work of God

1:Is not everything the work of God? ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

2:In the navel lotus' broad imperial range
Its proud ambitions and its master lusts
Were tamed into instruments of a great calm sway
To do a work of God on earthly soil. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,

3:Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability- and that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually-let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don't try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,

* WISDOM TROVE *

1:The nakedness of woman is the work of God. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove

2:Every successful work of God must have opposition. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove

3:The greatest productions of art, whether painting, music, sculpture or poetry, have invariably this quality-something approaching the work of God. ~ d-t-suzuki, @wisdomtrove

4:The work of God's Holy Spirit begins with bruising. In order to be saved, the fallow ground must be plowed up, the hard heart must be broken, the rock must be split apart. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove

5:The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of woman is the work of God. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove

6:How great, therefore, the wickedness of human nature is! How many girls there are who prevent conception and kill and expel tender fetuses, although procreation is the work of God. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove

7:Even if all the world were to combine forces, they could not bring about the conception of a single child in any woman's womb nor cause it to be born; that is wholly the work of God. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove

8:Your call will become clear as as your mind is transformed by the reading of Scripture and the internal work of God's Spirit. The Lord never hides His will from us. In time, as you obey the call first to follow, your destiny will unfold before you. The difficulty will lie in keeping other concerns from diverting your attention. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove

9:It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the universe do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the Vishnu lila, lila meaning play. And they look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance ‚Äî lila perhaps being somewhat related to our word lilt ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove

10:There is a Wonderful story in the Gospel of Luke (6:12-26). Jesus went up to the mountain to pray at night; in the morning he came down from the mountain and called his twelve apostles around him. In the afternoon he went out on the plain with them to preach the Good News and heal the sick. He had communion with God first, then he had community, and then he went out to do the work of God. That's the order of things. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove

* NEWFULLDB 2.4M *

1:An honest man's the noblest work of God ~ Alexander Pope,

2:Is not everything the work of God? ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,

3:An honest man's the noblest work of God. ~ Alexander Pope,

4:The nakedness of woman is the work of God. ~ William Blake,

5:One bird sits still Watching the work of God: ~ Thomas Merton,

6:Every successful work of God must have opposition. ~ Billy Graham,

7:Faith is the work of God's grace in us. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,

8:The true work of God is all good, since it is existence. ~ Maimonides,

9:Above all, trust in the slow work of God. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,

10:If a Work of God does NOT Continue, it was NEVER a Work of God. ~ Paul Washer,

11:we never own the work of God. We are simply stewards of it. ~ Christine Caine,

12:This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent. ~ Anonymous,

13:This is the work of God — that you believe in the One He has sent. ~ Anonymous,

14:I am just a man, not fit to do the work of God... or the Devil. ~ Peter Ustinov,

15:It is the work of God alone to justify, to sanctify, and to glorify. ~ John Wesley,

16:Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent. ~ Anonymous,

17:To do the work of others is slavery. To do the work of God is true liberation. ~ Anonymous,

18:Salvation is a work of God for man, rather than a work of man for God. ~ Lewis Sperry Chafer,

19:Man who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance! ~ Doris Lessing,

20:If you have a young child, then you are fulfilling the work of God in that way. ~ Meg Mitchell Moore,

21:Salvation is a work of God to show His glory. That’s why He’s not going to let it fail. ~ Paul Washer,

22:29 Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent. ~ Anonymous,

23:The true work of God is all good, since it is existence. ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190),

24:An honest man's the noblest work of God. ~ Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle IV, line 248,

25:Repentance is something that is brought about in the human heart by the work of God the Holy Spirit. ~ R C Sproul,

26:The call of God creates sight in us. It's the work of God in our hearts to awaken us before his word. ~ John Piper,

27:When everything is in its right place within us, we ourselves are in balance with the whole work of God. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel,

28:Faith is the work of God’s grace in us. No man can say that Jesus is the Christ but by the Holy Ghost. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,

29:An institute run with such knavish imbecility that if it were not the work of God it would not last a fortnight. ~ Hilaire Belloc,

30:If you want to do the work of God, pay attention to people. Notice them. Especially the people nobody else notices. ~ John Ortberg,

31:If an honest man is the noblest work of God, then Mr. Lincoln's title to high nobility is clear and unquestioned. ~ Matthew Simpson,

32:What is the work of God? Accepting people. Loving before judging. Caring before condemning. Look before you label. (From ~ Anonymous,

33:There are three stages to every great work of God; first it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done. ~ James Hudson Taylor,

34:Every true work of God has had its bitter enemies - not only outside, but also inside - just as in the days of Nehemiah. ~ Dwight L Moody,

35:The work of God in the cross of Christ strikes us as awe-inspiring only after we have first been awed by the glory of God. ~ Matt Chandler,

36:It is so easy to become more attached to the gifts of God than to the Giver—and even, I should add, to the work of God than to God Himself. ~ Watchman Nee,

37:If the work of God could be comprehended by reason, it would no longer be wonderful, and faith would have no merit if reason provided proof. ~ Pope Gregory I,

38:Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic. ~ Benedict XVI,

39:The greatest productions of art, whether painting, music, sculpture or poetry, have invariably this quality-something approaching the work of God. ~ D T Suzuki,

40:28Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” 29Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent. ~ Anonymous,

41:Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic. ~ Pope Benedict XVI,

42:There is no way that Christians, in a private capacity, can do so much to promote the work of God and advance the kingdom of Christ as by prayer. ~ Jonathan Edwards,

43:5As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb [1] of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything. ~ Anonymous,

44:It seems that the evangelical community no longer views conversion primarily as a supernatural work of God wrought through the miracle of the new birth. ~ Paul David Washer,

45:Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent. ~ Anonymous,

46:She is the crescendo, the final, astonishing work of God. Woman. In one last flourish creation comes to a finish with Eve. She is the Master's finishing touch. ~ John Eldredge,

47:28Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” 29Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent. ~ Anonymous,

48:By faith we understand the word and work of God—The faith of the ancients was centered in Christ—By faith, men subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, and worked miracles. ~ Anonymous,

49:28Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing p the works of God?” 29Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, q that you believe in him whom r he has sent. ~ Anonymous,

50:seemed to me that if there were lack of funds to carry on work, then to that degree, in that special development, or at that time, it could not be the work of God. ~ James Hudson Taylor,

51:The work of God's Holy Spirit begins with bruising. In order to be saved, the fallow ground must be plowed up, the hard heart must be broken, the rock must be split apart. ~ Charles Spurgeon,

52:The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of woman is the work of God. ~ William Blake,

53:I'm a religious person. I remember my mom told me: 'Vengeance belongs to God. It's up to him to wreak vengeance.' It's hard for me to get to that point, but that's the work of God. ~ Rodney King,

54:How great, therefore, the wickedness of human nature is! How many girls there are who prevent conception and kill and expel tender fetuses, although procreation is the work of God. ~ Martin Luther,

55:Even if all the world were to combine forces, they could not bring about the conception of a single child in any woman's womb nor cause it to be born; that is wholly the work of God. ~ Martin Luther,

56:I know enough about Satan to realize that he will have all his weapons ready for determined opposition. He would be a missionary simpleton who expected plain sailing in any work of God. ~ James O Fraser,

57:From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs, That makes her loved at home, revered abroad: Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, "An honest man 's the noblest work of God." ~ Robert Burns,

58:I do not see how it is possible for an intelligent human being to conclude that the Song of Solomon is the work of God, and that the tragedy of Lear was the work of an uninspired man. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll,

59:Few understand the concept of the new birth as a supernatural work of God that changes the nature of a person to such a degree that he can be referred to in the Scriptures as a new creature. ~ Paul David Washer,

60:It is always helpful to us to fix our attention on the God-ward aspect of Christian work; to realise that the work of God does not mean so much man's work for God, as God's own work through man. ~ James Hudson Taylor,

61:The work of God's house, reformation work especially, is a stirring work: read history, you find not any where, reformation made in any age, either in doctrine or discipline, without great stir and opposition. ~ Various,

62:God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods... ~ Socrates,

63:It did not look like the work of God, but it might have represented the handicraft of a God with a joyous sense of humor, a dancing God who loved mischief as much as prayer, and playfulness as much as mischief. ~ Pat Conroy,

64:The order of ... successive generations is indeed much more clearly proved than many a legend which has assumed the character of history in the hands of man; for the geological record is the work of God. ~ Roderick Murchison,

65:In the navel lotus’ broad imperial range
Its proud ambitions and its master lusts
Were tamed into instruments of a great calm sway
To do a work of God on earthly soil. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,

66:He sometimes allows something bad in our lives to prevent something far worse in our lives. That is a wondrous work of God I cannot even see, because sometimes I have no idea how God is working on my behalf. ~ Jennifer Rothschild,

67:Often a work of God comes with two edges, great joy and great pain, and in that matter-of-fact response Mary embraced both. She was the first person to accept Jesus on His own terms, regardless of the personal cost. ~ Philip Yancey,

