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Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.
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"It is a serious thing to
live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the
dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a
creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to
worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at
all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree,
helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is
in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe
and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our
dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all
politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. . .
If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat - the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden."
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| - Psalm 145
I love the power of Worship.
I love how it can close opposing gaps of any kind…Only
through the act of worship, the proud can bow as humble. The ugly can accept themselves as beautiful. The poor fills their stomach with a feast,
and the rich realizes their worthlessness…the oppressors does not become the
oppressed and the oppressed the oppressors, but they meet in a common place
which no status, no culture, and no time can ever forbid two complete opposite
human beings to join in extraordinary closeness.
I cannot think of anything else that binds unity and
diversity with such power and dynamics as seen in Worship.
Worship is not just an expression of our hearts,
it is an end in itself that is both pleasing to God and absolutely
satisfying to our souls.
To see the Face of God and to experience His beauty, to give
glory through praise and adoration, to enjoy Him with words or without
words - can be done alone in a quiet room or with thousands of people
in a huge arena.
So deeply personal, yet accessible to all. . .
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There is no safe investment.
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart
will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make
sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even
to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little
luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or
coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark,
motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it
will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The
alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is
damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be
perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
...God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous
creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates
the universe, already foreseeing - or should we say "seeing"? there are
no tenses in God - the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the
flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through
the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body
droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time,
for breath's sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological
image, God is a "host" who deliberately creates His own parasites;
causes us to be that we may exploit and "take advantage of" Him.
Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor
of all loves.
IV.Charity
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