First Sunday In Lent
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VII, Cycle C
Theme For The Day
The story of Jesus in the wilderness warns us against temptations to self-sufficiency, power, and invulnerability.
Old Testament Lesson
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Firstfruits
This is one of the great stewardship passages of the Bible. It was the practice of the ancient Israelites to separate, from the earliest produce of their farm fields, a "firstfruits" offering to give to the Lord. The recommended liturgical response in verse 3, to be spoken by the person making the offering, appears curious to modern ears: "Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us." Through the act of giving, worshipers are transported back to the time when their ancestors first entered into the promised land. The act of giving restores us to the simplicity of days past, when our spiritual ancestors clearly knew they were dependent on divine providence for everything. The act of giving changes us, in just that way. Properly and faithfully done, it reminds us not of our own generosity, but rather of God's. Following that, there is another liturgical response, beginning with the famous words, "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor ... The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm ... So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me" (vv. 5-10). If anyone doubts that giving is an act of worship, this passage will convince them otherwise.
New Testament Lesson
Romans 10:8b-13
Call On The Name Of The Lord
Paul has been reflecting on the paradox that certain Gentiles, depending wholly on Jesus Christ, have been assured of salvation, whereas certain Jews, still dependent on the pursuit of righteousness under the law, have not achieved it. The most important thing, he says, is the heartfelt confession of faith in Jesus Christ (v. 9). This is sufficient for salvation. The old distinction between Jew and Greek is no longer of any importance (v. 12). "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved" (v. 13, quoting Joel 2:32). The important thing is not the pursuit of good works, but rather the act of "calling on the name of the Lord," in all faithfulness and submission.
The Gospel
Luke 4:1-13
The Temptation Of Jesus
The story of the temptation of Jesus is the traditional reading for the First Sunday In Lent, in all three cycles of the lectionary. In this supernatural experience, Jesus has an encounter with the devil in the wilderness, who prescribes for him three trials: tests of his faith. Turning stones into bread (v. 3) is a temptation to self-sufficiency -- to depending not on God, but on one's own resources. Accepting rule over "all the kingdoms of the world" (v. 6) is a temptation to power. Throwing himself off the pinnacle of the temple is a temptation to fame, to ostentatious display. Such temptations are alive and well (if "well" is indeed the right word to use) in our lives today. Having failed to sway Jesus' resolve, the devil departs "until an opportune time" (v. 13). He will be back.
Preaching Possibilities
Survival is not something most of us spend a lot of time worrying about, day-to-day. It would take a natural disaster, or something of that scale, to get most of us worried about survival. Most of us live reasonably safe, protected lives: ensconced in climate-controlled houses, in police-patrolled neighborhoods, within the secure borders of a mighty nation that can dispatch aircraft carriers and Stealth bombers at will to tweak the noses of errant dictators.
Jesus, too, had it pretty safe -- or so one would think, anyway, being the Son of God. Yet Jesus, in today's gospel, puts all security and comfort aside and heads for the wilderness. Why does he do it? Because that's where you go, in that day and age, to find God and find yourself. Luke tells us he fasted for forty days -- "forty" being the biblical code number for "a very long time." Deep in the wilderness, weak with hunger, Jesus encounters none other than the devil.
The devil, in Luke, seems -- at first -- to be a thoughtful, considerate sort of fellow. Clucking over Jesus' lean and hungry look, he suggests, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread." (Why be hungry, when you don't have to?)
Jesus replies with the steely determination of a man on a mission: "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.' " That's the first temptation. It's one we often feel, too -- and we don't need to go to the desert to find it.
In modern parlance, this temptation is called self-sufficiency. It's not a bad thing to wish for -- after all, isn't self-sufficiency what every parent wants for his or her child? Isn't self-sufficiency what our schools labor to instill? Isn't self-sufficiency the virtue that's supposed to keep us off welfare?
Well, who said temptation was all bad, anyway? The grossest, blackest of temptations are pretty much all bad. Avoiding them is child's play. It's those subtle ones -- the ones that contain within themselves some shred of goodness -- that give us trouble.
Self-sufficiency is one of those sneaky sorts of temptations. Up to a certain point, it's a very good thing, but only up to a certain point. You needn't look far, in modern America, to see some of our neighbors taking self-sufficiency to ridiculous extremes.
