Edmund Clowney - 1964

(from Called to the Ministry, page 10) The Deepest secret of your idenity is in that name. Only God knows your real name, but that is the name by which he calls you. The Horror of lost idenitity - namelessness - haunts modern liturature. Madison Avenue knows about it, too. A bank recently invited customers from the subway crowds with billboards asserting that at Marine Midland they call account number 9557446, "Harry." How appealing: a city bank with huge resources, but a place where they know me!

Still, there is pathos in that appeal. A man may flee the computers of metropolis to Centerville where everyone will call him, "Harry" - at least everyone who stays on speaking terms with him. Will he then find himself? No, the metropolitan millions serve only to confuse the issue. The tragedy of alienation is not that so many people do not know me; it is that no one knows me, for I do not know myself. The terror of modern thought does not spring from the addition of millions in mass population. It springs from the substration of one - the Lord my God.

Bishop Ryle - Dead Mentors

"Few can have any idea how much wear and tear and anxiety of mind and body I had to go through for at lest five years before my wife died. I very rarely ever slept out of our own house, in order that I might be in the way if my wife wanted anything. I have frequently in the depth of winter driven distances of twelve, fifteen, twenty or even thirty miles in an open carriage to speak or preach, and then returned home the same distance immediately afterwards, rather than sleep away from my own house. As to holidays, rest and recreation in the year, I have never had any at all; while the whole business of entertaining and amusing the three boys in an evening devolved entirely upon me. In fact the whole state of things was a heavy strain upon me, both in body and mind, and I often wonder how I lived through it." A quote from this bio-sketch of J.C. Ryle.

It may not mean much to most, but this man wrote the first book I ever that could be considered anything near christian theology outside the bible, it was Holiness, I was sixteen with Pantera and Marylin Manson posters on my wall, full of uncertainty to who I was, and full of morbid thoughts and depression, and I had just met the Lord, and was completely undone by Ryle. What is so striking to me in this little quote above is the reality in which a man like Ryle lived for six years with a sick wife, and how crushing it is, to my very immature and chauvinistic views of life and marriage. This has been a small part in deepening my need for greater reality, and responsibility in my life. If I could some up my life lesson for 2008, it would be that my biggest problem isn't my circumstances, it never has been (even though I pray to my loving Father for them to change), it is that I am a hugely selfish sinner. If you know anything about the christian faith at all, you know that there is a river where mercy flows for that problem man, that is the most gracious gift to see, to have eyes to see your sins and shortcomings, and eyes to see the one who dying love changes you from the inside out..

Here is a quote from the first book that started me down an awesome journey on the path of walking with God, in community, even with those who have already gone to glory.

"Would you be holy? Would you become a new creature? Then you must begin with Christ. You will do just nothing at all, and make no progress till you feel your sin and weakness, and flee to Him. He is the root and beginning of all holiness, and the way to be holy is to come to Him by faith and be joined to Him. Christ is not wisdom and righteousness only to His people, but sanctification also. Men sometimes try to make themselves holy first of all, and sad work they make of it. They toil and labour, and turn over new leaves, and make many changes; and yet, like the woman with the issue of blood, before she came to Christ, they feel “nothing bettered, but rather worse” (Mark 5:26). They run in vain, and labour in vain; and little wonder, for they are beginning at the wrong end. They are building up a wall of sand; their work runs down as fast as they throw it up. They are baling water out of a leaky vessel; the leak gains on them, not they on the leak. Other foundation of “holiness” can no man lay than that which Paul laid, even Christ Jesus...

Holiness comes from Christ. It is the result of vital union with Him. It is the fruit of being a living branch of the True Vine. Go then to Christ and say, “Lord, not only save me from the guilt of sin, but send the Spirit, whom Thou didst promise, and save me from its power. Make me holy. Teach me to do Thy will.”

The man's man on fatherhood..

"Now observe that when that clever harlot, our natural reason (which the pagans followed in trying to be most clever), takes a look at married life, she turns up her nose and says, “Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores, and on top of that care for my wife, provide for her, labour at my trade, take care of this and take care of that, do this and do that, endure this and endure that, and whatever else of bitterness and drudgery married life involves? What, should I make such a prisoner of myself? 0 you poor, wretched fellow, have you taken a wife? Fie, fie upon such wretchedness and bitterness! It is better to remain free and lead a peaceful. carefree life; I will become a priest or a nun and compel my children to do likewise.”

What then does Christian faith say to this? It opens its eyes, looks upon all these insignificant, distasteful, and despised duties in the Spirit, and is aware that they are all adorned with divine approval as with the costliest gold and jewels. It says, “0 God, because I am certain that thou hast created me as a man and hast from my body begotten this child, I also know for a certainty that it meets with thy perfect pleasure. I confess to thee that I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers. or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother. How is it that I, without any merit, have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? 0 how gladly will I do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and despised. Neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labour, will distress or dissuade me, for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in thy sight.”

...

Now you tell me, when a father goes ahead and washes diapers or performs some other mean task for his child, and someone ridicules him as an effeminate fool, though that father is acting in the spirit just described and in Christian faith, my dear fellow you tell me, which of the two is most keenly ridiculing the other? God, with all his angels and creatures, is smiling, not because that father is washing diapers, but because he is doing so in Christian faith. Those who sneer at him and see only the task but not the faith are ridiculing God with all his creatures, as the biggest fool on earth. Indeed, they are only ridiculing themselves; with all their cleverness they are nothing but devil’s fools.

St. Cyprian, that great and admirable man and holy martyr, wrote that one should kiss the new-born infant, even before it is baptised, in honour of the hands of God here engaged in a brand new deed. What do you suppose he would have said about a baptised infant? There was a true Christian, who correctly recognised and regarded God’s work and creature. Therefore, I say that all nuns and monks who lack faith, and who trust in their own chastity and in their order, are not worthy of rocking a baptised child or preparing its pap, even if it were the child of a harlot." (Martin Luther Quote from Anesthetic Smoke Blog)

My pastor a few months ago talked about how Luther had been a single for decades, and you can always sense of certain coarseness in all his language that partly comes from it, but he echoes what I have had to learn and appreciate myself. The the school of marriage and fatherhood (and probably more so in motherhood but I'm not one) is one of the greatest schools of character. It is an radical challenge to real selflessness and like I tell a lot of folks its one of those things, that are as hard as they are worth it.

Johannes Tauler

Johannes Tauler 1300-1361

CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL

FROM the time when the first man gave a ready ear to the words of the enemy, mankind have been deaf, so that none of us can hear or understand the loving utterances of the eternal Word. Something has happened to the ears of man, which has stopped up his ears, so that he cannot hear the loving Word; and he has also been so blinded, that he has become stupid, and does not know himself. If he wished to speak of his own inner life, he could not do it; he knows not where he is, nor what is his state. (91)

How can it be that the noble reason, the inner eye, is so blinded that it cannot see the true light? This great shame has come about, because a thick coarse skin and a thick fur has been drawn over him, even the love and the opinion of the creatures, whether it be the man himself or something that belongs to him; hence man has become blind and deaf, in whatever position he may be, worldly or spiritual. Yes, that is his guilt, that many a thick skin is drawn over him, as thick as an ox's forehead, and it has so covered up his inner man, that neither God nor himself can get inside; it has grown into him.