Sacred Meditations Passage

This coming is Christ the King Sunday in some of our churches. Gerhard shares some relevant words about the fruits of our King's suffering (upon which the Holy Gospel sets our meditation):

There are three things that always must be observed in this mystery: the mercy of the loving God, the merit of the suffering Christ, and the grace of the Holy Spirit calling us through the Gospel. The mercy of God is universal because he loved all the world (John 3:16). “The world is full of the mercy of the Lord” (Psalm 33:5). For this reason God’s mercy is indeed greater than heaven and earth—it is just as great as God is (Sirach 2:23), for God is love (1 John 4:16). He has testified in his own Word that he wants no one to die (Ezekiel 33:11). If this were insufficient, he also confirmed it with an oath. If you cannot believe God when he promises, at least believe on account of the fact that he took an oath concerning your salvation. He is called the Father of Mercies (2 Corinthians 1:3) because he by his very nature has mercy and pardons. The cause and origin of the demonstration of mercy is in God’s own nature. Judging and avenging are foreign to him. Thus mercy more than punishment is seen to proceed from his heart.

The merits of Christ are also universal because he suffered for the sins of all the world (1 John 2:2). What then can demonstrate the mercy of God more plainly than the fact that he loved us when we did not yet exist, for it is out of God’s love that we have been created. He furthermore loved us when we were enemies. It was out of love that he gave the Son for our redemption (Romans 5:8). To the sinner sentenced to eternal torment and unable to redeem himself from that sentence, God the Father says, “Take my one and only Son and give him for yourself.” The Son himself says, “Take me and redeem yourself.” Christ is the flower of the field (Song of Solomon 2:1), not of the garden, because the fragrance of his grace is not restricted to a select few but is open to all. And lest you doubt the universality of his merits, Christ was praying for the ones crucifying him as he suffered and was shedding his blood, for the very ones who were shedding his blood (Luke 23:34). The promises of the Gospel are also universal because Christ says to all, “Come to me all who labor” (Matthew 11:28). What has been obtained for all is also offered to all. As many good things as he has extended to the pilgrim through faith, that many you will obtain. God denies his grace to no one except the one who deems himself unworthy of it.

Even Death Passage

AT 6:07PM, SHE CAME HOME. She’d been living with him for a few weeks now. They’d dated for a month or so before that. She was beautiful—thin, blonde, blue eyes, an athletic build. She was up each morning crisply at 6AM for a run, back at 6PM in the evening to make his dinner. She was just the kind of girl you’d pick if you wanted the world to know you were a fully assimilated and red-blooded German patriot, and, knowing he’d struck gold, he always left the shades open to prove just that. Nothing to hide here, his every action was scripted to assure the world.

She loved him. He despised her. He didn’t show it, but Schmidt was convinced of it beyond a doubt. They always despise her. He’d spit on her pretty little carcass when he was done with her. That’s what men like him did to girls like her. Rose-colored glasses are bad for the heart. Schmidt had learned that while she was probably still in diapers.

“Who do you think you’re fooling, Ishmael?” Schmidt mumbled into his glass. “Not me, that’s for sure. You can’t stand the sight of her. You buy her the latest fashions and then burn with indignation when she wears them. You complement her for the very things you want to destroy.”

Even Death Passage

The cathedral itself was quite large, but not as large as those in Augsburg and Worms. It was very medieval. Paintings of the saints wrapped the massive pillars. The chancel was ornate and deep, with a meticulously carved oak choir. They walked to the front pew and took a seat. This was the place where Luther was ordained. If only the bishop knew what he was doing!

They sat a while and listened to the soprano. She was singing Psalm 16. When she finished, they walked across to the Severikirche. You could hardly walk without stepping on markers for the dead. In a little side chapel a marvelous crucifix hung at eye level. Isaac stood and took it in for a while. The baptismal font was fantastically unique, reaching a few stories into the air. '

“You guys ready to head down? I want to get a sausage at the stand we passed. I’m starving,” Mike said.

“Sure,” Phil said. “I’m kind of hungry too. Don’t want to miss too much in Leipzig either. We’d better keep moving.”