Some aspects of the computer revolution play right into this. Why, we can conduct almost any sort of business over the computer these days. Need plane tickets? Book 'em. Looking for a book or CD? Order 'em. Gotta say "I'm sorry" to your significant other? Visit the right website, and we can dispatch a flower arrangement, with a few clicks of the mouse. The days of walking down to Main Street, and jawboning with the travel agent, or bookstore clerk, or florist seem to be on the wane. We lose something, as a society, when we cease to depend on others in a personal way, for the little things.
Worship for too long at the altar of self-sufficiency, and we'll soon come to worship little else. Make self-sufficiency our exclusive aim, and before we know it, we'll have no need for community, or family, or church -- or anything else that might distract us from our single-minded goal. Maybe not even God. "Show me a 'self-made man,' " says the comedian, "and I'll show you the result of unskilled labor."
The second temptation the devil lays before Jesus is the temptation of power. Setting out before him "in a single instant all the kingdoms of the world," the devil pledges, "To you I will give their glory and all this authority...." Well, that may seem a little hard to translate into real life. When was the last time anyone offered us all the kingdoms of the world (that is, without offering to throw in, as a special incentive, the Brooklyn Bridge as well)?
No, "world domination" is not something most of us enter on our "to-do" lists -- but even so, there are times when we crave power, on a smaller scale. The power we desire is power over people and things close at hand.
Which one of us, who's married, has never wished we could make our wife or husband do something? Or, which one of us, driving in heavy traffic, has not felt the "road rage" rise up out of the viscera, instantly translating itself into monumentally stupid driving? Which one of us, feeling injured or disappointed in some way, has not fantasized about dragging the wretched miscreants into court, and suing their sorry selves for every last penny?
In the film, Devil's Advocate, Al Pacino plays a singularly wicked attorney, who's actually the devil in human form. At one point, he waxes eloquent about this human craving for power: "You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire; you build egos the size of cathedrals and fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse; grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold-plated fantasies until every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own god! And where can you go from there?"
To this offer, posed by the devil, Jesus replies, "Worship the Lord, your God, and serve only him."
In the third temptation, the devil whisks Jesus away to the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem. He poses him there, on the edge of the parapet -- the very place where, according to some rabbinical traditions, the Messiah will one day appear. "Throw yourself down," the devil taunts him; "the angels will catch you -- just as it says in Psalm 91, 'lest you dash your foot against a stone.' " (It seems even the devil knows how to quote scripture!)
This is the hardest temptation of all to translate into modern idiom. Is this some strange, thrill seeking death-wish, on Jesus' part -- some weird compulsion, propelling him out onto the building ledge, so the crowds below will cry out, "Jump!"?
The modern equivalent of this temptation is the temptation to invulnerability. With all the fears and worries that plague our thinking -- terrorism, global epidemics, economic collapse, environmental disaster -- we like to think that our wealth and technology have made us invulnerable. We read in the news reports of strife, sickness, and starvation in other parts of the world, but we persist in the charmed thinking that such things could never happen here.
Wouldn't it be wonderful, the tempter whispers, to be invulnerable? Wouldn't it be just peachy to stand on the pinnacle of the Stock Exchange and leap off into space, confident that our incredible net worth will cushion our fall? Isn't that what so many are striving for, in the world of investing: striving to so insulate themselves from any possibility of harm that, like corporations, they will live forever?
That's the illusion. No one on this earth does live forever, of course -- but there do seem to be plenty of frantic seekers who continue to chase after that fantasy of invulnerability -- who chase it so hard and so fast, they've quite lost the ability to step back and view "the big picture."
Lent is a time when God calls us to view the big picture. None of us are self-sufficient. None of us are all-powerful. None of us are invulnerable. Yet, flawed and fleeting as our lives may be, they gain meaning from the act of coming together in community and gathering at the Lord's table.
Here, we need not turn stones into bread for here is bread indeed. Here, there is no need to elbow our way to the table for there is food a-plenty. Here, we can cease imagining, as we come, that we could ever be invulnerable for if our Lord allowed himself to be broken on the cross -- just as the bread is broken -- how can we aspire to a status higher than his?
