When Fish Catch the Fisherman

History shows clearly enough that true spirituality has never at any time been the possession of the masses. In any given period since the fall of the human race, only a few persons ever discerned the right way or walked in God's law. God's truth has never been popular. Wherever Christianity becomes popular, it is not on its way to die--it has already died. Popular Judaism slew the prophets and crucified Christ. Popular Christianity killed the Reformers, jailed the Quakers and drove John Wesley into the streets. When it comes to religion, the crowds are always wrong. At any time there are a few who see, and the rest are blinded. To stand by the truth of God against the current religious vogue is always unpopular and may be downright dangerous. The historic church, while she was a hated minority group, had a moral power that made her terrible to evil and invincible before her foes. When the Roman masses, without change of heart, were made Christian by baptism, Christianity gained popularity and lost her spiritual glow. From there she went on to adopt the ways of Rome and to follow her pagan religions. The fish caught the fisherman, and what started out to be the conversion of Rome became finally the conversion of the church. From that ignominious captivity, the church has never been fully delivered.

Verse

If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. John 15:19

Thought

That the world hates us because we are disciples of Christ is a positive indication that we are indeed following Him. If the world welcomes us as disciples of Christ, alarms go off. How closely are we walking with Him?

Prayer

Lord, help me to express Your love to the people of the world without conforming to the world.

~ A.W. Tozer

Education

Without any display of doing more than the rest, or any fear of doing too much, he was always true to her interests, and considerate of her feelings, trying to make her good qualities understood, and to conquer the diffidence which prevented their being more apparent; giving her advice, consolation, and encouragement.

Kept back as she was by everybody else, his single support could not bring her forward; but his attentions were otherwise of the highest importance in assisting the improvement of her mind, and extending its pleasures. He knew her to be clever, to have a quick apprehension as well as good sense, and a fondness for reading, which, properly directed, must be an education in itself. Miss Lee taught her French, and heard her read the daily portion of history; but he recommended the books which charmed her leisure hours, he encouraged her taste, and corrected her judgment: he made reading useful by talking to her of what she read, and heightened its attraction by judicious praise. In return for such services she loved him better than anybody in the world except William: her heart was divided between the two.

Mansfield Park
Jane Austen

To Go?

The trouble with the world today, it seems to me,
Is coffee in a cardboard cup.
The trouble with the affluent society
Is coffee in a cardboard cup.
No one's ever casual and nonchalant,
No one waits a minute in a restaurant,
No one wants a waitress passing pleasantries
Like "How're you, Miss?"
"How're you, Sir?"
"May I take your order please?"
The trouble with the world today is plain to see,
Is everything is hurry up.
It's rush it through, and don't be slow,
And BLT on rye to go,
With coffee (I think she said)
Coffee (I know she said)
Coffee in a cardboard cup.

The trouble with the helter-skelter life we lead
Is coffee in a cardboard cup.
The trouble, the psychologists have all agreed,
Is coffee in a cardboard cup.
Tell me, what could possibly be drearier
Than seafood from the Belnord cafeteria?
Seems to me a gentleman would much prefer
"Afternoon!"
"How've you been?"
"Would you like the special, sir?"
The trouble with the world today is plain to see,
Is everything is hurry up.
There's ready-wear, and instant tea,
And minute rice, and my oh me,
There's coffee (I think she said)
Coffee (I know she said)
Coffee in a cardboard cup.

The trouble with the world today, beyond a doubt,
Is coffee in a cardboard cup.
The trouble is the way we like to take things out,
Like coffee in a cardboard cup.
No one knows the meaning of utopia
Is dining at the corner cornucopia,
Seems to me we wouldn't be such nervous wrecks
With "Hello, there!"
"Be right back!"
"Would you care for separate checks?"
The trouble with the world today is plain to see,
Is everything is hurry up.
It's all become looney tunes
With sugar packs and plastic spoons
And coffee (I think she said)
Coffee (I know she said)
Coffee (I'm sure she said)
Coffee (She must have said)
Coffee in a cardboard cup.

~ A Musical That I Know Nothing About

Fear

He that reproveth a scorner getteth to himself shame: and he that rebuketh a wicked man getteth himself a blot.

Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee: rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee.

Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser: teach a just man, and he will increase in learning.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.
For by me thy days shall be multiplied, and the years of thy life shall be increased.

If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself: but if thou scornest, thou alone shall bear it.

~ Proverbs 9:7-12

To Be or To Do

In spite of all our opportunity to know the truth, most of us are still slow to learn. The tendency to accept without question and follow without knowing why is very strong in us. For this reason whatever the majority of Christians hold at any given time is sure to be accepted as true and right beyond a doubt. It is easier to imitate than to originate; it is easier and, for the time being, safer to fall into step without asking too many questions about where the parade is headed. This is why being has ceased to have much appeal for people and doing engages almost everyone's attention. Modern Christians lack symmetry.
They know almost nothing about the inner life. They are like a temple that is all exterior without any interior. Color, light, sound, appearance, motion - these are thy gods, 0 Israel.
"The accent in the Church today," says Leonard Ravenhill, the English evangelist, "is not on devotion, but on commotion." Religious extroversion has been carried to such an extreme in evangelical circles that hardly anyone has the desire, to say nothing of the courage, to question the soundness of it.

The Root of the Righteous
A.W. Tozer

Excessive use of rewards.

Many activities offer us intrinsic pleasures, but we can stifle our children's motivation by offering extrinsic rewards for what's already intrinsically motivation. Inappropriate use of material rewards stunts intrinsic motivation. It's a great way to teach children that learning is so unpleasant, you have to be bribed into doing it! And it can keep a creative child from experimenting for the sheer fun of discovering something new.

~The Dyslexic Reader 2010 - Issue 54, page 10
http://www.scribd.com/doc/56568212/The-Dyslexic-Reader-2010-Issue-54

Es el libro el mejor companero en los ratos de soledad y el mejor de los amigos cuando en tierra extrana somos peregrinos.
Y el mejor de los visitantes y el que mas nos entretiene y distrae y mas instruccion y deleite nos ofrece.
~ Libro de Los Mil y Una Noches

Open Thou Mine Eyes

Open thou mine eyes and I shall see:

Incline my heart and I shall desire:

Order my steps and I shall walk

in the ways of Thy Commandments.

O Lord my God, be Thou to me a God,

And beside Thee let there be none else,

No other, nought else with Thee.

Vouchsafe to me to worship Thee and serve Thee

According to Thy commandments,

in truth of spirit,

In rev’rence of body,

In blessing of lips,

In private and public.

Text from "Open Thou Mine Eyes" by Michael Cox.

Music

Confessions Book X 33 On Music

The delights of the ear had more powerfully inveigled and conquered me, but Thou didst unbind and liberate me. Now, in those airs which Thy words breathe soul into, when sung with a sweet and trained voice, do I somewhat repose; yet not so as to cling to them, but so as to free myself when I wish. But with the words which are their life do they, that they may gain admission into me, strive after a place of some honour in my heart; and I can hardly assign them a fitting one. Sometimes I appear to myself to give them more respect than is fitting, as I perceive that our minds are more devoutly and earnestly elevated into a flame of piety by the holy words themselves when they are thus sung, than when they are not; and that all affections of our spirit, by their own diversity, have their appropriate measures in the voice and singing, wherewith by I know not what secret relationship they are stimulated. But the gratification of my flesh, to which the mind ought never to be given over to be enervated, often beguiles me, while the sense does not so attend on reason as to follow her patiently; but having gained admission merely for her sake, it strives even to run on before her, and be her leader. Thus in these things do I sin unknowing, but afterwards do I know it.

