James Bryant Smith

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Things Above

Colossians 3:1-2 “So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth,”
Dallas Willard: Wherever our mind goes, the rest of our lives go with it
Unhelpful Narrative: I am a worthless sinner
Power Narrative: I am one in whom Christ dwells and delights (all Christians are)
This is a thought from above and it is powerful
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Galatians 2:20 “and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
2 Cor 5.17 “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”
rom 8:1-2 “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.”
2 Cor 12.9 “but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.”
Bob George: Jesus gave his life for us so that he could give his life to us so he could live his life through us.
Col 1.27 “To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
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Unhelpful Narrative: I must constantly repent of my sins and ask forgiveness to keep accounts
Power Narrative: I have been forgiven of all my sins (past, present, and future) so I confess my sins and give thanks for the forgiveness already given to me (the finality of the cross)
My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought My sin, not in part, but the whole Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul
(from It is Well with My Soul, by Horatio Spafford)
Col 2.12-14 “when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.”
Dallas Willard: God is no longer dealing with us on the basis of our sins
Eph 1.7 “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace”
John 1.29 “The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
Temple tradition of blood sacrifice
Heb 9.22 “Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”
Lev 17.11 “For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar; for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement.”
Heb 7.27 “Unlike the other high priests, he has no need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for those of the people; this he did once for all when he offered himself.”
Col 2.13-14 “And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.”
Some Christians are so focused on their sin that they cannot progress spiritually
Bob George: A failure to recognize and trust that the sin issue between you and God is over will effectively stop your spiritual growth in Christ. If Satan can keep us preoccupied with the past through dredging up our feelings of guilt over past sins then we can never be free to trust Christ as we walk through life today.

The death He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God (Romans 6:10).

But now He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of Himself (Hebrews 9:26).

For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit (1 Peter 3:18).

Canning peaches in three steps: (1) sterilize the jars (2) fill them with peaches (3) seal them

After sterilizing the jars and filling them with fruit, the jars are sealed. Sealing keeps the good things inside and the bad things that would spoil the contents outside. We read in Ephesians 1:13:

And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.

Cleansing, filling, and sealing: a wonderful picture of salvation!

Colossians and Philemon: An Introduction and Commentary i. Live in Christ, the Risen Lord (3:1–4)

The command to aspire to the things of heaven is a command to meditate and dwell upon Christ’s sort of life, and on the fact that he is now enthroned as the Lord of the world. The Bible does not say very much about heaven. But its central feature is clear: it is the place where the crucified Christ already reigns, where his people already have full rights of citizenship (Phil. 3:19ff.). To concentrate the mind on the character of Jesus Christ, on that unique blend of love and strength revealed in the Gospels, is to begin on earth to reflect the very life of heaven.

2 cor 5.17-19 “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.”
Col 2.23 “These (food laws) have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence.”
Eternal Life is something that begins in this life
John 17.3 “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
We learn to open ourselves to the kingdom of the heavens
Mt 3.16-17 “And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.””
Jewish cosmology has three heavens: our atmosphere, the celestial bodies, and where God dwells
2 cor 12.2 “I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows.”
Acts 7.56 ““Look,” he (Stephen) said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”” (the stoning of Stephen)
Acts 10.11-12 “He saw the heaven opened and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air.”
Celtic Christians talked about thin places where God’s presence can be felt more easily
The provisions of the spiritual world are greater than you can imagine
Consider the manna from heaven and all the miracles of Jesus
“It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God—but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people—and this is not learned in five minutes.”
—Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

The discovery of God lies in the daily and the ordinary, not in the spectacular and the heroic. If we cannot find God in the routines of home and shop, then we will not find Him at all. - Richard Foster

Athanasius: On the Incarnation of the Word of God (Chapter LIV: The Glorious Nature and Magnitude of Christ’s Works)
For He became Man that we might be made God and He manifested Himself through the body that we might take cognizance of the invisible Father: and He underwent insult at the hands of men that we might inherit immortality.