Luke tells us that, "When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until a more opportune time." He'll be back on the day Judas is thinking of denying his Lord. He's likely to show up again in our lives as well. In the meantime, our Lord is journeying to Jerusalem, and we are invited to travel with him.
Prayer For The Day
Be Thou my breastplate, my sword for the fight;
Be Thou my armor, and be Thou my might;
Thou my soul's shelter, Thou my high tower;
Raise Thou me heavenward, O power of my power.
(A little-known stanza from the Irish hymn, "Be Thou My Vision")
To Illustrate
"Unawareness is the root of all evil," observed a fourth-century follower of Jesus. This desert monastic was one of those who chose to make the wilderness his home. They went to the desert in order to be disillusioned -- that is stripped of illusion. And thus, unshielded by fig leaves, they were confronted by the naked truth of the human heart and the various movements within it. Movements which can thwart and undermine the realization of God's unbounded love and justness and compassion in our lives and our relationships with others.
"In the desert the air is purer, the sky is more open and God is closer," observed Origen, another early veteran of the wilderness.
And so it is that Jesus is led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil....
Jesus in the wilderness had to come face-to-face with the various dimensions and potentialities of his own psyche: those that would both lead him more deeply into the demands of his belovedness, and those that would draw him into himself.
In the wilderness Jesus had to acknowledge and welcome and befriend what the Anglican mystic William Law describes as the dark guest: which is the shadow side of our human nature. "When rightly known and rightly dealt with," Law tells us, "[the dark guest] can as well be made the foundation of Heaven as it is of Hell."
-- Frank Griswold, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, U.S.A., in a sermon preached in Austin, Texas, at the Episcopal Church's Executive Council meeting, February 11-14, 2005 (Episcopal News Service)
***
At the feast of ego, everyone leaves hungry.
-- Anonymous
***
Atlas was condemned to carry the weight of the entire world on his shoulders. That was as harsh a punishment as the ancient Greek mind could conjure up. Today, it seems, we have volunteered to play the role of Atlas.
We have not offended God, we have dismissed him, told him we were grown up enough not to need his help any more, and offered to carry the weight of the entire world on our shoulders. The question is, when it gets too heavy for us, when there are questions too hard for human knowledge to answer and problems that take more time to solve than any of us have, will we be too proud to admit that we have made a mistake in wanting to carry this world alone?
-- Rabbi Harold Kushner
***
It is important to know when we can give attention and when we need attention. Often we are inclined to give, give, and give without ever asking anything in return. We may think that this is a sign of generosity or even heroism. But it might be little else than a proud attitude that says: "I don't need help from others. I only want to give." When we keep giving without receiving we burn out quickly. Only when we pay careful attention to our own physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs can we be, and remain, joyful givers.
There is a time to give and a time to receive. We need equal time for both if we want to live healthy lives.
-- Henri J. M. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey (San Francisco, HarperCollins, 1990)
***
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
-- Abraham Lincoln
***
A number of years ago, Henry Drummond wrote a classic sermon titled, "The Greatest Thing in the World." He concluded his sermon by suggesting that if you put a piece of iron in the presence of an electrified field, that piece of iron itself will become electrified. And in the presence of that electrical field, it is changed into a magnet. As long as it remains in contact with that field of power, it will continue to attract other pieces to itself. We are like that piece of iron. In the presence of Christ, we experience his love and take on his likeness. We are changed, electrified by the Holy Spirit, to attract others to the same love of God that we experience.
-- Lee Griess, Taking The Risk Out Of Dying (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing Company, 1997)
***
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do children as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
-- Helen Keller
***
Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without.
-- Joseph Wood Krutch
***
The heart of spirituality isn't safety and security. Instead, it is what Dorothy Day called "precarity." In the mind of most, precarity (or precariousness) is a bleak state of uncertainty and danger. The word connotes instability, poverty, marginalization, and the absence of a safety net.... It also suggests radical dependence: the Latin precarious is the state of being dependent on another's will, being upheld or sustained by another's force. So a spirituality centered on precarity acknowledges the radical uncertainty or contingency of human existence and our utter dependence on God.
-- Kerry Walters in Jacob's Hip: Finding God in an Anxious Age (New York: Orbis, 2003)
***
Dorothy Day once said the only way to have real security is to live as close as you can to the bottom, because then you have no fear of a fall.