Sometimes, again, avoiding very earnestly this same deception, I err out of too great preciseness; and sometimes so much as to desire that every air of the pleasant songs to which David’s Psalter is often used, be banished both from my ears and those of the Church itself; and that way seemed unto me safer which I remembered to have been often related to me of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, who obliged the reader of the psalm to give utterance to it with so slight an inflection of voice, that it was more like speaking than singing. Notwithstanding, when I call to mind the tears I shed at the songs of Thy Church, at the outset of my recovered faith, and how even now I am moved not by the singing but by what is sung, when they are sung with a clear and skilfully modulated voice, I then acknowledge the great utility of this custom. Thus vacillate I between dangerous pleasure and tried soundness; being inclined rather (though I pronounce no irrevocable opinion upon the subject) to approve of the use of singing in the church, that so by the delights of the ear the weaker minds may be stimulated to a devotional frame. Yet when it happens to me to be more moved by the singing than by what is sung, I confess myself to have sinned criminally, and then I would rather not have heard the singing. See now the condition I am in! Weep with me, and weep for me, you who so control your inward feelings as that good results ensue. As for you who do not thus act, these things concern you not. But Thou, O Lord my God, give ear, behold and see, and have mercy upon me, and heal me,—Thou, in whose sight I am become a puzzle to myself; and “this is my infirmity.”

Saint Augustine

Distractions in Prayer

Lord! I cannot pray,
My fancy is not free;
Unmannerly distractions come,
And force my thoughts from Thee.

The world that looks so dull all day
Glows bright on me at prayer,
And plans that ask no thought but then
Wake up and meet me there.

All nature one full fountain seems
Of dreamy sight and sound,
Which, when I kneel, breaks up its deeps,
And makes a deluge round.

Old voices murmur in my ear,
New hopes start to life,
And past and future gaily blend
In one bewitching strife.

My very flesh has restless fits;
My changeful limbs conspire
With all these phantoms of the mind
My inner self to tire.

I cannot pray; yet, Lord! Thou knowst
The pain it is to me
To have my vainly struggling thoughts
Thus torn away from Thee.

Sweet Jesus! teach me how to prize
These tedious hours when I,
Foolish and mute before Thy Face,
In helpless worship lie.

Prayer was not meant for luxury,
Or selfish pastime sweet;
It is the prostrate creature’s place
At his Creator’s Feet.

Had I, dear Lord! no pleasure found
But in the thought of Thee,
Prayer would have come unsought, and been
A truer liberty.

Yet Thou art oft most present, Lord!
In weak distracted prayer:
A sinner out of heart with self
Most often finds Thee there.

For prayer that humbles sets the soul
From all illusions free,
And teaches it how utterly,
Dear Lord! it hangs on Thee.

The heart, that on self-sacrifice
Is covetously bent,
Will bless Thy chastening hand that makes
Its prayer its punishment.

My Saviour! why should I complain
And why fear aught but sin?
Distractions are but outward things;
Thy peace dwells far within.

These surface-troubles come and go,
Like rufflings of the sea;
The deeper depth is out of reach
To all, my God, but Thee.

~ Frederick William Faber, 1814-1863

Rest

But the next day being Sunday, and also Easter Sunday, all agreed to
sanctify the day by rest. These Americans were religious men, scrupulous
observers of the precepts of the Bible, and their situation could not but
develop sentiments of confidence towards the Author of all things.

Chapter 13
The Mysterious Island
Jules Verne

Entertaining Education

"which children are taught the driest doctrines by the insinuating method of instructive games, has little reason to dread the consequences of study being rendered too serious or severe. The history of England is now reduced to a game at cards,--- the problems of mathematics to puzzles and riddles,---and the doctrines of arithmetic may, we are assured, be sufficiently acquired, by spending a few hours a-week at a new and complicated edition of the Royal Game of the Goose. There wants but one step further, and the Creed and Ten Commandments may be taught in the same manner, without the necessity of the grave face, deliberate tone of recital, and devout attention, hitherto exacted from the well-governed childhood of this realm. It may, in the meantime, be subject of serious consideration, whether those who are accustomed only to acquire instruction through the medium of amusement, may not be brought to reject that which approaches under the aspect of study whether those who learn history by the cards, may not be led to prefer the means to the end; and whether, were we to teach religion in the way of sport, our pupils may not thereby be gradually induced to make sport of their religion. To our young hero, who was permitted to seek his instruction only according to the bent of his own mind, and who, of consequence, only sought it so long as it afforded him amusement, the indulgence of his tutors was attended with evil consequences, which long continued to influence his character, happiness, and utility."