This strong expression is a not uncommon one in Athanasius’ writings. Irenæus also speaks of Christ ‘raising again humanity into God by His incarnation’ (v. 1, comp. iv. 63–8), and Clement of Alexandria, ‘He who is God became man that we might become God’ (Protrept i. 8), and Origen has the same thought, ‘From Christ began the union of the Divine with the human nature, in order that the human, by communion with the Divine, might rise to be Divine’ (contr. Cels. iii. 28). Comp. Augustine (Serm. 166, 3), ‘Deus enim deum te vult facere,’ and Thomas Aquinas, ‘The Only-begotten Son of God, wishing us to be partakers of His own Divinity, assumed our nature and became Man that men might become gods’ (Psa. 82:6, John 10:34). The idea is a true paraphrase of St. Peter’s teaching (2 Pet. 1:4), ‘Ye may become partakers of the Divine nature,’ and of St. Paul’s, ‘We are members of His Body’ (Eph. 5:30). The facts of the solidarity of the human race and its vital incorporation in the Word through His Incarnation, and the personal indwelling of Christ in the members of His Church, help us to realize this transcendent mystery.

He awed men by the fire when He made flame to burst from the pillar of cloud—a token at once of grace and fear: if you obey, there is the light; if you disobey, there is the fire; but, since humanity is nobler than the pillar or the bush, after them the prophets uttered their voice,—the Lord Himself speaking in Isaiah, in Elias,—speaking Himself by the mouth of the prophets. But if thou dost not believe the prophets, but supposest both the men and the fire a myth, the Lord Himself shall speak to thee, “who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but humbled Himself,”1—He, the merciful God, exerting Himself to save man. And now the Word Himself clearly speaks to thee, shaming thy unbelief; yea, I say, the Word of God became man, that thou mayest learn from man how man may become God. Is it not then monstrous, my friends, that while God is ceaselessly exhorting us to virtue, we should spurn His kindness and reject salvation?

Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Heathen 1

But both Jesus Himself and His disciples desired that His followers should believe not merely in His Godhead and miracles, as if He had not also been a partaker of human nature, and had assumed the human flesh which “lusteth against the Spirit;” 3 but they saw also that the power which had descended into human nature, and into the midst of human miseries, and which had assumed a human soul and body, contributed through faith, along with its divine elements, to the salvation of believers,4 when they see that from Him there began the union of the divine with the human nature, in order that the human, by communion with the divine, might rise to be divine

Origen, Against Celsus 3.68

Power Narrative: We love because God loved us first, not just once, but always.

As We Think, So We Are: James Allen's Guide to Transforming Our Lives

1 John 4.10 “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
1 John 4.19 “We love because he first loved us.”
Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity (it did not need changing)! Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God. God’s abundance and compassion make any scarcity economy of merit or atonement unhelpful and unnecessary. Jesus undid “once and for all” (Hebrews 7:27; 9:12; 10:10) all notions of human and animal sacrifice and replaced them with his new infinite economy of grace. Jesus was meant to be a game changer for religion and the human psyche.
This grounds Christianity in love and freedom from the very beginning; it creates a very coherent and utterly attractive religion, which draws people toward lives of inner depth, prayer, reconciliation, healing, and universal “at-one-ment,” instead of mere sacrificial atonement. Nothing “changed” on Calvary but everything was revealed—an eternally outpouring love. Jesus switched the engines of history: instead of us needing to spill blood to get to God, we have God spilling blood to get to us!
References: Adapted from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Media: 2014), 183-188; “Dying: We Need It for Life,” Richard Rohr on Transformation, Collected Talks, Vol. 1, disc 4 (Franciscan Media: 1997); and Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media: 2008), 202.
Father in Heaven! You have loved us first, help us never to forget that You are love so that this sure conviction might triumph in our hearts over the seduction of the world, over the inquietude of the soul, over the anxiety for the future, over the fright of the past, over the distress of the moment. But grant also that this conviction might discipline our soul so that our heart might remain faithful and sincere in the love which we bear to all those whom You have commanded us to love as we love ourselves.
You have loved us first, O God, alas! We speak of it in terms of history as if You have only loved us first but a single time, rather than that without ceasing You have loved us first many things and every day and our whole life through. When we wake up in the morning and turn our soul toward You – You are the first – You have loved us first; if I rise at dawn and at the same second turn my soul toward You in prayer, You are there ahead of me, You have loved me first. When I withdraw from the distractions of the day and turn my soul toward You, You are the first and thus forever. And yet we always speak ungratefully as if You have loved us first only once.
– Søren Kierkegaard