68:O the sweet exchange, O the incomprehensible work of God, O the unexpected blessings, that the sinfulness of many should be hidden in one righteous man, while the righteousness of one should justify many sinners! ~ Thomas R Schreiner,

69:What is sanctification? Sanctification is the work of God's free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness. ~ Westminster Assembly,

70:True salvation is wholly a work of God. It is said to be both a finished work and a gift, and, therefore, it lays no obligation upon the saved one to complete it himself, or to make after payments of service for it. ~ Lewis Sperry Chafer,

71:In the Middle East, Iraq, Sudan, the former Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland, and many other places in the world, religion has been so divisive that people have killed one another, believing they were doing the work of God. ~ John C Danforth,

72:Yesterday I was on the edge Hoping everything was going to work itself out A good honest man doing the work of God Trying to make things better for Him A lover of life in a school for fools Trying to find another way to survive ~ Cat Stevens,

73:If you believe in science, like I do, you believe that there are certain laws that are always obeyed. If you like, you can say the laws are the work of God, but that is more a definition of God than a proof of his existence. ~ Stephen Hawking,

74:you may fall into error by fixing your minds so much upon the faith which is the channel of salvation as to forget the grace which is the fountain and source even of faith itself. Faith is the work of God’s grace in us. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,

75:This is the work of God, that ye believe in him whom he has sent (John 6:29). This is to say that the most divinely approved work possible is to believe in the Messiah. To trust in the Lord Jesus is the climax of virtue. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,

76:The miracle, upside-down work of God is that our failure isn’t an obstacle, it’s an opportunity to remember to sink into God. Not having what it takes is not a liability, it’s a prerequisite. Maybe there is hope for us after all. ~ Emily P Freeman,

77:The mind of the thinker and the student is driven to admit, though it be awe-struck by apparent injustice, that this inequality is the work of God. Make all men equal to-day, and God has so created them that they shall be all unequal to-morrow. ~ Anthony Trollope,

78:For in this way the God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods by whom they are severally possessed. ~ Plato,

79:A Christian who does not protect Creation, who does not let it grow, is a Christian who does not care about the work of God, that work that was born from the love of God for us. And this is the first response to the first creation: protect creation, make it grow. ~ Pope Francis,

80:Above all trust in the slow work of God. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that His hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,

81:It came to Mr. Blood, as he trudged forward under the laden apple-trees on that fragrant, delicious July morning, that man—as he had long suspected—was the vilest work of God, and that only a fool would set himself up as a healer of a species that was best exterminated. ~ Rafael Sabatini,

82:Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at is worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the "noblest work of God. ~ Mark Twain,

83:Whatever is born is the work of God. So whatever is plastered on, is the devil's work.... How unworthy of the Christian name it is to wear a fictitious face - you on whom simplicity in every form is enjoined! You, to whom lying with the tongue is not lawful, are lying in appearance. ~ Tertullian,

84:...Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the 'noblest work of God.' ~ Mark Twain,

85:Edwards says elsewhere: "I am bold to say that the work of God in the conversion of one soul, considered together with the source foundation, and purchase of it, and also the benefit, end, and eternal issue of it, is a more glorious work of God than the creation of the whole material universe. ~ William James,

86:These enemies of divine revelation extol human progress to the skies, and with rash and sacrilegious daring would have it introduced into the Catholic religion as if this religion were not the work of God but of man, or some kind of philosophical discovery susceptible of perfection by human efforts. ~ Pope Pius IX,

87:Am I a pessimist? Not at all. I am convinced that the history of the human race, no matter how tragic, will ultimately lead to the Kingdom of God. I am convinced that all the works of humankind will be reintegrated in the work of God, and that each of us, no matter how sinful, will ultimately be saved. ~ Jacques Ellul,

88:During these times immediately ahead, the world will need many trumpets to sound the clarion call. The world will need many voices to speak the words of truth and healing for which millions long. The world will need many hearts joined together in the work of the soul, and prepared to do the work of God. ~ Neale Donald Walsch,

89:What we now need to see is that human life doesn't need to be rescued from a fall that didn't happen. Human life needs to be empowered. We have to begin to see the work of God as expanding the humanity of people so that they do not have to relate to one another out of the survivor mentality of fallen people. ~ John Shelby Spong,

90:To terrorize a man into believing in God is never the work of God, but the work of human expediency. If we want to convince a congregation of a certain thing, we may use terror to frighten them into it; but never say that is God's way, it is our way. To call that God's method is a travesty to the character of God. ~ Oswald Chambers,

91:In essentials, unity. In doubtful questions, liberty. In all things, charity. There is enough of the flesh in every one of us to wreck any local church or any other work of God. Therefore, we must submerge our own petty, personal whims and attitudes, and work together in peace for the glory of God and for common blessing. ~ Susie Larson,

92:It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the universe do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the Vishnu lila, lila meaning play. And they look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance — lila perhaps being somewhat related to our word lilt ~ Alan Watts,

93:Your call will become clear as as your mind is transformed by the reading of Scripture and the internal work of God's Spirit. The Lord never hides His will from us. In time, as you obey the call first to follow, your destiny will unfold before you. The difficulty will lie in keeping other concerns from diverting your attention. ~ Charles R Swindoll,

94:If Cancer is the chastening tool of God, then doctors who are fighting cancer are fighting against the work of God. If a preacher or a Christian believes the sickness is a means of chastening, then he should never pray for relief from the sickness, but rather pray that the cancer will continue to grow until the chastening is completed. ~ Ray Comfort,

95:It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the universe do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the Vishnu lila, lila meaning play. And they look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance — lila perhaps being somewhat related to our word lilt ~ Alan W Watts,

96:The growth of trees and plants takes place so slowly that it is not easily seen. Daily we notice little change. But, in course of time, we see that a great change has taken place. So it is with grace. Sanctification is a progressive, lifelong work (Prov 4:18). It is an amazing work of God's grace and it is a work to be prayed for (Rom 8:27). ~ John Owen,

97:We cannot convince a man to believe any more than we can raise the dead. Such things are the work of God's Spirit. Men are brought to faith only through the supernatural working of God, and He has promised to work-not through human wisdom or intellectual expertise, but through the preaching of Christ crucified and resurrected from the dead! ~ Paul Washer,

98:God is constantly creating anew. And God also, invites us to be re-created and join the work of God as co-(re)creators. . . . Imagine the Kingdom of God as the creative process of God reengaging in all that we know and experience. . . . When we employ creativity to make this world better, we participate with God in the recreation of the world. ~ Doug Pagitt,

99:For believers to doubt their security is to question God’s integrity and power. It is to add the merit of human works to the gracious, unmerited work of God. And it is to add self-trust to trust in our Lord, because if salvation can be lost by anything that we can or cannot do, our ultimate trust must obviously be in ourselves rather than in God. ~ John F MacArthur Jr,

100:As the art of life is learned, it will be found at last that all lovely things are also necessary: - the wild flower by the wayside, as well as the tended corn; and the wild birds and creatures of the forest, as well as the tended cattle; because man doth not live by bread only, but also by the desert manna; by every wondrous word and unknowable work of God ~ John Ruskin,

101:The reason God responds to persistence is because prayer is changing the one who prays. As we pray, God is making us spiritually fit to receive what He is already willing to do. Prayer changes us into the people who can participate in the greater work of God without being spoiled by it through pride or becoming discouraged by the increased weight of greater fruitfulness. ~ James MacDonald,

102:Does not all your anxious restlessness, and futile effort, prove that you have not let God do His work? God is drawing you to Himself. This is not your own wish, and the stirring of your own heart, but the everlasting Divine magnet is drawing you. These restless yearnings and thirstings, remember, are the work of God. Come and be still, and wait upon God. He will reveal Himself. ~ Andrew Murray,

103:What is it that is most beautiful? - The Universe; for it is the work of God. What is most powerful? - Necessity; because it triumphs over all things. What is most difficult? - To know one's self. What is most easy? - To give advice. What method must we take to lead a good life? - To do nothing we would condemn in others. What is necessary to happiness? - A sound body and a contented mind. ~ Thales,

104:Becoming mature Christians will require the sovereign work of God. Only God can save and sanctify. Still, God uses men and means. Certainly we as parents must seek to bring our children to Jesus Christ for salvation. But salvation is not the end of the journey. It is only the beginning. The destination toward which we are headed with our children is nothing less than maturity in Christ. ~ Wayne Mack,

105:You understand the fundamental principle of an icon, don’t you? “Inspired by God”
“Not made by hands” “Supposedly directly imprinted upon the background material by God Himself”
All Icons fundamentally were the work of God. A revelation in material form. And sometimes new icon could be made from another simply by pressing a new cloth to the original and a magic transfer would occur. ~ Anne Rice,

106:Salvation is not something that God begins and we finish. Salvation is the work of God from start to finish. “Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). On the cross, Jesus cried, “It is finished!” He provides a complete salvation. He didn’t “make the down payment” and expect us to keep up the installments! ~ Warren W Wiersbe,