Waverley
~Sir Walter Scott

Character

Though they had now been acquainted a month, she could not be satisfied
that she really knew his character. That he was a sensible man,
an agreeable man, that he talked well, professed good opinions,
seemed to judge properly and as a man of principle, this was all
clear enough. He certainly knew what was right, nor could she fix
on any one article of moral duty evidently transgressed; but yet she would
have been afraid to answer for his conduct. She distrusted the past,
if not the present. The names which occasionally dropt
of former associates, the allusions to former practices and pursuits,
suggested suspicions not favourable of what he had been.
She saw that there had been bad habits; that Sunday travelling
had been a common thing; that there had been a period of his life
(and probably not a short one) when he had been, at least,
careless in all serious matters; and, though he might now think
very differently, who could answer for the true sentiments of a clever,
cautious man, grown old enough to appreciate a fair character?
How could it ever be ascertained that his mind was truly cleansed?

~ Jane Austen
Persuasion

"But, perhaps, I keep no journal."

"Perhaps you are not sitting in this room, and I am
not sitting by you. These are points in which a doubt is
equally possible. Not keep a journal! How are your absent
cousins to understand the tenour of your life in Bath
without one? How are the civilities and compliments of
every day to be related as they ought to be, unless noted
down every evening in a journal? How are your various
dresses to be remembered, and the particular state of
your complexion, and curl of your hair to be described
in all their diversities, without having constant recourse
to a journal? My dear madam, I am not so ignorant of
young ladies' ways as you wish to believe me; it is this
delightful habit of journaling which largely contributes
to form the easy style of writing for which ladies are
so generally celebrated. Everybody allows that the talent
of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female.
Nature may have done something, but I am sure it must
be essentially assisted by the practice of keeping a journal."

"I have sometimes thought," said Catherine, doubtingly,
"whether ladies do write so much better letters than gentlemen!
That is--I should not think the superiority was always on our side."

"As far as I have had opportunity of judging,
it appears to me that the usual style of letter-writing
among women is faultless, except in three particulars."

"And what are they?"

"A general deficiency of subject, a total inattention
to stops, and a very frequent ignorance of grammar."

"Upon my word! I need not have been afraid of disclaiming
the compliment. You do not think too highly of us in that way."

"I should no more lay it down as a general rule that
women write better letters than men, than that they sing
better duets, or draw better landscapes. In every power,
of which taste is the foundation, excellence is pretty
fairly divided between the sexes."

~ Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey

You Have Gotten to Your English

"Kinsman," she said, "you are welcome--and you, too, stranger," she
added, releasing my alarmed companion, who instinctively drew back and
settled his wig, and addressing herself to me--"you also are welcome. You
came," she added, "to our unhappy country, when our bloods were chafed,
and our hands were red. Excuse the rudeness that gave you a rough
welcome, and lay it upon the evil times, and not upon us." All this was
said with the manners of a princess, and in the tone and style of a
court. Nor was there the least tincture of that vulgarity, which we
naturally attach to the Lowland Scottish. There was a strong provincial
accentuation, but, otherwise, the language rendered by Helen MacGregor,
out of the native and poetical Gaelic, into English, which she had
acquired as we do learned tongues, but had probably never heard applied
to the mean purposes of ordinary life, was graceful, flowing, and
declamatory. Her husband, who had in his time played many parts, used a
much less elevated and emphatic dialect;--but even _his_ language rose in
purity of expression, as you may have remarked, if I have been accurate
in recording it, when the affairs which he discussed were of an agitating
and important nature; and it appears to me in his case, and in that of
some other Highlanders whom I have known, that, when familiar and
facetious, they used the Lowland Scottish dialect,--when serious and
impassioned, their thoughts arranged themselves in the idiom of their
native language; and in the latter case, as they uttered the
corresponding ideas in English, the expressions sounded wild, elevated,
and poetical. In fact, the language of passion is almost always pure as
well as vehement, and it is no uncommon thing to hear a Scotchman, when
overwhelmed by a countryman with a tone of bitter and fluent upbraiding,
reply by way of taunt to his adversary, "You have gotten to your
English."

Rob Roy
Volume 2 Chapter 18
Sir Walter Scott