***
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
-- Frederick Nietszche
The story of Jesus in the wilderness warns us against temptations to self-sufficiency, power, and invulnerability.
Old Testament Lesson
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Firstfruits
This is one of the great stewardship passages of the Bible. It was the practice of the ancient Israelites to separate, from the earliest produce of their farm fields, a "firstfruits" offering to give to the Lord. The recommended liturgical response in verse 3, to be spoken by the person making the offering, appears curious to modern ears: "Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us." Through the act of giving, worshipers are transported back to the time when their ancestors first entered into the promised land. The act of giving restores us to the simplicity of days past, when our spiritual ancestors clearly knew they were dependent on divine providence for everything. The act of giving changes us, in just that way. Properly and faithfully done, it reminds us not of our own generosity, but rather of God's. Following that, there is another liturgical response, beginning with the famous words, "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor ... The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm ... So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me" (vv. 5-10). If anyone doubts that giving is an act of worship, this passage will convince them otherwise.
New Testament Lesson
Romans 10:8b-13
Call On The Name Of The Lord
Paul has been reflecting on the paradox that certain Gentiles, depending wholly on Jesus Christ, have been assured of salvation, whereas certain Jews, still dependent on the pursuit of righteousness under the law, have not achieved it. The most important thing, he says, is the heartfelt confession of faith in Jesus Christ (v. 9). This is sufficient for salvation. The old distinction between Jew and Greek is no longer of any importance (v. 12). "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved" (v. 13, quoting Joel 2:32). The important thing is not the pursuit of good works, but rather the act of "calling on the name of the Lord," in all faithfulness and submission.
The Gospel
Luke 4:1-13
The Temptation Of Jesus
The story of the temptation of Jesus is the traditional reading for the First Sunday In Lent, in all three cycles of the lectionary. In this supernatural experience, Jesus has an encounter with the devil in the wilderness, who prescribes for him three trials: tests of his faith. Turning stones into bread (v. 3) is a temptation to self-sufficiency -- to depending not on God, but on one's own resources. Accepting rule over "all the kingdoms of the world" (v. 6) is a temptation to power. Throwing himself off the pinnacle of the temple is a temptation to fame, to ostentatious display. Such temptations are alive and well (if "well" is indeed the right word to use) in our lives today. Having failed to sway Jesus' resolve, the devil departs "until an opportune time" (v. 13). He will be back.
Preaching Possibilities
Survival is not something most of us spend a lot of time worrying about, day-to-day. It would take a natural disaster, or something of that scale, to get most of us worried about survival. Most of us live reasonably safe, protected lives: ensconced in climate-controlled houses, in police-patrolled neighborhoods, within the secure borders of a mighty nation that can dispatch aircraft carriers and Stealth bombers at will to tweak the noses of errant dictators.
Jesus, too, had it pretty safe -- or so one would think, anyway, being the Son of God. Yet Jesus, in today's gospel, puts all security and comfort aside and heads for the wilderness. Why does he do it? Because that's where you go, in that day and age, to find God and find yourself. Luke tells us he fasted for forty days -- "forty" being the biblical code number for "a very long time." Deep in the wilderness, weak with hunger, Jesus encounters none other than the devil.
The devil, in Luke, seems -- at first -- to be a thoughtful, considerate sort of fellow. Clucking over Jesus' lean and hungry look, he suggests, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread." (Why be hungry, when you don't have to?)
Jesus replies with the steely determination of a man on a mission: "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.' " That's the first temptation. It's one we often feel, too -- and we don't need to go to the desert to find it.
In modern parlance, this temptation is called self-sufficiency. It's not a bad thing to wish for -- after all, isn't self-sufficiency what every parent wants for his or her child? Isn't self-sufficiency what our schools labor to instill? Isn't self-sufficiency the virtue that's supposed to keep us off welfare?
Well, who said temptation was all bad, anyway? The grossest, blackest of temptations are pretty much all bad. Avoiding them is child's play. It's those subtle ones -- the ones that contain within themselves some shred of goodness -- that give us trouble.
Self-sufficiency is one of those sneaky sorts of temptations. Up to a certain point, it's a very good thing, but only up to a certain point. You needn't look far, in modern America, to see some of our neighbors taking self-sufficiency to ridiculous extremes.
Some aspects of the computer revolution play right into this. Why, we can conduct almost any sort of business over the computer these days. Need plane tickets? Book 'em. Looking for a book or CD? Order 'em. Gotta say "I'm sorry" to your significant other? Visit the right website, and we can dispatch a flower arrangement, with a few clicks of the mouse. The days of walking down to Main Street, and jawboning with the travel agent, or bookstore clerk, or florist seem to be on the wane. We lose something, as a society, when we cease to depend on others in a personal way, for the little things.
Worship for too long at the altar of self-sufficiency, and we'll soon come to worship little else. Make self-sufficiency our exclusive aim, and before we know it, we'll have no need for community, or family, or church -- or anything else that might distract us from our single-minded goal. Maybe not even God. "Show me a 'self-made man,' " says the comedian, "and I'll show you the result of unskilled labor."
The second temptation the devil lays before Jesus is the temptation of power. Setting out before him "in a single instant all the kingdoms of the world," the devil pledges, "To you I will give their glory and all this authority...." Well, that may seem a little hard to translate into real life. When was the last time anyone offered us all the kingdoms of the world (that is, without offering to throw in, as a special incentive, the Brooklyn Bridge as well)?
No, "world domination" is not something most of us enter on our "to-do" lists -- but even so, there are times when we crave power, on a smaller scale. The power we desire is power over people and things close at hand.
Which one of us, who's married, has never wished we could make our wife or husband do something? Or, which one of us, driving in heavy traffic, has not felt the "road rage" rise up out of the viscera, instantly translating itself into monumentally stupid driving? Which one of us, feeling injured or disappointed in some way, has not fantasized about dragging the wretched miscreants into court, and suing their sorry selves for every last penny?
In the film, Devil's Advocate, Al Pacino plays a singularly wicked attorney, who's actually the devil in human form. At one point, he waxes eloquent about this human craving for power: "You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire; you build egos the size of cathedrals and fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse; grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold-plated fantasies until every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own god! And where can you go from there?"
To this offer, posed by the devil, Jesus replies, "Worship the Lord, your God, and serve only him."
In the third temptation, the devil whisks Jesus away to the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem. He poses him there, on the edge of the parapet -- the very place where, according to some rabbinical traditions, the Messiah will one day appear. "Throw yourself down," the devil taunts him; "the angels will catch you -- just as it says in Psalm 91, 'lest you dash your foot against a stone.' " (It seems even the devil knows how to quote scripture!)
This is the hardest temptation of all to translate into modern idiom. Is this some strange, thrill seeking death-wish, on Jesus' part -- some weird compulsion, propelling him out onto the building ledge, so the crowds below will cry out, "Jump!"?
The modern equivalent of this temptation is the temptation to invulnerability. With all the fears and worries that plague our thinking -- terrorism, global epidemics, economic collapse, environmental disaster -- we like to think that our wealth and technology have made us invulnerable. We read in the news reports of strife, sickness, and starvation in other parts of the world, but we persist in the charmed thinking that such things could never happen here.
Wouldn't it be wonderful, the tempter whispers, to be invulnerable? Wouldn't it be just peachy to stand on the pinnacle of the Stock Exchange and leap off into space, confident that our incredible net worth will cushion our fall? Isn't that what so many are striving for, in the world of investing: striving to so insulate themselves from any possibility of harm that, like corporations, they will live forever?
That's the illusion. No one on this earth does live forever, of course -- but there do seem to be plenty of frantic seekers who continue to chase after that fantasy of invulnerability -- who chase it so hard and so fast, they've quite lost the ability to step back and view "the big picture."
Lent is a time when God calls us to view the big picture. None of us are self-sufficient. None of us are all-powerful. None of us are invulnerable. Yet, flawed and fleeting as our lives may be, they gain meaning from the act of coming together in community and gathering at the Lord's table.
Here, we need not turn stones into bread for here is bread indeed. Here, there is no need to elbow our way to the table for there is food a-plenty. Here, we can cease imagining, as we come, that we could ever be invulnerable for if our Lord allowed himself to be broken on the cross -- just as the bread is broken -- how can we aspire to a status higher than his?
Luke tells us that, "When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until a more opportune time." He'll be back on the day Judas is thinking of denying his Lord. He's likely to show up again in our lives as well. In the meantime, our Lord is journeying to Jerusalem, and we are invited to travel with him.