What Love Means in the Bible (Scot McKnight):

Love is a rugged commitment (covenant). Love is a presence. Love is advocacy. Love is transformation.
Love is a rugged commitment, a passionate feeling, to be with us, to be for us, and to grow together in Christ-likeness.
Jon D Levensen in The Love of God discusses the differences between hesed (lovingkindness) and hasaq (passionate affective emotional feeling, desire). hasaq=set his heart
Deut 7.7 “It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you—for you were the fewest of all peoples.”
Matt 22.36-40 ““Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.””
Romans 12.10 “love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.”
Romans 13.8 “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”
Gal 5.6 “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love.”
Gal 5.13-14 “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.””
Eph 3.17-19 “and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Eph 5.2 “and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
As John Wesley has put it:
“Love is the essence, the spirit, the life of all virtue.”“In love is found perfection and glory and happiness.”“Be most zealous of all for love, the queen of all graces, the highest perfection in heaven or earth, the very image of the invisible God.”“This love is the great medicine of life; the never failing remedy for all the evils of a disordered world; for all the miseries and vices of men. ““Wherever there is love, there is the whole image of God.”
Medieval Judaism was heavily influenced by Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical thinking, which had a problem with incorporating love, especially love for a particular people, Israel, into its rationalistic idea of God. Medieval Judaism created ways to resolve this problem, including “probably the greatest reflection on the love of God in medieval Jewish literature, and perhaps all of Jewish literature,” Bahya ibn Paquda’s Duties of the Heart, written in Spain circa 1080. Here are a few of Bahya’s signs:
• The abandoning of all superfluous things that distract from obedience to God.
• Commitment to serving God regardless of the praise or blame of others—or reward from God.
• Love for God amidst suffering, even suffering that seems to come from God.
• Constant verbal thanksgiving, blessing, and praise toward God.
• Actively seeking to influence others toward the love of God.
• Taking responsibility for one’s sins and misdeeds and practicing teshuvah (repentance/return).
Summary: God loves us first and loves us always and at every moment with a passionate love because God is for us, God longs to be with us and God wants what is best for us and in every moment of every day he finds us delightful.
Eternity is Now in Session: John Ortberg
John 17.3 “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
To know God means to know what Paul called “the power of his resurrection” in the details and tasks and challenges of my daily, ordinary life.
Philippians 3.10 “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death,”
God is not waiting for eternity to begin. God lives in it right now.
“The New Testament is a book about disciples, by disciples, and for disciples of Jesus Christ. “- Dallas Willard
Discipleship is a journey— a lifelong journey in which we learn to live the life that Jesus offers. For many centuries, that journey was described using certain stages:
Awakening: I become aware of God’s extraordinary presence in my ordinary days. I wake up to love, gratitude, wonder, and responsibility.
Purgation: I confess my character defects. I humbly ask God to remove them. I engage in practices that can help free me from them.
Illumination: I begin to change at the level of my automatic perceptions and beliefs. My “mental map” of how things are begins to look like Jesus’ mental map.
Union: I begin to experience the life that Jesus invited us into when he said, “Abide in me, and I will abide in you” (see John 15:4).
Saving faith is when my faith (the way I understand reality to operate) is the same as Jesus’ mental map of how reality operates so that my whole life will look like Jesus’ life would look if he were in my body. - John Ortberg (Mental map = Mind of Christ)