107:She is the crescendo, the final astonishing work of God. Woman. In one least flourish creation comes to a finish not with Adam, but with Eve. She is the Master’s finishing touch… His piece de resistance. She fills a place in the world nothing and no one else can fill… (Ladies) Look out across the earth and say to yourselves, “The whole, vast world is incomplete without me. Creation reached its zenith in me. ~ Stasi Eldredge,

108:There is a Wonderful story in the Gospel of Luke (6:12-26). Jesus went up to the mountain to pray at night; in the morning he came down from the mountain and called his twelve apostles around him. In the afternoon he went out on the plain with them to preach the Good News and heal the sick. He had communion with God first, then he had community, and then he went out to do the work of God. That's the order of things. ~ Henri Nouwen,

109:When the Bible uses the words salvation, Savior, and save, it's speaking of the total work of God in bringing people from a state of death - hopeless separation from God - to a state of everlasting life through the forgiveness of sin, based on the merits of Christ Jesus who died and rose again. Saving us is the greatest and most concrete demonstration of God's love, the definitive display of His grace throughout time and eternity. ~ David Jeremiah,

110:What is the message? Can faith bereft of specific beliefs speak understanding? If so, understanding of what? My concern is that the only thing Cox has to say to young people seeking spirituality is “Do good.”13 But why should we do good? And what is the good if it is not somehow rooted in the nature and work of God? Cox’s Age of the Spirit needs a normative Word. For while belief without faith is empty, faith without belief is blind. ~ Kevin J Vanhoozer,

111:Mr. Langdon, I did not ask if you believe what man says about God. I asked if you believed in God. There is a difference. Holy scripture is stories...legends and history of man's quest to understand his own need for meaning. I am not asking you to pass judgment on literature. I am asking if you believe in God. When you lie out under the stars, do you sense the divine? Do you feel in your gut that you are staring up at the work of God's hands? ~ Dan Brown,

112:Salvation is accomplished by the almighty power of the Triune God. The Father chose a people, the Son died for them, the Holy Spirit makes Christ's death effective by bringing the elect to faith and repentance, thereby causing them to willingly obey the gospel. The entire process (election, redemption, regeneration) is the work of God and is by grace alone. Thus God, not man, determines who will be the recipients of the gift of salvation. ~ Loraine Boettner,

113:We ourselves, though we're guilty of every sin, are not just a work of God: we're image. Yet we have cut ourselves off from our Creator in both soul and body. Did we get eyes to serve lust, the tongue to speak evil, ears to hear evil, a throat for gluttony, a stomach to be gluttony's ally, hands to do violence, genitals for unchaste excesses, feet for an erring life? Was the soul put in the body to think up traps, fraud, and injustice? I don't think so. ~ Tertullian,

114:In still earlier years than those I have been recalling, Holliday's Hill, in our town, was to me the noblest work of God. It appeared to pierce the skies. It was nearly three hundred feet high. In those days I pondered the subject much, but I never could understand why it did not swathe its summit with never-failing clouds, and crown its majestic brow with everlasting snows. I had heard that such was the custom of great mountains in other parts of the world. ~ Mark Twain,

115:Let us beware of tinkering with our inner life in hope ourselves to rend the veil. God must do everything for us. Our part is to yield and trust. We must confess, forsake, repudiate the self-life, and then reckon it crucified. But we must be careful to distinguish lazy "acceptance" from the real work of God. We must insist upon the work being done. We dare not rest content with a neat doctrine of self-crucifixion. That is to imitate Saul and spare the best of the sheep and the oxen. ~ A W Tozer,

116:Stars, on the other hand, were inexplicable. Not holes in the sky, not candles, not electric lights, not anything that resembled what you knew. The immensity of the black air overhead, the vastness of the space that stood between you and those small luminosities, was something that resisted all understanding. Benign and beautiful presences hovering in the night, there because they were there and for no other reason. The work of God's hands, yes, but what in the world had he been thinking? ~ Paul Auster,

117:The work of God in salvation is a supernatural work, but in the United States of America and among Baptists it's been reduced down to a few evangelical hoops that if we can get someone to jump through, we declare them popishly to be savedit has been the pulpit that's sending more people to Hell than any liberal organization on the face of the earthnot a liberal Methodist, not a liberal Episcopalian, but a Baptist who claims to know God's word and yet does not understand the gospel of Jesus Christ. ~ Paul Washer,

118:Self is the opaque veil that hides the Face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction. As well try to instruct leprosy out of our system. There must be a work of God in destruction before we are free. We must invite the cross to do its deadly work within us. We must bring our self-sins to the cross for judgment. We must prepare ourselves for an ordeal of suffering in some measure like that through which our Saviour passed when He suffered under Pontius Pilate. ~ A W Tozer,

119:The formation of the life of a person in the womb is the work of God, and it is not merely a mechanical process but a work on the analogy of weaving or knitting: "Thou didst knit me together in my mother's womb" (psalm 139:13). The life of the unborn is the knitting of God, and what He is knitting is a human being in His own image, unlike any other creature in the universe... The destruction of conceived human life - whether embryonic, fetal, or viable - is an assault on the unique person-forming work of God. ~ John Piper,

120:Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at is worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the "noblest work of God." This is the truth I am telling you. And this is not a new idea with him, he has talked it through all the ages, and believed it. Believed it, and found nobody among all his race to laugh at it.

-Mark Twain, Letters From the Earth: Uncensored Writings ~ Mark Twain,

121:The work of God’s Holy Spirit begins with bruising. In order to be saved, the hard ground must be plowed; the hard heart must be broken, the rock must be smashed. An old preacher said there is no going to heaven without passing close to the gates of hell, without a great deal of trouble for the heart and soul. I see the bruised reed as a picture of the poor sinner when God first begins his work on the soul. That person is like a bruised reed, almost completely broken and destroyed. There is very little strength left in him. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,

122:Do not entertain the notion that you ought to advance in your prayer. If you do, you will only find you have put on the brake instead of the acceleration. All real progress in spiritual things comes gently, imperceptibly, and is the work of God. Our crude efforts spoil it. Know yourself for the childish, limited and dependent soul you are. Remember that the only growth which matters happens without our knowledge and that trying to stretch ourselves is both dangerous and silly. Think of the Infinite Goodness, never of your own state. ~ Evelyn Underhill,

123:Therefore, at this time, all that the soul can do of itself ends, as I have said, in disturbing the peace and the work of God in the spirit amid the dryness of sense. This peace, being spiritual and delicate, effects a work that is quiet and delicate, unobtrusive and satisfactory,6 pacific and utterly alien from the former delights, which were most gross and sensual. This is that peace, according to the Psalmist, which God speaks in the soul to make it spiritual. “He will speak peace unto His people.”7 This brings us to the third test. ~ Juan de la Cruz,

124:O loss of sight, of thee I most complain! Blind among enemies, O worse than chains, dungeon or beggary, or decrepit age! Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct, and all her various objects of delight annulled, which might in part my grief have eased. Inferior to the vilest now become of man or worm; the vilest here excel me, they creep, yet see; I, dark in light, exposed to daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong, within doors, or without, still as a fool, in power of others, never in my own; scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half. ~ John Milton,

125:To assure someone that if enough nuns sing enough Masses then her dead child will go to heaven is trickery as low as passing a false coin as good. To buy a pardon from the pope, to force the pope to annul a marriage, to make him set aside kinship laws, to watch as he fleeces his cardinals, who charge the bishops, who rent to the priests, who seek their tithes from the poor – all these abuses would have to fall away if we agreed that a soul can come to God without any intervention. The crucifixion is the work of God. The church is the work of man. ~ Philippa Gregory,

126:As to the human race. There are many pretty and winning things about the human race. It is perhaps the poorest of all the inventions of all the gods but it has never suspected it once. There is nothing prettier than its naive and complacent appreciation of itself. It comes out frankly and proclaims without bashfulness or any sign of a blush that it is the noblest work of God. It has had a billion opportunities to know better, but all signs fail with this ass. I could say harsh things about it but I cannot bring myself to do it-it is like hitting a child. ~ Mark Twain,

127:a ‘Divine mathematics,’ with which one could create the richest possible reality by the most economical means, and this, it now seemed to me, was everywhere apparent: in the beautiful economy by which millions of compounds could be made from a few dozen elements, and the hundred-odd elements from hydrogen itself; the economy by which the whole range of atoms was composed from two or three particles; and in the way that their stability and identity were guaranteed by the quantal numbers of the atom itself – all this was beautiful enough to be the work of God. ~ Oliver Sacks,

128:This, then is the first work of God—that He is merciful to all who are ready to do without opinion, right, wisdom, and all spiritual goods, and are to be poor in spirit. These are they who truly fear God, who count themselves not worthy of anything, be it never so small, and are glad to be naked and bare before God and man; who ascribe whatever they have to His pure grace, bestowed on the unworthy; who use it with praise and fear and thanksgiving, as though it belonged to another, and who seek not their own will, desire, or honour, but His alone to whom it belongs. ~ Martin Luther,

