As the deer…

“As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God.” Psalm 42:1

My pastor was talking about this verse the other day.  He said, “Those who pant for God are the ones who have tasted of God, and those who have tasted of God will not be satisfied with anything else.”

Why do I drink from broken cisterns?

Lord, in the midst of everything else, let me taste of Your goodness.

Let me be addicted to Your Living Water.

Let me never again settle for less.

C.S. Lewis on Writing

“What really matters is: —

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure y[ou]r. sentence couldn’t mean anything else.
2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one.  Don’t implement promises, but keep them.
3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do.  If you mean ‘More people died’ don’t say ‘Mortality rose.’
4. In writing.  Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing.  I mean, instead of telling us a thing was ‘terrible,’ describe it so that we’ll be terrified.  Don’t say it was ‘delightful’; make us say ‘delightful’ when we’ve read the description.  You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers ‘Please will you do my job for me.’
5. Don’t use words too big for the subject.  Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”

 

-C.S. Lewis, letter to “Joan”, 26 June 1959.  Reprinted in C.S. Lewis Letters to Children, edited by Lyle W. Dorsett and Majorie Lamp Mead, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1985.

Happy Mother’s Day: Thank God for your Mother

“There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it.” – Chinese Proverb

“A mother is she who can take the place of all others, but whose place no one else can take.” – Cardinal Mermillod

“The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.” – Honore’ de Balzac

“Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins, comrades and friends – but only one mother in the whole world.” – Kate Douglas Wiggin

“The patience of a mother might be likened to a tube of toothpaste – it’s never quite all gone.” – Author Unknown

“You never realize how much your mother loves you till you explore the attic – and find every letter you ever sent her, every finger painting, clay pot, bead necklace, Easter chicken, cardboard Santa Claus, paper lace Mother’s Day card and school report since day one.” – Pam Brown

“I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.” – Abraham Lincoln

“Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character.” – Hosea Ballou

“I thought my mom’s whole purpose was to be my mom. That’s how she made me feel.” – Natasha Gregson Wagner

“She is my first, great love. She was a wonderful, rare woman – you do not know; as strong, and steadfast, and generous as the sun. She could be as swift as a white whiplash, and as kind and gentle as warm rain, and as steadfast as the irreducible earth beneath us.” – D.H. Lawrence

“A little girl, asked where her home was, replied, ‘where mother is.’ ” – Keith L. Brooks

“The mother, more than any other, affects the moral and spiritual part of the children’s character. She is their constant companion and teacher in formative years. The child is ever imitating and assimilating the mother’s nature. It is only in after life that men gaze backward and behold how a mother’s hand and heart of love molded their young lives and shaped their destiny.” – E.W. Caswell

“My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.” – George Washington

“An ounce of mother is worth a ton of priest.” – Spanish proverb

“A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.” – Tenneva Jordan

“I cannot tell you how much I owe to the solemn word of my good mother.” – Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.” – Washington Irving

“All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” – Abraham Lincoln

“The mother is everything – she is our consolation in sorrow, our hope in misery, and our strength in weakness. She is the source of love, mercy, sympathy, and forgiveness. He who loses his mother loses a pure soul who blesses and guards him constantly.” – Kahlil Gibran

“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.” – Henry Ward Beecher

“I wish I could sit here and give you words to describe what my mother means to me. There aren’t enough words in the dictionary. I don’t know how she did it.” – LeBron James

“My mother never gave up on me. I messed up in school so much they were sending me home, but my mother sent me right back.” – Denzel Washington

“It seems to me that my mother was the most splendid woman I ever knew… I have met a lot of people knocking around the world since, but I have never met a more thoroughly refined woman than my mother. If I have amounted to anything, it will be due to her.” – Charles Chaplin

“Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.” – Barbara Kingsolver

“The noblest calling in the world is that of mother. True motherhood is the most beautiful of all arts, the greatest of all professions. She who can paint a masterpiece or who can write a book that will influence millions deserves the plaudits and admiration of mankind; but she who rears successfully a family of healthy, beautiful sons and daughters whose immortal souls will be exerting an influence throughout the ages long after painting shall have faded, and books and statues shall have been destroyed, deserves the highest honor that man can give.” – David O. McKay

Desiring Heaven

“There have been times when I think that we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else…. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends, or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work…. all your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it.”