When my whole body believes what I say my mind believes I am complete.
Seeing Beauty:
Every thought-seed sown or allowed to fall into the mind, and to take root there, produces its own, blossoming sooner or later into act, and bearing its own fruitage of opportunity and circumstances. Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bad fruit. (James Allen, As A Man Thinketh)
Glorious Thought: God’s love is revealed in beauty
What is beauty?
Thomas Aquinas: Beauty is that which, when seen (heard, smelled, touched, etc), pleases.
Aesthetics: from Greek aisthētikos, from aisthēta ‘perceptible things’, from aisthesthai ‘perceive’. The sense ‘concerned with beauty’ was coined in German in the mid 18th century and adopted into English in the early 19th century
Hans Urs von Balthasar, in The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 1, Seeing the Form
To contemplate beauty is precisely to contemplate divine love, but this is not any kind of love. This is the concrete love of God in the form of Christ, a kenotic love, which the Holy Spirit sheds abroad in the human heart. Unless theology begins here, we will get neither truth nor goodness right. Without beauty, goodness will turn hedonistic and utilitarian, while truth will turn cold. Without beauty, we will neither pray right nor know how to love.
Form and splendor as a movement of love
Two primary elements mark the beautiful: form and splendor. Together, as “light” transforms the object in view (the species) into something comely (or speciosa), form and splendor produce something love-worthy. More properly, they generate a transportation of love. To be transported belongs to the very origin of Christianity. The Apostles were transported by what they saw, heart, and touched—by everything manifested in the form.
von Balthasar describes a “theory of rapture,” a double and reciprocal ekstasis: a movement of God to humankind in revelation and a movement of humankind to God in faith.
When we encounter beauty, we encounter it as a kind of epiphany that 1) pulls us in to the object of beauty (as an act of eros, where we simultaneously lay hold of and are laid hold of by the beautiful object), 2) pulls us up towards the Source of beauty (as an act of contemplation), 3) pulls us outside of ourselves (as an act of ecstasy), and 4)pulls us out towards others (as an agapic act). Our encounter with beauty rightly occurs without our ever escaping into the object of beauty, and so falsely losing ourselves, nor escaping beyond the object of beauty, and so leaving it behind as if the object or form were no longer “needful.”
Echoing Karl Barth, von Balthasar says any theory of beauty must reckon first and finally with the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ. Following the 18th century German philosopher and pietist Johann Georg Hamann, von Balthasar describes an “aesthetic obedience to the Cross,” or a trinitarian glory as kenosis, this way: “as being proper not only to the God who became Man, but even before that to the Creator who, by creating, penetrates into nothingness—proper, also, to the Holy Spirit, who conceals himself ‘under all kinds of rags and tatters’”.
It is hard to match von Balthasar’s beautiful prose:
In the face of the Cross, love is sobered to its very marrow before God’s agape, which clothes itself in the language of the body; and, in the face of this intoxicating language of flesh and blood that gives itself by being poured out, love is lifted above itself and elevated into the eternal, in order there, as creaturely eros, to be the tent and dwelling-place of the divine love!
John O’Donohue (Beauty:The Invisible Embrace): In order to become attentive to beauty we need to rediscover the art of reverence. Reverence bestows dignity and it is only in the light of dignity that beauty will become visible. Reverence is also the companion of humility. To live with reverence is to live without judgment, prejudice and the saturation of consumerism. The consumer’s heart becomes empty and lonesome because it has squandered reverence. A sense of reverence opens pathways to beauty to surprise us. The earth is full of thresholds where beauty awaits the wonder of our gaze.

“The beauty of the world is the tender smile of Christ to us through matter.”