129:God receives none but those who are forsaken, restores health to none but those who are sick, gives sight to none but the blind, and life to none but the dead. He does not give saintliness to any but sinners, nor wisdom to any but fools. In short: He has mercy on none but the wretched and gives grace to none but those who are in disgrace. Therefore no arrogant saint, or just or wise man can be material for God, neither can he do the work of God, but he remains confined within his own work and makes of himself a fictitious, ostensible, false, and deceitful saint, that is, a hypocrite ~ Martin Luther,

130:I have now been an officer in this Church for a very long time. I am an old man who cannot deny the calendar. I have lived long enough and served in enough different capacities to have removed from my mind, if such were necessary, any doubt of the divinity of this, the work of God. We respect those of other churches. We desire their friendship and hope to render meaningful service with them. We know they all do good, but we unabashedly state—and this frequently brings criticism upon us—that this is the true and living Church of our Father in Heaven and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. ~ Gordon B Hinckley,

131:Our work is not to save souls, but to disciple them. Salvation and sanctification are the work of God's sovereign grace, and our work as His disciples is to disciple others' lives until they are totally yielded to God. One life totally devoted to God is of more value to Him than one hundred lives which have been simply awakened by His Spirit. As workers for God, we must reproduce our own kind spiritually, and those lives will be God's testimony to us as His workers. God brings us up to a standard of life through His grace, and we are responsible for reproducing that same standard in others. ~ Oswald Chambers,

132:Since sin is the multifaced distortion of humans in their relations with God, self, others, and the world, and since cracked Eikons create systemic injustice, inherent to the atoning work of God os restorative justice. God’s redemptive intent is to restore and rehabilitate humans in their relationship with God, self, others, and the world, and when that happens justice is present and established. The followers of Jesus both proclaim and embody atoning justice by fighting injustice and establishing just that kind of justice. Their forward guard is surrounded with the banner of grace and forgiveness. ~ Scot McKnight,

133:Have you never yet learned the lesson that the Holy Spirit works with mighty power, while on the human side everything appears feeble? Look at the Lord Jesus Christ in Gethsemane. We read that He, “through the eternal Spirit” (Heb. 9:14), offered Himself a sacrifice unto God. The Almighty Spirit of God was enabling Him to do it. And yet what agony and fear and exceeding sorrow came over Him, and how He prayed! Externally, you can see no sign of the mighty power of the Spirit, but the Spirit of God was there. And even so, while you are feeble and fighting and trembling, in faith in the hidden work of God’s Spirit do not fear, but yield yourself. ~ Andrew Murray,

134:ECCLESIASTES 11 f Cast your bread upon the waters, g for you will find it after many days. 2 h Give a portion to i seven, or even to eight, j for you know not what disaster may happen on earth. 3 If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth, and if a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie. 4 He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap. 5As you do not know the way k the spirit comes to l the bones in the womb [1] of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything. ~ Anonymous,

135:I love the healing parable of Jesus and the blind man. As he went along he saw a man blind from birth, his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” We have been trained to think in terms of sin and punishment. These ideas disempower us by stressing that we are weak and wrong. The empowering way is to view trials as lessons and opportunities to choose differently. We can transcend the odious notion of being sinners cloaked in guilt, awaiting punishment. To access a spiritual solution to a problem involves focusing on the idea of a solution. ~ Wayne W Dyer,

136:I would have liked to believe in God. Now there was something that could have been everything better than anything else. By believing in God, I could succumb to ease and comfort and reassurance. Fearlessness was an option! Eternity was mine! It could all be mine: the awesome pitch of organ pipes, the musings of Anglican bishops. All I had to do was put away my doubts and believe. Whenever I was on the verge of that, I would call myself back from the brink. Keep clarity! I would cry. Hold on to yourself! For the reason the world was so pleasurable, and why I wanted to extend that pleasure through total submission to God, was my thoughts—my reasoned, stubborn, skeptical thoughts—which always unfortunately made quick work of God. ~ Joshua Ferris,

137:This has everything to do with parenting, because the kind of disciple I am dictates the kind of mother I am. I am a mom who is passionate about the work of God, or I’m not. My kids will surely know the difference. I’ll teach my children to elevate themselves or I’ll teach them to love the kingdom; those are mutually exclusive. If I truly believe, then my kids belong to Christ and my highest calling is to see them into his good care. My work is to present them to Jesus as single-minded disciples, prepared and equipped to live out their mission. If I believe, I create a house of grace. If I believe, my children will see me forgive and ask forgiveness. If I believe, my kids will care about this troubled planet Jesus was willing to die for. ~ Jen Hatmaker,

138:The work of God which is conversion is truly saving in the most personal sense. There is not – as some folk vainly preach – an element of self-denial or restriction in conversion. The converted man does not denounce or give up what he was before as a person, but what he was before as a person is, in conversion, restored to him in maturity and fulfillment. It was so with Paul – who was a great zealot. Before his conversion, Paul was the most zealous persecutor of Christ. After his conversion, Paul becomes the most zealous evangelist and apologist. Both before and after, Paul is still Paul the zealot. Paul is still the person he is in every sense, save that now that which he is, is freed from tribute to death and fulfilled – made new – brought to mature humanity – in Christ. ~ William Stringfellow,

139:THE DANGEROUS VICE OF ASKING Which is worth more? Experience or doctrine? By dropping stones and pebbles, big balls and little balls, Galileo Galilei proved that velocity remains the same no matter the weight. Aristotle was wrong, and for nineteen centuries no one had noticed. Johannes Kepler, another curious fellow, discovered that plants do not rotate in circles when they follow the light over the course of a day. Wasn’t the circle supposed to be the perfect path of everything that revolves? Wasn’t the universe supposed to be the perfect work of God? “This world is not perfect, not nearly,” Kepler concluded. “Why should its paths be perfect?” His reasoning seemed suspicious to Lutherans and Catholics alike. Kepler’s mother had spent four years in prison accused of practicing witchcraft. They must have been up to something. But ~ Eduardo Galeano,

140:One might think that those who feast most often on communion with God are least hungry. They turn often from the innocent pleasures of the world to linger more directly in the presence of God through the revelation of his Word. And there they eat the Bread of Heaven and drink the Living Water by meditation and faith. But, paradoxically, it is not so that they are the least hungry saints. The opposite is the case. The strongest, most mature Christians I have ever met are the hungriest for God. It might seem that those who eat most would be least hungry. But that’s not the way it works with an inexhaustible fountain, and an infinite feast, and a glorious Lord. When you take your stand on the finished work of God in Christ, and begin to drink at the River of Life and eat the Bread of Heaven, and know that you have found the end of all your longings, ~ John Piper,

141:When Jesus talks about the Sabbath, he makes statements that seem unrelated to rest if we think of it in terms of relaxation. In Matthew 12:8, he is the Lord of the Sabbath. When we realize that the Sabbath has to do with participating in God’s ordered system (rather than promoting our own activities as those that bring us order), we can understand how Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath. Throughout his controversies with the Pharisees, Jesus insisted that it was never a violation of the Sabbath to do the work of God on that day. Indeed, he noted that God is continually working (Jn 5:17). The Sabbath is most truly honored when we participate in the work of God (see Is 58:13-14). The work we desist from is that which represents our own attempts to bring our own order to our lives.2 It is to resist our self-interest, our self-sufficiency and our sense of self-reliance. ~ John H Walton,

142:As the room filled with tart, pleasant fumes Esther had never smelled before, her head became light with joy. These paints and and brushes and canvases were the tools real artists used. In the short hour left, inspired by Van Gogh, she chose a corner of the room as her subject and began to paint in tiny, furious brush strokes. To her amazement, yellow and blue combined into a vibrant green, red and blue turned a pulsating purple, and yellow and red mixed into a glowing orange. But beyond the colors, some new magic took over. Esther's eyes, clear as if the cumin had never blinded her, captured shapes and shadows and threw them on the canvas without effort, without thought. The urge to paint was a fountain that coursed through her, her fingers only a conduit to something so big it was hard to imagine her little heart contained it. Surely, this was the work of God. He must be guiding her hand. ~ Talia Carner,

143:Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability- and that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually-let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don't try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,

144:Good human work honors God's work. Good work uses no thing without respect, both for what it is in itself and for its origin. It uses neither tool nor material that it does not respect and that it does not love. It honors nature as a great mystery and power, as an indispensable teacher, and as the inescapable judge of all work of human hands. It does not dissociate life and work, or pleasure and work, or love and work, or usefulness and beauty. To work without pleasure or affection, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonor God, nature, the thing that is made, and whomever it is made for. This is blasphemy: to make shoddy work of the work of God. But such blasphemy is not possible when the entire Creation is understood as holy and when the works of God are understood as embodying and thus revealing His spirit. (pg. 312, Christianity and the Survival of Creation) ~ Wendell Berry,

145:Let us beware of tinkering with our inner life in hope ourselves to rend the veil. God must do everything for us. Our part is to yield and trust. We must confess, forsake, repudiate the self-life, and then reckon it crucified. But we must be careful to distinguish lazy `acceptance' from the real work of God. We must insist upon the work being done. We dare not rest content with a neat doctrine of self-crucifixion. That is to imitate Saul and spare the best of the sheep and the oxen.