-C.S. Lewis

Praise Him

“Your mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens;

Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.

Your righteousness is like the great mountains;

Your judgments are a great deep;

O LORD, You preserve man and beast.

How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God!

Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Your wings.

They are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of Your house,

And You give them drink from the river of Your pleasures.

For with You is the fountain of life;

In Your light we see light.”

Psalm 36:5-9, NKJV

Thoughts on Christian Womanhood

The world has enough women who are tough;
we need women who are tender.
There are enough women who are coarse;
we need women who are kind…
We have enough women of fame and fortune;
we need more women of faith.
We have enough greed; we need more goodness.
We have enough vanity; we need more virtue.
We have enough popularity; we need more purity.”
-Margaret D. Nadauld

A Christian woman does not put her hope in her husband, or in getting a husband. She does not put her hope in her looks. She puts her hope in the promises of God. She is described in Proverbs 31:25: “Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.” She laughs at everything the future will bring and might bring, because she hopes in God.

She looks away from the troubles and miseries and obstacles of life that seem to make the future bleak, and she focuses her attention on the sovereign power and love of God who rules in heaven and does on earth whatever He pleass. She knows her Bible, and she knows her theology of the sovereignty of God, and she knows His promise that he will be with her, help her, and strength her no matter what. This is the deep, unshakable root of Christian womanhood.

-John Piper

Strength in my Weakness

I heard a quote this weekend…it said something like “strength is perfected in concious weakness”. The preacher went on to say that too often we ask God to give us strength…maybe we should ask Him to be our strength.

What I’m realizing is that rather than asking God to make me strong to deal with the trials I’ll face…I need to realize that that strength is already available to me. As a child of God, in Him and Him alone I already have all the strength I will ever need.

I am human…I am drastically imperfect. I have so many failings and weaknesses. When I am conscious of them, though, then God can use them in my life. He can change me from the inside out.

We tend to think that we are strong when we ignore our weaknesses.

I think we are strong when we admit to them.

God can use that humility to change us more into His image.

Lord, be my strength this week…and help me to see my weaknesses as clearly as I should. But don’t let them stop me from serving You and being sold-out for Christ.

I am weak, God is strong. His grace is sufficient. He is my strength.

God bless,
Love,
keely<33

Think About It.

“This country will not survive another generation of Christians that fit in.” ~Joshua Harris

Of logs and specks

“He who grows in grace remembers that he is but dust, and he therefore does not expect his fellow Christians to be anything more. He overlooks ten thousand of their faults, because he knows his God overlooks twenty thousand in his own case. He does not expect perfection in the creature, and, therefore, he is not disappointed when he does not find it. When our virtues become more mature, we shall not be more tolerant of evil; but we shall be more tolerant of infirmity, more hopeful for the people of God, and certainly less arrogant in our criticisms.”

~C.H. Spurgeon

The Bible

“Infidels for eighteen hundred years have been refuting and overthrowing this book, and yet [it] stands today as solid as a rock.  Its circulation increases and it is more loved and cherished and read today than ever before. Infidels, with all their assaults, make about as much impression on this book as a man with a tack hammer would on the Pyramids of Egypt. 

“When the French monarch proposed the persecution of the Christians in the dominion, an old statesman and warrior said to him, ‘Sire, the Church of God is an anvil that has worn out many hammers.’ So the hammers of infidels have been pecking away at this book for ages, but the hammers are worn out, and that anvil still endures.  If this book had not been the book of God, men would have destroyed it long ago.  Emperors and popes, kings and priests, princes and rulers have all tried their hand at it; they die and the book still lives.”

~H.L. Hastings, as quoted by John Lea, The Greatest Book in the World.