Prayer For The Day
Be Thou my breastplate, my sword for the fight;
Be Thou my armor, and be Thou my might;
Thou my soul's shelter, Thou my high tower;
Raise Thou me heavenward, O power of my power.
(A little-known stanza from the Irish hymn, "Be Thou My Vision")
To Illustrate
"Unawareness is the root of all evil," observed a fourth-century follower of Jesus. This desert monastic was one of those who chose to make the wilderness his home. They went to the desert in order to be disillusioned -- that is stripped of illusion. And thus, unshielded by fig leaves, they were confronted by the naked truth of the human heart and the various movements within it. Movements which can thwart and undermine the realization of God's unbounded love and justness and compassion in our lives and our relationships with others.
"In the desert the air is purer, the sky is more open and God is closer," observed Origen, another early veteran of the wilderness.
And so it is that Jesus is led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil....
Jesus in the wilderness had to come face-to-face with the various dimensions and potentialities of his own psyche: those that would both lead him more deeply into the demands of his belovedness, and those that would draw him into himself.
In the wilderness Jesus had to acknowledge and welcome and befriend what the Anglican mystic William Law describes as the dark guest: which is the shadow side of our human nature. "When rightly known and rightly dealt with," Law tells us, "[the dark guest] can as well be made the foundation of Heaven as it is of Hell."
-- Frank Griswold, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, U.S.A., in a sermon preached in Austin, Texas, at the Episcopal Church's Executive Council meeting, February 11-14, 2005 (Episcopal News Service)
***
At the feast of ego, everyone leaves hungry.
-- Anonymous
***
Atlas was condemned to carry the weight of the entire world on his shoulders. That was as harsh a punishment as the ancient Greek mind could conjure up. Today, it seems, we have volunteered to play the role of Atlas.
We have not offended God, we have dismissed him, told him we were grown up enough not to need his help any more, and offered to carry the weight of the entire world on our shoulders. The question is, when it gets too heavy for us, when there are questions too hard for human knowledge to answer and problems that take more time to solve than any of us have, will we be too proud to admit that we have made a mistake in wanting to carry this world alone?
-- Rabbi Harold Kushner
***
It is important to know when we can give attention and when we need attention. Often we are inclined to give, give, and give without ever asking anything in return. We may think that this is a sign of generosity or even heroism. But it might be little else than a proud attitude that says: "I don't need help from others. I only want to give." When we keep giving without receiving we burn out quickly. Only when we pay careful attention to our own physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs can we be, and remain, joyful givers.
There is a time to give and a time to receive. We need equal time for both if we want to live healthy lives.
-- Henri J. M. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey (San Francisco, HarperCollins, 1990)
***
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
-- Abraham Lincoln
***
A number of years ago, Henry Drummond wrote a classic sermon titled, "The Greatest Thing in the World." He concluded his sermon by suggesting that if you put a piece of iron in the presence of an electrified field, that piece of iron itself will become electrified. And in the presence of that electrical field, it is changed into a magnet. As long as it remains in contact with that field of power, it will continue to attract other pieces to itself. We are like that piece of iron. In the presence of Christ, we experience his love and take on his likeness. We are changed, electrified by the Holy Spirit, to attract others to the same love of God that we experience.
-- Lee Griess, Taking The Risk Out Of Dying (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing Company, 1997)
***
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do children as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
-- Helen Keller
***
Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without.
-- Joseph Wood Krutch
***
The heart of spirituality isn't safety and security. Instead, it is what Dorothy Day called "precarity." In the mind of most, precarity (or precariousness) is a bleak state of uncertainty and danger. The word connotes instability, poverty, marginalization, and the absence of a safety net.... It also suggests radical dependence: the Latin precarious is the state of being dependent on another's will, being upheld or sustained by another's force. So a spirituality centered on precarity acknowledges the radical uncertainty or contingency of human existence and our utter dependence on God.
-- Kerry Walters in Jacob's Hip: Finding God in an Anxious Age (New York: Orbis, 2003)
***
Dorothy Day once said the only way to have real security is to live as close as you can to the bottom, because then you have no fear of a fall.
***
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
-- Frederick Nietszche
