“To be, rather than to seem”
Cicero (106 BC-43 BC)
Almost Gone
No man can be prepared for any deep and vital work in the world who has not gone through the school of the devil. You cannot be taught to preach by reading books, however good and eloquent.
You overshoot my life; I must hear something in your tone and accents that tell me that
you too have been in the pit, have been dragged through the lake of fire, and have understood what it is to be almost – gone.
Joseph Parker (1830-1902)
Who among the gods
“Who among the gods is like you, O Lord?
Who is like you — majestic in holiness,
awesome in glory, working wonders?”
Exodus 15:11
O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive
my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out
and my lying down; you are familiar with all my
ways. Before a word is on my tongue you 
know it completely, O Lord…. Where can I go from your
Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if
I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I
settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me, your
right will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely
the darkness will hide me and the light become
night around me,” even the darkness will
not be dark to you; the night will shine like
the day, for darkness is as light to you.
Psalm 139: 1-4,7-12
Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and
forgives the transgression of the remnant of
his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever
but delight to show mercy. Micah 7:18
We have heard how the Lord dried up the water 
of the Red Sea for you when you came out of
Egypt, … for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on earth below.
Joshua 2:10…11
…“O Lord, God of Israel, There is no God like
you in heaven above or on earth below—you who
keep your covenant of love with your servants
who continue wholeheartedly in your way.”
1 Kings: 8: 23
Who is like the Lord our God, the One who
sits enthroned on high, who stoops down to
look on the heavens and the earth?
Psalm 113:5-6
“To whom will you compare me or count me equal?
To whom will you liken me that we may be compared?
Some pour out gold from their bags and weigh out silver 
on the scales; they hire a goldsmith to make it into a
god, and they bow down and worship it.
They lift it to their shoulders and carry it; they set
it up in its place, and there it stands. From that spot
it cannot move. Though one cries out to it, it does
not answer; it cannot save him from his troubles.”
Isaiah 46:5-7
Before the mountains were born or you brought
forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to
everlasting you are God.
Psalm 90: 2
Stand & Wait
Must life be considered a failure
to someone compelled to stand still,
forced into inaction and required to watch
the great roaring tides of life from shore? 
No – victory is then to be won by standing still and quietly waiting.
Yet this is a thousand times harder to do than in the past, when you rushed headlong into the busyness of life. It requires much more courage to stand and wait and still not lose heart or lose hope,
to submit to the will of God, to give opportunities for work and leave honors to others, and to be quiet, confident, and rejoicing while the busy multitude goes happily along their way. The greatest life is, “after you have done everything, to stand.”
J.R.Miller (1840-1912)
is
Deeper Rationality
…the intelligible and delicately balanced structure of the world
does raise questions that transcend the purely scientific, and ,
to this extent, the laws of contemporary physcis can, in their modest 
way, prove ” mediators of divinity.” They provoke an intellectual restlessness that will only find its quiet in a deeper rationality than that provided by natural science.
The search for understanding is the search for the Logos.
John C. Polkinghorne