Insist that the work be done in very truth and it will be done. The cross is rough, and it is deadly, but it is effective. It does not keep its victim hanging there forever. There comes a moment when its work is finished and the suffering victim dies. After that is resurrection glory and power, and the pain is forgotten for joy that the veil is taken away and we have entered in actual spiritual experience the Presence of the living God. ~ A W Tozer,

146:When no one listens To the quiet trees When no one notices The sun in the pool. Where no one feels The first drop of rain Or sees the last star Or hails the first morning Of a giant world Where peace begins And rages end: One bird sits still Watching the work of God: One turning leaf, Two falling blossoms, Ten circles upon the pond. One cloud upon the hillside, Two shadows in the valley And the light strikes home. Now dawn commands the capture Of the tallest fortune, The surrender Of no less marvelous prize! Closer and clearer Than any wordy master, Thou inward Stranger Whom I have never seen, Deeper and cleaner Than the clamorous ocean, Seize up my silence Hold me in Thy Hand! Now act is waste And suffering undone Laws become prodigals Limits are torn down For envy has no property And passion is none. Look, the vast Light stands still Our cleanest Light is One! [1962.jpg] -- from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton, by Thomas Merton

~ Thomas Merton, Stranger
,

147:This love has in it something of the most perfect union with God, and thus partakes in some measure of its properties, which are more especially actions of God received in the soul rather than of the soul, in which they subsist passively, the soul giving its consent thereto.6 3. But this warmth and force and temper and passion of love, or burning, as the soul calls it, are solely the work of God Who is entering into union with it. The more the desires are restrained, subdued, and disabled for the enjoyment of the things of heaven and earth, the more room does this love find in the soul, and better the dispositions for its reception, so that it may unite itself with that soul, and wound it. This takes place, as has been said before,7 during the dark purgation in a wonderful way, for God has so weaned the faculties, and they are now so recollected in Him, that they are unable to take pleasure as they like in anything whatever. 4. All this is the work of God; wrought ~ Juan de la Cruz,

148:There was no heat in these buildings, partly because the earliest meetinghouses also served as powder magazines, and fires threatened to blow the entire congregation to smithereens. They were bitter cold in winter. Many tales were told of frozen communion bread, frostbitten fingers, baptisms performed with chunks of ice and entire congregations with chattering teeth that sounded like a field of crickets. It was a point of honor for the minister never to shorten a service merely because his audience was frozen. But sometimes the entire congregation would begin to stamp its feet to restore circulation until the biblical rebuke came crashing down upon them: “STAND STILL and consider the wonderous work of God.” Later generations built “nooning houses” or “sab-baday houses” near the church where the congregation could thaw out after the morning sermon and prepare for the long afternoon sermon to come. But unheated meetings remained a regional folkway for two hundred years. ~ David Hackett Fischer,

149:Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,

150:Now, having said that, it is true that you have been called to work. You have been called to give yourself to the work of God’s kingdom and to daily obey the commands of the King. You’ve been called to recognize that your life is no longer your own because you were bought with a price. But the work you do is never to be done in order to earn something. The work you’re called to do is to be done in celebration of something. You don’t work to earn God’s favor; rather, your work is a hymn of thanks for the favor that Christ achieved on your behalf. You don’t have to wonder if you’ve worked enough. You don’t have to fear that you’ll mess up and get booted out of the family. You don’t have to fear seeing the back of God’s head. You don’t have to be haunted by the question of whether you’ve done enough for long enough. The bridge of impossibility has been walked by Christ. The job is done. Your relationship with God is eternally secure. Now, in thankfulness, go out and do his work. ~ Paul David Tripp,

151:In Lamentations 2, we encounter a suffering community coming to terms with their narrative. They embrace the necessary work of God in the place of suffering rather than quickly jumping to the easy answers. Lamentations 2 suggests a proper response to God’s sovereignty. The narrative of suffering and the lament that accompanies suffering is evidenced in Lamentations 2 as God’s people move toward an acknowledgment of who is in charge. In the humility necessary to acknowledge their shortcomings, the survivors of the destruction of Jerusalem can respond appropriately to God’s judgment. The dismantling of privilege requires the disavowal of any pretense of exceptionalism. Lamentations 2 offers a possibility of the expansion of the American evangelical theological imagination in order to encompass suffering and lament, which a privileged perspective may not allow. Lamentations calls us to embrace a narrative of suffering in order to understand the fullness of God’s message for his people. ~ Soong Chan Rah,

152:They were all trying to frighten us, thinking, “Their hands will get too weak for the work, and it will not be completed.” [But I prayed,] “Now strengthen my hands.” NEHEMIAH 6:9 NOVEMBER 15 Are your human relationships what you want them to be? Would you like them to be better? Then why aren’t they better? Maybe it is because you fail to realize your full capacity. If all the members of some group of, say, several hundred persons would suddenly realize their full capacity, do you know what they could do? They could change this world. If we would just all catch it! But how do you catch it? How does one get a power that is plenty for the work of God’s kingdom? One thing is certain: you can’t manufacture it yourself. Human beings are weak. We are only as strong as we are strong in God. God promises you infinitely more strength. But you’ve got to reach for it. You have to take it. You have to want it. You have to accept it. Then you have the full complement of power. Surrender yourself completely to Jesus Christ and build your life around Him. Live the way He wants you to live, even though it’s hard at times. Do this, and you will have the power. ~ Norman Vincent Peale,

153:Now the true Gospel has it that we are justified by faith alone, without the deeds of the Law. The false gospel has it that we are justified by faith, but not without the deeds of the Law. The false apostles preached a conditional gospel. So do the papists. They admit that faith is the foundation of salvation. But they add the conditional clause that faith can save only when it is furnished with good works. This is wrong. The true Gospel declares that good works are the embellishment of faith, but that faith itself is the gift and work of God in our hearts. Faith is able to justify, because it apprehends Christ, the Redeemer. Human reason can think only in terms of the Law. It mumbles: "This I have done, this I have not done." But faith looks to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, given into death for the sins of the whole world. To turn one's eyes away from Jesus means to turn them to the Law. True faith lays hold of Christ and leans on Him alone. Our opponents cannot
understand this. In their blindness they cast away the precious pearl,
Christ, and hang onto their stubborn works. They have no idea what faith is.
How can they teach faith to others? ~ Martin Luther,

154:But upon a day, the good providence of God called me to Bedford, to work on my calling; and in one of the streets of that town, I came where there were three or four poor women sitting at a door, in the sun, talking about the things of God; and being now willing to hear them discourse, I drew near to hear what they said, for I was now a brisk talker also myself, in the matters of religion; but I may say, I heard but understood not; for they were far above, out of my reach. Their talk was about a new birth, the work of God on their hearts, also how they were convinced of their miserable state by nature; they talked how God had visited their souls with His love in the Lord Jesus, and with what words and promises they had been refreshed, comforted, and supported, against the temptations of the devil: moreover, they reasoned of the suggestions and temptations of Satan in particular; and told to each other, by which they had been afflicted and how they were borne up under his assaults. They also discoursed of their own wretchedness of heart, and of their unbelief; and did contemn, slight and abhor their own righteousness, as filthy, and insufficient to do them any good. ~ John Bunyan,

155:If you have a choice between letting the doctor examine you right away, uncomfortable though it may be, and waiting until he or she can do a post-mortem on you after it’s too late, it’s wise to go for the first. If you open yourself, day by day and week by week, to the message of scripture, its grand sweep and its small details, and allow the faithful preaching of Jesus and his achievement to enter your consciousness and soak down into your imagination and heart, then the admittedly uncomfortable work of God’s word will be happening on a regular basis, showing you (as we say) where you really are, what’s going on deep inside. You may need help from someone else in this process. Just as the healing work of the early church didn’t mean that doctors became unnecessary, so the probing, searching, penetrating analysis of God’s word doesn’t mean that there isn’t still a job for psychotherapists and similar professionals. But nor do they make the task of the word unnecessary. To spend time, prayerfully and thoughtfully, with scripture and with Jesus, the written and living Word of God, is to know that gentle but powerful touch, like a very sharp and fine blade, producing surprising and perhaps alarming results. ~ Tom Wright,

156:This present universe is only one element in the kingdom of God. But it is a very wonderful and important one. And within it the Logos, the now risen Son of man, is currently preparing for us to join him (John 14:2–4). We will see him in the stunning surroundings that he had with the Father before the beginning of the created cosmos (17:24). And we will actively participate in the future governance of the universe. We will not sit around looking at one another or at God for eternity but will join the eternal Logos, “reign with him,” in the endlessly ongoing creative work of God. It is for this that we were each individually intended, as both kings and priests (Exod. 19:6; Rev. 5:10). Thus, our faithfulness over a “few things” in the present phase of our life develops the kind of character that can be entrusted with “many things.” We are, accordingly, permitted to “enter into the joy of our Lord” (Matt. 25:21). That “joy” is, of course, the creation and care of what is good, in all its dimensions. A place in God’s creative order has been reserved for each one of us from before the beginnings of cosmic existence. His plan is for us to develop, as apprentices to Jesus, to the point where we can take our place in the ongoing creativity of the universe. ~ Dallas Willard,

