Quotes and Musings

"On the twenty-ninth of November, 1685, our pastor, Brother Fownes, died in Gloucester jail, having been kept there for two years and nine months a prisoner, unjustly and maliciously, for the testimony of Jesus and preaching the gospel." --Broadmead Baptist Church, Bristol -- And we think we Christians are really persecuted in America.

Open-Book Christian One reason life is so difficult, says C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), is that we try to be Christians without giving our whole self to Christ (Mere Christianity, 1952):

"The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self— all your wishes and precautions— to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call ‘ourselves’, to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be ‘good’. We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way-- centered on money or pleasure or ambition— and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. As He said, a thistle cannot produce figs. If I am a field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be plowed up and re-sown."

“I'm still discovering, right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God.” ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer