Christianity is not just mental assent that certain doctrines are true--not even that the right doctrines are true. This is only the beginning. This would be rather like a starving man sitting in front of great heaps of food and saying, “I believe the food exists, I believe it's real,” and yet never eating it. It is not enough merely to say, “I am a Christian,” and then in practice to live as if present contact with the supernatural were something far-off and strange...to act as though [you] come in contact with the supernatural just twice--once when you are justified and become a Christian, and once when [you] die.
--Francis Schaeffer, Death in the City
οὐκ ἐν σοφίᾳ λόγου ἵνα μὴ κενωθῇ ὁ σταυρὸς τοῦ Χριστοῦ ὁ λόγος γὰρ ὁ τοῦ σταυροῦ τοῖς μὲν ἀπολλυμένοις μωρία ἐστίν τοῖς δὲ σῳζομένοις ἡμῖν δύναμις θεοῦ ἐστιν
--Παῦλος, τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ τῇ οὔσῃ ἐν Κορίνθῳ (1st chapter)
ἔλεγεν ἀναχωρεῖτε οὐ γὰρ ἀπέθανεν τὸ κοράσιον ἀλλὰ καθεύδει καὶ κατεγέλων αὐτοῦ ὅτε δὲ ἐξεβλήθη ὁ ὄχλος εἰσελθὼν ἐκράτησεν τῆς χειρὸς αὐτῆς καὶ ἠγέρθη τὸ κοράσιον
--ὁ Ἰησοῦς (translated by Matthew, 9:24-25)
April fool’s day is a rather special day for my daughter and me. It’s the day, a dozen years ago, that Aristotle was proven wrong about how fixed nature is. That 1st of April, she was cured of cancer, which is also something the diagnosing physicians said would be impossible. (It was an ununsually involved rare childhood liver cancer). But the Person who gave her breath to begin with is alive and is supernatural, and kindly listens to our cries for help. Today, we cry Thank You!
No comments:
Post a Comment