Andy Cornett | living in the new creation

endlessly captivated by the person and work of the resurrected Jesus

on hope deferred

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I am preaching at our church this coming Sunday on “Hope Deferred.” Our texts are Psalm 25 and Hebrews 11:32-12:3. It’s been a fascinating week of study, thinking, and prayer as I work on this message. Here are three quotes that have been fresh in mind as I prepared for Sunday.

“The waters have risen and severe storms are upon us, but we do not fear drowning, for we stand firmly upon a rock. Let the sea rage, it cannot break the rock … What are we to fear? Death? Life to me means Christ, and death is gain. Exile? ‘The earth and its fullness belong to the Lord.’ The confiscation of goods? We brought nothing into this world, and we shall surely take nothing from it. I have only contempt for the world’s threats, I find its blessings laughable. I have no fear of poverty, no desire for wealth. I am not afraid of death nor do I long to live, except for your good. I concentrate therefore on the present situation, and I urge you, my friends, to have confidence.”

– Excerpt from a homily by St. John Chrysostom (Ante exsilium, nn. 1-3, PG 52, 427-430). (Thanks to a college student friend for pointing me to this one.)

“… the only sure source of our consolation: by the good and admirable providence of God the things which we consider adverse somehow contribute to our salvation. We defraud God unless each of us lives and dies in utter dependence upon His sovereign and good will.”

– John Calvin, letter to a pastor friend who had also lost his wife to death, 1557 (can’t remember the date exactly).

“And now Christianity! Christianity teaches that this single human being, and so every single human being, whether husband, wife, servant girl, cabinet minister, merchant, barber, student, etc., this single human being is before God … in short this human being has an invitation to live on the most intimate footing with God! Furthermore, for this person’s sake, for the sake of this very person too, God comes to the world, lets himself be born, suffers, dies; and this suffering God, he will-nigh begs and implores the human being to accept the help offered to him! Truly, if there is anything one should lose one’s mind over, this is it!”

– Soren Kierkegaard, A Sickness Unto Death, 117-118. (see also 100-110 on Kierkegaard defining sin as “before God, or with the conception of God, in despair not wanting to be oneself, or wanting in despair to be oneself.”)

sheer grace

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Let us rejoice in this grace, so that our glorying may bear witness to our good conscience by which we glory, not in ourselves but in the Lord. That is why Scripture says, “He is my glory, the one who lifts up my head.” For what greater grace could God have made to dawn on us than to make his only Son become the Son of man, so that human beings might in their turn become children and heirs of God? Ask if this were merited; ask for its reason, for its justification, and whether you will find any answer but sheer grace.

an aid to prayer from Augustine.
in the Ancient Christian Devotional, ed. Thomas Oden and Cindy Crosby, 31.

a prayer from Brigid

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Rouse us, O Lord, from the sleep of apathy and from tossing to and fro in our thoughts, that we may no longer live as in a troubled dream but as people awake and resolved to finish the work you have given them to do. By your humble birth root out of our hearts all pride and haughtiness, that humble ways may content us, if so be that we may serve the humble. By the life of compassion for those who labor and are heavy laden, teach us to be concerned one for another and to bear one another’s burdens. By your hallowed and most bitter anguish on the cross, make us to fear you, and love you, and follow you, O Christ. [Amen.]

a prayer of Brigid
in the Ancient Christian Devotional, ed. Thomas Oden and Cindy Crosby, 192.