Wednesday, October 31, 2007

"Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God.
It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness,
nourishment of mind by His truth,
purifying of imagination by His beauty,
opening of the heart to His love,
and submission of will to His purpose.
And all this gathered up in adoration is the greatest
of human expressions of which we are capable."

-William Temple
No other person has so accurately defined and diagnosed the evil of mankind and the sinfulness within as Jesus.

"For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander." Matt 15:19

"For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly." Mark 7:21-22

Why is this so important to define?
We are afraid to define any sense of right and wrong for fear of becoming unpopular or "judgmental'. There is so much evil in the world that we often try to ignore it because we don't know how to handle it, we don't know what to do with it and we don't know how to solve it. The result of ignoring the evil of mankind is a failure to see the need for a savior.
In No Strange Land

Francis Thompson
The kingdom of God is within you

O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air--
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumor of thee there?

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!--
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places--
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendored thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry--and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry--clinging to Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!