157:When people say you can’t argue anyone into the kingdom, they usually have an alternative approach in mind. They might be thinking that a genuine expression of love, kindness, and acceptance, coupled with a simple presentation of the gospel, is a more biblical approach. If you are tempted to think this way, let me say something that may shock you: You cannot love someone into the kingdom. It can’t be done. In fact, the simple gospel itself is not even adequate to do that job. How do I know? Because many people who were treated with sacrificial love and kindness by Christians never surrendered to the Savior. Many who have heard a clear explanation of God’s gift in Christ never put their trust in him. In each case something was missing that, when present, always results in conversion. What’s missing is that special work of the Father that Jesus referred to, drawing a lost soul into his arms. Of this work Jesus also said, “Of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day” (John 6:39). According to Jesus, then, two things are true. First, there is a particular work of God that is necessary to bring someone into the kingdom. Second, when present, this work cannot fail to accomplish its goal. Without the work of the Spirit, no argument — no matter how persuasive — will be effective. But neither will any act of love nor any simple presentation of the gospel. Add the Spirit, though, and the equation changes dramatically. Here’s the key principle: Without God’s work, nothing else works; but with God’s work, many things work. Under the influence of the Holy Spirit, love persuades. By the power of God, the gospel transforms. And with Jesus at work, arguments convince. God is happy to use each of these methods. ~ Gregory Koukl,

158:SALVATION BELONGS TO THE LORD! — JONAH 2:9 Salvation is the work of God. It is He alone who quickens the soul “dead in . . . trespasses and sins,”1 and He it is who maintains the soul in its spiritual life. He is both “Alpha and Omega.” “Salvation belongs to the LORD!” If I am prayerful, God makes me prayerful; if I have graces, they are God’s gifts to me; if I hold on in a consistent life, it is because He upholds me with His hand. I do nothing whatever toward my own preservation, except what God Himself first does in me. Whatever I have, all my goodness is of the Lord alone. Whenever I sin, that is my own doing; but when I act correctly, that is wholly and completely of God. If I have resisted a spiritual enemy, the Lord’s strength nerved my arm. Do I live before men a consecrated life? It is not I, but Christ who lives in me. Am I sanctified? I did not cleanse myself: God’s Holy Spirit sanctifies me. Am I separated from the world? I am separated by God’s chastisements sanctified to my good. Do I grow in knowledge? The great Instructor teaches me. All my jewels were fashioned by heavenly art. I find in God all that I want; but I find in myself nothing but sin and misery. “He only is my rock and my salvation.”2 Do I feed on the Word? That Word would be no food for me unless the Lord made it food for my soul and helped me to feed upon it. Do I live on the bread that comes down from heaven? What is that bread but Jesus Christ Himself incarnate, whose body and whose blood I eat and drink? Am I continually receiving fresh supplies of strength? Where do I gather my might? My help comes from heaven’s hills: Without Jesus I can do nothing. As a branch cannot bring forth fruit except it abide in the vine, no more can I, except I abide in Him. What Jonah learned in the ocean, let me learn this morning in my room: “Salvation belongs to the LORD. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,

159:July 28, 1849, my second child, James Edson White, was born. When he was six weeks old we went to Maine. September 14, a meeting was appointed at Paris. Those who observed the Sabbath of the Lord had not had a meeting for one year and a half. Brethren Bates, Chamberlain and Ralph were present, also brethren and sisters from Topsham. One F. T. Howland, a notable fanatic, was present. He had long troubled God’s children {261} with his errors and harsh spirit. Honest souls whom the Lord loved, but who had long been in error, were at the meeting. While engaged in prayer the Spirit of the Lord rested upon Brother S. Howland. His face was white, and a light seemed to rest upon it. He went towards F. T. Howland, and in the name of the Lord bid him leave the assembly of the saints. Said he, ‘You have torn the hearts of God’s children and made them bleed. Leave the house, or God will smite you.’ That rebellious spirit, never before known to fear or to yield, sprang for his hat and in terror left the house. The power of God descended something as it did on the day of Pentecost, and five or six who had been deceived and led into error and fanaticism, fell prostrate to the floor. Parents confessed to their children, and children to their parents, and to one another. Brother J. N. Andrews with deep feeling exclaimed, ‘I would exchange a thousand errors for one truth.’ Such a scene of confessing and pleading with God for forgiveness we have seldom witnessed. That meeting was the beginning of better days to the children of God in Paris, to them a green spot in the desert. The Lord was bringing out Brother Andrews to fit him for future usefulness, and was giving him an experience that would be of great value to him in his future labors. He was teaching him that he should not be influenced by the experience of others, but decide for himself concerning the work of God. ~ James White,

160:February 26 MORNING “Salvation is of the Lord.” — Jonah 2:9 SALVATION is the work of God. It is He alone who quickens the soul “dead in trespasses and sins,” and it is He also who maintains the soul in its spiritual life. He is both “Alpha and Omega.” “Salvation is of the Lord.” If I am prayerful, God makes me prayerful; if I have graces, they are God’s gifts to me; if I hold on in a consistent life, it is because He upholds me with His hand. I do nothing whatever towards my own preservation, except what God Himself first does in me. Whatever I have, all my goodness is of the Lord alone. Wherein I sin, that is my own; but wherein I act rightly, that is of God, wholly and completely. If I have repulsed a spiritual enemy, the Lord’s strength nerved my arm. Do I live before men a consecrated life? It is not I, but Christ who liveth in me. Am I sanctified? I did not cleanse myself: God’s Holy Spirit sanctifies me. Am I weaned from the world? I am weaned by God’s chastisements sanctified to my good. Do I grow in knowledge? The great Instructor teaches me. All my jewels were fashioned by heavenly art. I find in God all that I want; but I find in myself nothing but sin and misery. “He only is my rock and my salvation.” Do I feed on the Word? That Word would be no food for me unless the Lord made it food for my soul, and helped me to feed upon it. Do I live on the manna which comes down from heaven? What is that manna but Jesus Christ himself incarnate, whose body and whose blood I eat and drink? Am I continually receiving fresh increase of strength? Where do I gather my might? My help cometh from heaven’s hills: without Jesus I can do nothing. As a branch cannot bring forth fruit except it abide in the vine, no more can I, except I abide in Him. What Jonah learned in the great deep, let me learn this morning in my closet: “Salvation is of the Lord. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,

161:The first distinctive of the Biblical Gospel over against the message taught by Rome was the role of God. Rather than God simply providing a way of salvation, the Reformers discovered that the Bible taught that God actually saved men. That is, rather than salvation being dependent upon men’s striving to take advantage of the plan made available by God, the real Gospel taught that God was able to save men independent of any action on man’s part. God, the Reformers taught, was absolutely sovereign in the matter of salvation. He had, from time immemorial, chosen, elected, predestined to save certain men and bring them into fellowship with Himself, and, since God will never fail to do that which He purposes, those whom God has chosen will be saved! Rather than a man-centered message that made the operative factor man and man’s will and decisions, the Bible presented a God-centered message in line with the words of the Psalmist, “Our God is in heaven; He does whatever pleases Him” (Psalm 115:3). Next, the Reformers found that the Biblical teaching about man was very different than the elaborate system worked out by medieval theologians such as Thomas Aquinas. They found that sin had affected all of man, to the point that Paul could say, “There is none righteous, there is none who understands, there is not one who seeks after God” (Romans 3:10-11). This meant that even man’s will was enslaved to evil, incapable of seeking after God or doing right. Outside of the sovereign work of God by the Holy Spirit, man was utterly helpless to even will to be saved, let alone be saved through whatever system of works, ceremonies, penances, etc. that might be presented. “And you, being dead in your transgressions...” (Eph. 2:1) is how the Apostle expressed it. Dead in sin, not just wounded by sin, deprived of some original righteousness by sin, hindered by sin. This was a radical concept in that day, for it clearly meant that all the “aids” or “helps” that could possibly be concocted would be of no avail to someone who is dead! No amount of sacraments could help a dead person—God had to act first to bring spiritual life. This also meant that faith and repentance had to be gifts of God, for they were not within the ability of sinful man. ~ James R White,