When the others started down the steps, Isaac took a picture of the view from the top. The entire city knelt before these churches, genuflecting to the God in whose honor they’d been built in a piety long since lost by most of the population.

Isaac met up with the guys in the little market at the foot of the steps. Mike came back, looking baffled, gazing in consternated contemplation at his lunch. A foot of Thuringian sausage rested in a dinner roll almost too small for his hands—not quite the bratwurst you’d get at a Brewer’s game.

“What’s wrong, Mike? Don’t like sausage?” Isaac joked.

“Shut up or I’ll whack you with it.”

“But then what would you do with all that bun?”

Sacred Meditations Passage

This Sunday is Saints Triumphant Sunday in some of our churches. Here is a passage from one of Gerhard's devotions on that topic:

O pined after life! O exceeding blessedness, in which the Most Holy Trinity is present, who will be gazed upon without end, who will be loved without wearying, who will be praised without monotony, who will bring our desires to completion! Seeing God will surpass all joy. Seeing Christ, living with Christ, and hearing Christ will surpass all the desires of our heart. O Jesus Christ, the sweetest Bridegroom of my soul, when will you lead your bride into your royal palace? What could she possibly lack there? What more could she desire or expect in that place “where God will be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28)? The sight will be beautiful, the taste as honey, the sound as a harp, the smell as incense, the touch as a flower. God will be everything and he will distribute good to each according to the desire of his heart. If you desire life, if health, if peace, if honor, there God will be all in all. What is here shrouded in mystery, even to the doctors of the church, there will be obvious, even to small children. Christ will be present with us in his blessed humanity, and with the sweetest voice he will preach on all of the once-hidden mysteries of our salvation. His voice is sweet and his face is lovely (Song of Solomon 2:14). Grace pours from his lips and he is crowned with honor and glory (Psalm 45:3; Psalm 8:61).
1 Psalm 8:5 in English.

Thank You

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Even Death Passage

SHEW ME THY WAYS, O LORD; teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day.

Movie time again. Greatest hits. Crescents and swords and masks and battle cries and screams and “Allahu Akbar” and pleas and splayed arteries and shooting blood and trophy heads and the like. Real heartwarming stuff.

Matthias laughed. “Reruns again?”

Phil sat and watched with resignation. His stomach growled. He was hungry. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast the day before.

Isaac sat, elbows on knees, head in hands, staring at the floor, imagining his captors, contemplating the grim prospects he faced. Occasionally, he read the words on the wall again. Didn’t they know someone could very well say them without meaning them, with no intention of following through on them, of putting them into practice once they let him go? Or were they not really planning on letting anyone go to begin with? Or could they care less what happened once they had what they wanted, after their captives were another scene in their footage, propaganda for a future victim’s eyes, wayward role models for next season’s prey as they too pondered professing another faith—however so disingenuously—to save their lives.

Sacred Meditations Passage

This coming Sunday is Last Judgment Sunday in some of our churches. Here are some thoughts from Gerhard's devotion on the last judgment:

Lord Jesus, to whom may I flee in this anguish of mine? “I fear all my works” (Job 9:28), knowing that you do not spare any delinquent. I will be placed between time and eternity, where time passes by and eternity still remains infinite in its span. The evil spirits will demand credit for all their works. All the evil that they persuaded here they will produce in that most severe judgment, so that they may drag the soul with them into their fellowship in torment. “All the heavenly host shall be slowly consumed and the heavens will be folded together like a book; all the host of them will vanish as a leaf that falls from the vine and a fig from a tree” (Isaiah 34:4). “The sun will blush and the moon will be put to shame” (Isaiah 24:23). And if these works of your hands, which have never committed any evil, will flee from your face, how should I, a miserable sinner, be able to appear before your face? The heavens are not pure before you (Job 15:15). How will I, a wretched man, who drinks iniquity like water, be clean (Job 15:16)? And if the righteous man will scarcely be saved, where will the sinner stack up in comparison (1 Peter 4:18)? To whom, then, may I flee; to whom may I turn, except to you, O Lord? You will be the Judge of my sins—you who died for my sins.