― Simone Weil, Waiting for God
Narrative: Forgiveness is the way to Freedom
Willie Nelson: Once you start replacing negative thoughts with positive ones you will get positive results
Col 3.13 “Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”
Matt 6.12 “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
Miracle Hour (Linda Schubert): Loving Father, I choose to forgive everyone in my life, including myself, because You have forgiven me. Thank You, Lord, for this grace. I forgive myself for all my sins, faults and failings, especially _____________. I forgive myself for not being perfect, I accept myself and make a decision to stop picking on myself and being my own worst enemy. I release the things held against myself, free myself from bondage and make peace with myself today, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
There is room in the kingdom for can’t but not for won’t. True about forgiveness also.

“Sarayu: “Mack, if anything matters than everything matters. Because you are important, everything you do is important. Every time you forgive, the universe changes; every time you reach out and touch a heart or a life, the world changes; with every kindness and service, seen or unseen, my purposes are accomplished and nothing will ever be the same again” (235).”

― Paul Young, The Shack
Norman Vincent Peale: Change your thoughts and you change the world
Story of receiving as a gift a limited edition Martin guitar commissioned by and signed inside by Eric Clapton.
Glorious Thought: You are of sacred worth. You are indwelled by God (we are people (temples) in whom Christ dwells and delights). You should therefore care for yourself. God gives his best. Jesus wants to be the maestro of our lives. This is true of ourselves and all other people.
The New International Version (Chapter 3)
14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.n20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
Louise L Hay: Every word we speak and every thought we think is creating our future.
James Allen: As we think so we live.
Philippians 4.8 “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
Prov 4.23 “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”
Nurture your soul with positive thoughts and internal happiness will blossom before your eyes. — Melanie Koulouris
You are not a helpless victim of your own thoughts, but rather a master of your mind. — Louise Hay
If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely. — Anonymous
Glorious Thought: Christ is all around us. It is a God bathed world.
Saint Patrick's Breastplate is an Old Irish prayer of protection of the "lorica" type (hence Lorica Sancti Patricii, or "The Lorica of Saint Patrick"):
I arise today Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, Through the belief in the threeness, Through confession of the oneness Of the Creator of Creation. I arise today Through the strength of Christ's birth with his baptism, Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial, Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension, Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom. I arise today Through the strength of the love of Cherubim, In obedience of angels, In the service of archangels, In hope of resurrection to meet with reward, In prayers of patriarchs, In predictions of prophets, In preaching of apostles, In faith of confessors, In innocence of holy virgins, In deeds of righteous men. I arise today Through the strength of heaven: Light of sun, Radiance of moon, Splendour of fire, Speed of lightning, Swiftness of wind, Depth of sea, Stability of earth, Firmness of rock. I arise today Through God's strength to pilot me: God's might to uphold me, God's wisdom to guide me, God's eye to look before me, God's ear to hear me, God's word to speak for me, God's hand to guard me, God's way to lie before me, God's shield to protect me, God's host to save me From snares of devils, From temptations of vices, From everyone who shall wish me ill, Afar and anear, Alone and in multitude. I summon today Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me. I arise today Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, Through belief in the threeness, Through confession of the oneness, Of the Creator of Creation.
Glorious Thought: Our deepest longing is for God.
Eph 2.1-7 “You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
George McDonald (in Donal Grant, when Donal encounters a woman who has had dark dreams): When the very hope of the creature in his creator is attacked in the name of religion; when his longing after a living God is met with the offer of a paltry escape from hell, how is the creature to live! It is God we want, not heaven; his righteousness, not an imputed one, for our own possession; remission, not letting off; love, not endurance for the sake of another, even if that other be the one loveliest of all.
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Marcus Aurelius: The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.
Glorious Thought: God overcomes our shame
Simone Weil (pronounced VAY) was raised in an agnostic Jewish family and converted to Christianity after reading Love III by George Herbert
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44367/love-iii
Love (III) BY GEORGE HERBERT
Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning, If I lacked any thing. A guest, I answered, worthy to be here: Love said, You shall be he. I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear, I cannot look on thee. Love took my hand, and smiling did reply, Who made the eyes but I? Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame Go where it doth deserve. And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame? My dear, then I will serve. You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat: So I did sit and eat.
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