162:One of the most disputed Old Testament texts that could show distinct personality for more than one person is Proverbs 8:22–31. Although the earlier part of the chapter could be understood as merely a personification of “wisdom” for literary effect, showing wisdom calling to the simple and inviting them to learn, vv. 22–31, one could argue, say things about “wisdom” that seem to go far beyond mere personification. Speaking of the time when God created the earth, “wisdom” says, “Then I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind” (Prov. 8:30–31 NIV). To work as a “craftsman” at God’s side in the creation suggests in itself the idea of distinct personhood, and the following phrases might seem even more convincing, for only real persons can be “filled with delight day after day” and can rejoice in the world and delight in mankind.7 But if we decide that “wisdom” here really refers to the Son of God before he became man, there is a difficulty. Verses 22–25 (RSV) seem to speak of the creation of this person who is called “wisdom”: The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth. Does this not indicate that this “wisdom” was created? In fact, it does not. The Hebrew word that commonly means “create” (bārā’) is not used in verse 22; rather the word is qānāh, which occurs eighty-four times in the Old Testament and almost always means “to get, acquire.” The NASB is most clear here: “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his way” (similarly KJV). (Note this sense of the word in Gen. 39:1; Ex. 21:2; Prov. 4:5, 7; 23:23; Eccl. 2:7; Isa. 1:3 [”owner”].) This is a legitimate sense and, if wisdom is understood as a real person, would mean only that God the Father began to direct and make use of the powerful creative work of God the Son at the time creation began8: the Father summoned the Son to work with him in the activity of creation. The expression “brought forth” in verses 24 and 25 is a different term but could carry a similar meaning: the Father began to direct and make use of the powerful creative work of the Son in the creation of the universe. ~ Wayne Grudem,

163:17 For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of what we eat or drink, but of living a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. 18 If you serve Christ with this attitude, you will please God, and others will approve of you, too. 19 So then, let us aim for harmony in the church and try to build each other up. 14 Yo sé —y estoy convencido por la autoridad del Señor Jesús— que ningún alimento en sí mismo está mal; pero si alguien piensa que está mal comerlo, entonces, para esa persona, está mal. 15 Si otro creyente se angustia por lo que tú comes, entonces no actúas con amor si lo comes. No permitas que lo que tú comes destruya a alguien por quien Cristo murió. 16 Entonces no serás criticado por hacer algo que tú crees que es bueno. 17 Pues el reino de Dios no se trata de lo que comemos o bebemos, sino de llevar una vida de bondad, paz y alegría en el Espíritu Santo. 18 Si tú sirves a Cristo con esa actitud, agradarás a Dios y también tendrás la aprobación de los demás. 19 Por lo tanto, procuremos que haya armonía en la iglesia y tratemos de edificarnos unos a otros. 20 Don’t tear apart the work of God over what you eat. Remember, all foods are acceptable, but it is wrong to eat something if it makes another person stumble. 21 It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything else if it might cause another believer to stumble.[*] 22 You may believe there’s nothing wrong with what you are doing, but keep it between yourself and God. Blessed are those who don’t feel guilty for doing something they have decided is right. 23 But if you have doubts about whether or not you should eat something, you are sinning if you go ahead and do it. For you are not following your convictions. If you do anything you believe is not right, you are sinning.[*] 20 No destruyas la obra de Dios a causa de lo que comes. Recuerda que todos los alimentos están permitidos; lo malo es comer algo que haga tropezar a otro. 21 Es mejor no comer carne ni beber vino ni hacer ninguna otra cosa que pudiera causar que otro creyente tropiece.[*] 22 Tal vez crees que no hay nada malo en lo que haces, pero mantenlo entre tú y Dios. Benditos son los que no se sienten culpables por hacer algo que han decidido que es correcto. 23 Pero si tienes dudas acerca de si debes o no comer algo en particular, entonces es pecado comerlo, pues no eres fiel a tus convicciones. Si haces algo que crees que está mal, pecas.[*] NEW LIVING TRANSLATION NUEVA TRADUCCIÓN VIVIENTE Romans 15 Living to Please Others 1 We who are strong must be considerate of those who are sensitive about things like this. We must not just ~ Anonymous,

164:It really is location, location, location. If you’re going to live with peace of heart and with hope and courage, you have to know your place in the work of God. There are two markers of that work that really do locate you, tell you what God is doing, and inform you as to how you should live right here, right now. As I have said before, you live between the “already” and the “not yet.” First, it is vital for you and me to always remember that we live in the “already” of complete forgiveness. Forgiveness is not a “hope it will be” thing. It’s an “accomplished and done” thing. You do not have to hope that you will be forgiven. You do not have to be concerned that the process of forgiveness will somehow fail. Why? Because your complete and final forgiveness was accomplished on the cross of Jesus Christ. The perfect sacrifice of the completely righteous Lamb fully satisfied the holy requirements of God and left you righteous and without penalty in his sight. So you never have to worry that you will be so bad that God will reject you. You never have to hide your sin. You never have to do things to win God’s favor. You never have to cower in shame. You never have to rationalize, excuse, defend, or shift the blame. You never have to pretend that you are better than you are. You never have to present arguments for your righteousness. You never have to fear being known or exposed. You never have to compare the size of your sin to the size of another’s. You never have to parade your righteousness so it can be seen by others. You never have to wonder if God’s going to get exhausted with how often you mess up. All of these are acts of gospel irrationality because you have been completely forgiven. On the other end, it is essential to understand the “not yet” of your final repair. Yes, you have been fully forgiven, but you have not yet been completely rebuilt into all that grace will make you. Sin still remains, the war for your heart still rages, the world around you is still broken, spiritual danger still lurks, and you have not yet been fully re-formed into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. The cross of Jesus guarantees that all of these broken things will be fixed, but they are not fixed yet. So as I bask in the complete forgiveness that I have been given and enjoy freedom from the anxiety that I will not measure up, I cannot live unwisely. One danger (sin) still lives inside me and another (temptation) still lurks outside me, so I am still a person in daily and desperate need of grace. Forgiveness is complete. Final restoration is yet to come. Knowing you live in between the two is the key to a restful and wise Christian life. For further study and encouragement: 2 Peter 3:1 ~ Paul David Tripp,

165:Romans 14 The Danger of Criticism 1 Accept other believers who are weak in faith, and don’t argue with them about what they think is right or wrong. 2 For instance, one person believes it’s all right to eat anything. But another believer with a sensitive conscience will eat only vegetables. 3 Those who feel free to eat anything must not look down on those who don’t. And those who don’t eat certain foods must not condemn those who do, for God has accepted them. 4 Who are you to condemn someone else’s servants? Their own master will judge whether they stand or fall. And with the Lord’s help, they will stand and receive his approval. 5 In the same way, some think one day is more holy than another day, while others think every day is alike. You should each be fully convinced that whichever day you choose is acceptable. 6 Those who worship the Lord on a special day do it to honor him. Those who eat any kind of food do so to honor the Lord, since they give thanks to God before eating. And those who refuse to eat certain foods also want to please the Lord and give thanks to God. 7 For we don’t live for ourselves or die for ourselves. 8 If we live, it’s to honor the Lord. And if we die, it’s to honor the Lord. So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. 9 Christ died and rose again for this very purpose—to be Lord both of the living and of the dead. 10 So why do you condemn another believer[*]? Why do you look down on another believer? Remember, we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. 11 For the Scriptures say, “‘As surely as I live,’ says the LORD, ‘every knee will bend to me, and every tongue will declare allegiance to God.[*]’” 12 Yes, each of us will give a personal account to God. 13 So let’s stop condemning each other. Decide instead to live in such a way that you will not cause another believer to stumble and fall. 14 I know and am convinced on the authority of the Lord Jesus that no food, in and of itself, is wrong to eat. But if someone believes it is wrong, then for that person it is wrong. 15 And if another believer is distressed by what you eat, you are not acting in love if you eat it. Don’t let your eating ruin someone for whom Christ died. 16 Then you will not be criticized for doing something you believe is good. 17 For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of what we eat or drink, but of living a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. 18 If you serve Christ with this attitude, you will please God, and others will approve of you, too. 19 So then, let us aim for harmony in the church and try to build each other up. 20 Don’t tear apart the work of God over what you eat. Remember, all foods are acceptable, but it is wrong to eat something if it makes another person stumble. 21 It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything else if it might cause another believer to stumble.[*] 22 You may believe there’s nothing wrong with what you are doing, but keep it between yourself and God. Blessed are those who don’t feel guilty for doing something they have decided is right. 23 But if you have doubts about whether or not you should eat something, you are sinning if you go ahead and do it. For you are not following your convictions. If you do anything you believe is not right, you are sinning.[*] ~ Anonymous,

