The preface to The Screwtape Letters:
“I live in a Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” The greatest evil is not done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut finger nails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.”
“For a man, a house without a wife is a cold and sterile thing. In ages of the world when the wilderness was just beyond the hedge, that was obvious. A man can live alone, but not fruitfully. It’s in the nature of things, for a husband and wife bring a good return. In our time we’ve lost our sense of the nature of things—particularly the fruitfulness of a home where women and the feminine arts are honored.” — in the house of Tom Bombadil
Developing a rhythm of prayer is so difficult:
“Every day I want to speak with you.
And every day something
more important calls for my attention—the drugstore, the beauty products,
the luggage
I need to buy for the trip.
Even now I can hardly sit here
among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the garbage
trucks outside already screeching and banging.
The mystics say you are as close as my own breath.
Why do I lee from you?
My days and nights pour through me like complaints and become a story I forgot to tell.
Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning to rise from the chair as soon as I inish this sentence.” (Marie Howe)
1 Timothy 1:15
“The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” 
"Now-a-days, if a man is a little celebrated, his signature, the house in which he was born, the place where he dines, and everything else, is thought worthy of public notice. So soon as he is departed this life, he is embalmed in huge folios, the profit of which rests mainly, I believe, with the publishers, and not with the readers." Charles Spurgeon, 1865
Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation." (Luke 2:25–30)
If the biblical God does not exist, there are two alternatives: either there is no god at all, or something other than the biblical God is god. On the one hand, if there is no god at all, then all is chance, all thinking is futile, and all ethical judgments are null and void. I shall therefore call that the irrationalist alternative. Irrationalism results not only when the existence of any god is denied but also when a god is affirmed and yet thought to be so distant or mysterious (or both) that he can have no practical involvement with the world. Irrationalism, parasitically, lives off of certain truths: that man is small, that the mind is limited, that God is far above us and incomprehensible. Thus irrationalism often enters theology masquerading as a respect for God’s transcendence. We therefore described this position earlier as a “non-Christian view of transcendence.”
On the other hand, if the unbeliever chooses to deify something in the world, something finite, then a kind of rationalism results. Man’s mind either is the new god or is considered competent to discover it autonomously, which is the same thing. This is what we earlier described as a “non-Christian view of immanence,” and it too masquerades as biblical truth, trading on biblical language about the covenant nearness of God, about His solidarity with the world.
Both rationalism and irrationalism are futile and self-defeating, as sin must always be. If irrationalism is true, then it is false. If all thinking is the product of chance, then how can it be trusted even to formulate an irrationalism? Rationalism flounders on the truth that is obvious to everyone: the human mind is not autonomous, not suited to be the final criterion of all truth. We are limited. The rationalist can defend his position, then, only by limiting his rationalism to certain truths of which he thinks there is no question—that we exist, that we think, and so forth. Then he seeks to deduce all other truth from those statements and to deny the truthfulness of anything that cannot be so deduced. But the result of this is that the mind turns out to know only itself or, more precisely, to know only its thinking. Thought is thought of thinking. Only that can be known for certain. Once some more specific content is specified, certainty disappears. Thus the consistent rationalist will deny that there is anything, ultimately, except “pure thought,” “pure being,” and so forth. All else is illusion (but how is that illusion to be explained!?). But what is a “pure thought” that is not a thought of something? Does that idea have any meaning at all? It is a pure blank. The knowledge of which rationalism boasts turns out to be a knowledge of … nothing!
Isaiah 50:9
Behold, the Lord God helps me;
who will declare me guilty?
Romans 8:31–34
If God is for us, who can be against us?
Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect?
Who is to condemn?
"The creation of the world seems to have been especially for this end, that the eternal Son of God might obtain a spouse, towards whom he might fully exercise the infinite benevolence of his nature, and to whom he might, as it were, open and pour forth all that immense fountain of condescension, love, and grace that was in his heart, and that in this way God might be glorified.” Jonathan Edwards
“Part of being wise in this world is learning to accept that we have only very limited access to the big picture. To be sure, we often want access to it—for God has “put eternity into man’s heart”—but the point is that we “cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (3:11). God is not being unkind to us by not sharing it; the point is that we are not built to understand the big picture, precisely because we live in time and God does not. If we could see the end from the beginning, and understand how a billion lives and a thousand generations and unspeakable sorrows and untold joys are all woven into a tapestry of perfect beauty, then we would be God.” (David Gibson) 
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.
Union with Christ. 
foundation device. . . cool!
22miles this morning
Chris rock isn’t funny
He’s crude
And lost
