boy nurses a crush on the star cheerleader.

We simply lived in the same streets, walked the same sidewalk, breathed the same exhaust, shared the same songs, heard the same words and watched the bus come and go.

I reached out to you like a kid tries to rescue a soaked cat; more scratches than purring...pulling on the tail in some delirium of compassion. Your indifference didn’t fit my ideal of salvation. Maybe you didn’t need me...

You wouldn’t let me be a hero.

I couldn’t play my messiah card, none of my evangelistic spells seemed to work on you. No Jedi mind tricks...sometimes you’d just walk away mid-sentance.

Your house scarred me, like someone vomiting; I didn’t want any of it on me, but I didn’t want you sick either. You caught me in my own squeamishness and quirkiness,

it’s hard to be a surgeon if it involves being that close.

I knew you were dying...what is someone to do with someone who doesn’t want to live?

How do you save someone who doesn’t want to be saved? How can you be a knight in shining armor, when the damsel gives you the finger?

You just wouldn’t let me be the hero.

I saw the trucks coming, the lights shining, the sirens announcing your departure. I reluctantly came to watch them carry you out...naked, dirty and broken. They ignored me...just like you did.

In the end, I couldn’t help you the way I thought I was supposed to do. I just watched them as they tried not to look at you. Covering you with a flimsy blue paper blanket, hauled off to nowhere, nobody to call and say you were leaving...nobody crying...just paid employees following you to the hospital.

I went back to mowing the weeds, picking up the garbage; and in the end...in the mass of refuse...wondering if any of it really mattered to anyone else.

But in the conclusion of it all...I am glad the crabgrass is smaller; the discarded carts are aligned neatly in a row and the trash is a little less littered. But most of all I am hopeful that at least one old dead man knows

that I remember his name."

Pastor Eric.

 

Which church, Which Bible, Which doctrine???

 I was fortunate to have  moved around a lot when I was a young Christian, and because of that, I attended many churches. 

I found each church always had a core group of true believers actually living out the faith in ways that I saw as Biblical. 

They were always loving, caring, active, living simply, and free of extreme dogma. 

In addition I was fortunate to have a fella hand me a Christian Classic to read as a devotional; 

 It created a hunger in me, and from that day forward I read the Bible as well as the Christian Classics and biographies which broadened my spiritual horizons, caused me to question my narrow and pinched beliefs and helped me immensely by grounding me in the faith, 

but also recognizing the height, depth and width of Christian thought. 

 If you had asked Henry Drummond to what school of thought he belonged, he would have told you that 

"He never wore ready-made clothes." 

I like that.

"The classical instance of the contemptuous rejection of ready-made clothing was, of course, David's refusal to wear Saul's armor."

I learned when I felt bound or "cribb'd, cabin'd, and confined"  by a teaching, 

I needed to search it out and find out what the teaching was that robbed me of Christ's liberating words of life. 

I also learned if I find some special phase of truth powerfully attracting me, I must, without shunning it, 

pay increasing attention to all other aspects. 

'The Lord has yet more truth to break from out His Word!' said John Robinson; 

and I must try to find it.'

To illustrate that - 

"Mr. Goodman is a splendid fellow; but he fell in love with one lonely little truth one day, and now he never thinks or reads or preaches of any other."

Reading the classics of faith and biographies also motivated me because the heroes of the faith were men and women of action!

They involved themselves with the marginalized, the downcast, the oppressed, the addicted, and the afflicted. 

I soon realized that a faith consisting only of Christian study and doctrine was but half of our calling. 

The other half—however it is expressed—

is serving the least, the last, and the lost, "cheek to jowl," up close and personal. 

There, in the lives of those we serve, is the true school of Christ. 

 Divisions among the Christian faith

"Our age is far sadder than those before it—

not with a noble, tragic sadness, 

but with the dull exhaustion of boredom, weary minds, 

and deep discomfort of both soul and body.

I believe the root of this darkness is our loss of faith. 

No generation in history—whether savage or civilized—has so completely fulfilled the words, 

"having no hope, and without God in the world," as modern Europeans.

A Native American or Tahitian islander often possesses a stronger sense of a divine presence surrounding and governing life 

than many educated people in London or Paris. 

Even those among us who still believe 

are largely divided into two hostile camps: Catholics and Protestants. 

Were it not for the restraining influence of unbelievers, 

each side would gladly destroy the other. 

Catholics have done so whenever they held power; 

Protestants, in turn, wait with satisfaction for God to destroy Rome with volcanic fire.

This bitter division among people who profess 

the same God 

and the same Scriptures 

has become a great stumbling block—

one that few overcome except through the fortunate influence of their early upbringing."

The quote above is an abridged version of John Ruskin. Here is the original - 

“On the whole, these are much sadder ages than the early ones; not sadder in a noble and deep way, but in a dim, wearied way, - the way of ennui, and jaded intellect, and uncomfortableness of soul and body. 

 The profoundest reason of this darkness of heart is, I believe, our want of faith. There never yet was a generation of men (savage or civilized) who, taken as a body, so woefully fulfilled the words, “having no hope, and without God in the world,” as the present European race.

A Red Indian or Otaheitan savage has more sense of a Divine existence round him, or government under him, than the plurality of refined Londoners and Parisians; and those among us who may in some sense be said to believe, are divided almost without exception into two broad classes, Romanists and Puritan; who, but for the interference of the unbelieving portions of society would, either of them, reduce the other sect as speedily as possible to ashes; the Romanist having always done so whenever he could, from the beginning of their separation, and the Puritan at this time holding himself in complacent expectation of the destruction of Rome by volcanic fire. Such division as this between persons nominally of one religion, that is to say, believing in the same God, and the same Revelation, cannot but become a stumbling-block which they can only surmount under the most favorable circumstances of early education.   

God rarely gives us strength for imaginary troubles;

He gives it for present duties.

The following reflection captures that reality with uncommon clarity and a memorable personal example of how fear strangely disappeared when real crisis demanded action.

“There is one thing which seems to me to have always and invariably hampered and maimed me, whenever I have yielded to it, and I have often yielded to it; and that is Fear.

It can be called by many names, and all of them ugly names—

anxiety, timidity, moral cowardice.

I can never trace the smallest good in having given way to it.

Face to face with it, it has a strength, a poignancy, a paralyzing power, which makes it seem like a personal and specific ill-will,

issuing in a sort of dreadful enchantment or spell, which renders it impossible to withstand.

Yet, strange to say, it has not exercised its power in the few occasions in my life when it would seem to have been really justified.

Let me quote an instance which will illustrate what I mean.

I was called upon once in Switzerland to assist with two guides in the rescue of an unfortunate woman who had fallen from a precipice, and had to be brought down, dead or alive.

We hurried up through the pine-forest with a chair, and found the poor creature alive indeed, but with horrible injuries—

an eye knocked out, an arm and a thigh broken, her ulster torn to ribbons, and with more blood about the place in pools than I should have thought a human body could contain.

She was conscious; she had to be lifted into the chair, and we had to discover where she belonged; she fainted away in the middle of it, and I had to go on and break the news to her relations.

If I had been told beforehand what would have had to be done,

I do not think I could have faced it;

but it was there to do,

and I found myself entirely capable of taking part, and even of wondering all the time how it was possible to act.”