166:The enemy of my soul didn't want me painting that day. To create meant that I would look a little bit like my Creator. To overcome the terrifying angst of the blank canvas meant I would forever have more compassion for other artists. You better believe as I placed the first blue and gray strokes onto the white emptiness before me, the "not good enough" statement was pulsing through my head in almost deafening tones...
This parlaying lie is one of his favorite tactics to keep you disillusioned by disappointments. Walls go up, emotions run high, we get guarded, defensive, demotivated, and paralyzed by the endless ways we feel doomed to fail. This is when we quit. This is when we settle for the ease of facebook.... This is when we get a job to simply make money instead of pursuing our calling to make a difference. This is when we put the paintbrush down and don't even try.
So there I was. Standing before my painted blue boat, making a choice of which voice to listen to.
I'm convinced God was smiling. Pleased. Asking me to find delight in what is right. Wanting me to have compassion for myself by focusing on that part of my painting that expressed something beautiful. To just be eager to give that beauty to whoever dared to look at my boat. To create to love others. Not to beg them for validation.
But the enemy was perverting all that. Perfection mocked my boat. The bow was too high, the details too elementary, the reflection on the water too abrupt, and the back of the boat too off-center. Disappointment demanded I hyper-focused on what didn't look quite right.
It was my choice which narrative to hold on to: "Not good enough" or "Find delight in what is right." Each perspective swirled, begging me to declare it as truth.
I was struggling to make peace with my painting creation, because I was struggling to make make peace with myself as God's creation. Anytime we feel not good enough we deny the powerful truth that we are a glorious work of God in progress.
We are imperfect because we are unfinished.
So, as unfinished creations, of course everything we attempt will have imperfections. Everything we accomplish will have imperfections. And that's when it hit me: I expect a perfection in me and in others that not even God Himself expects. If God is patient with the process, why can't I be?
How many times have I let imperfections cause me to be too hard on myself and too harsh with others?
I force myself to send a picture of my boat to at least 20 friends. I was determined to not not be held back by the enemy's accusations that my artwork wasn't good enough to be considered "real art". This wasn't for validation but rather confirmation that I could see the imperfections in my painting but not deem it worthless. I could see the imperfections in me and not deem myself worthless. It was an act of self-compassion.

I now knew to stand before each painting with nothing but love, amazement, and delight. I refused to demand anything more from the artist. I just wanted to show up for every single piece she was so brave to put on display..
Might I just be courageous enough to stand before her work and require myself to find everything about it I love? Release my clenched fist and pouty disappointments, and trade my "live up" mentality for a "show up" one? It is so much more freeing to simply show up and be a finder of the good. Break from the secret disappointments. Let my brain venture down the tiny little opening of love..

And I realized what makes paintings so delightful. It's there imperfections. That's what makes it art. It's been touched by a human. It's been created by someone whose hands sweat and who can't possibly transfer divine perfection from what her eyes see to what her fingertips can create. It will be flawed. ~ Lysa TerKeurst,

167:Is it possible that the Pentateuch could not have been written by uninspired men? that the assistance of God was necessary to produce these books? Is it possible that Galilei ascertained the mechanical principles of 'Virtual Velocity,' the laws of falling bodies and of all motion; that Copernicus ascertained the true position of the earth and accounted for all celestial phenomena; that Kepler discovered his three laws—discoveries of such importance that the 8th of May, 1618, may be called the birth-day of modern science; that Newton gave to the world the Method of Fluxions, the Theory of Universal Gravitation, and the Decomposition of Light; that Euclid, Cavalieri, Descartes, and Leibniz, almost completed the science of mathematics; that all the discoveries in optics, hydrostatics, pneumatics and chemistry, the experiments, discoveries, and inventions of Galvani, Volta, Franklin and Morse, of Trevithick, Watt and Fulton and of all the pioneers of progress—that all this was accomplished by uninspired men, while the writer of the Pentateuch was directed and inspired by an infinite God? Is it possible that the codes of China, India, Egypt, Greece and Rome were made by man, and that the laws recorded in the Pentateuch were alone given by God? Is it possible that Æschylus and Shakespeare, Burns, and Beranger, Goethe and Schiller, and all the poets of the world, and all their wondrous tragedies and songs are but the work of men, while no intelligence except the infinite God could be the author of the Pentateuch? Is it possible that of all the books that crowd the libraries of the world, the books of science, fiction, history and song, that all save only one, have been produced by man? Is it possible that of all these, the bible only is the work of God? ~ Robert G Ingersoll,

168:John Brown
Though for your sake I would not have you now
So near to me tonight as now you are,
God knows how much a stranger to my heart
Was any cold word that I may have written;
And you, poor woman that I made my wife,
You have had more of loneliness, I fear,
Than I—though I have been the most alone,
Even when the most attended. So it was
God set the mark of his inscrutable
Necessity on one that was to grope,
And serve, and suffer, and withal be glad
For what was his, and is, and is to be,
When his old bones, that are a burden now,
Are saying what the man who carried them
Had not the power to say. Bones in a grave,
Cover them as they will with choking earth,
May shout the truth to men who put them there,
More than all orators. And so, my dear,
Since you have cheated wisdom for the sake
Of sorrow, let your sorrow be for you,
This last of nights before the last of days,
The lying ghost of what there is of me
That is the most alive. There is no death
For me in what they do. Their death it is
They should heed most when the sun comes again
To make them solemn. There are some I know
Whose eyes will hardly see their occupation,
For tears in them—and all for one old man;
For some of them will pity this old man,
Who took upon himself the work of God
Because he pitied millions. That will be
For them, I fancy, their compassionate
Best way of saying what is best in them
To say; for they can say no more than that,
And they can do no more than what the dawn
Of one more day shall give them light enough
To do. But there are many days to be,
And there are many men to give their blood,
As I gave mine for them. May they come soon!
140
May they come soon, I say. And when they come,
May all that I have said unheard be heard,
Proving at last, or maybe not—no matter—
What sort of madness was the part of me
That made me strike, whether I found the mark
Or missed it. Meanwhile, I’ve a strange content,
A patience, and a vast indifference
To what men say of me and what men fear
To say. There was a work to be begun,
And when the Voice, that I have heard so long,
Announced as in a thousand silences
An end of preparation, I began
The coming work of death which is to be,
That life may be. There is no other way
Than the old way of war for a new land
That will not know itself and is tonight
A stranger to itself, and to the world
A more prodigious upstart among states
Than I was among men, and so shall be
Till they are told and told, and told again;
For men are children, waiting to be told,
And most of them are children all their lives.
The good God in his wisdom had them so,
That now and then a madman or a seer
May shake them out of their complacency
And shame them into deeds. The major file
See only what their fathers may have seen,
Or may have said they saw when they saw nothing.
I do not say it matters what they saw.
Now and again to some lone soul or other
God speaks, and there is hanging to be done,—
As once there was a burning of our bodies
Alive, albeit our souls were sorry fuel.
But now the fires are few, and we are poised
Accordingly, for the state’s benefit,
A few still minutes between heaven and earth.
The purpose is, when they have seen enough
Of what it is that they are not to see,
To pluck me as an unripe fruit of treason,
And then to fling me back to the same earth
Of which they are, as I suppose, the flower—
141
Not given to know the riper fruit that waits
For a more comprehensive harvesting.
Yes, may they come, and soon. Again I say,
May they come soon!—before too many of them
Shall be the bloody cost of our defection.
When hell waits on the dawn of a new state,
Better it were that hell should not wait long,—
Or so it is I see it who should see
As far or farther into time tonight
Than they who talk and tremble for me now,
Or wish me to those everlasting fires
That are for me no fear. Too many fires
Have sought me out and seared me to the bone—
Thereby, for all I know, to temper me
For what was mine to do. If I did ill
What I did well, let men say I was mad;
Or let my name for ever be a question
That will not sleep in history. What men say
I was will cool no cannon, dull no sword,
Invalidate no truth. Meanwhile, I was;
And the long train is lighted that shall burn,
Though floods of wrath may drench it, and hot feet
May stamp it for a slight time into smoke
That shall blaze up again with growing speed,
Until at last a fiery crash will come
To cleanse and shake a wounded hemisphere,
And heal it of a long malignity
That angry time discredits and disowns.
Tonight there are men saying many things;
And some who see life in the last of me
Will answer first the coming call to death;
For death is what is coming, and then life.
I do not say again for the dull sake
Of speech what you have heard me say before,
But rather for the sake of all I am,
And all God made of me. A man to die
As I do must have done some other work
Than man’s alone. I was not after glory,
But there was glory with me, like a friend,
Throughout those crippling years when friends were few,
142
And fearful to be known by their own names
When mine was vilified for their approval.
Yet friends they are, and they did what was given
Their will to do; they could have done no more.
I was the one man mad enough, it seems,
To do my work; and now my work is over.
And you, my dear, are not to mourn for me,
Or for your sons, more than a soul should mourn
In Paradise, done with evil and with earth.
There is not much of earth in what remains
For you; and what there may be left of it
For your endurance you shall have at last
In peace, without the twinge of any fear
For my condition; for I shall be done
With plans and actions that have heretofore
Made your days long and your nights ominous
With darkness and the many distances
That were between us. When the silence comes,
I shall in faith be nearer to you then
Than I am now in fact. What you see now
Is only the outside of an old man,
Older than years have made him. Let him die,
And let him be a thing for little grief.
There was a time for service and he served;
And there is no more time for anything
But a short gratefulness to those who gave
Their scared allegiance to an enterprise
That has the name of treason—which will serve
As well as any other for the present.
There are some deeds of men that have no names,
And mine may like as not be one of them.
I am not looking far for names tonight.
The King of Glory was without a name
Until men gave Him one; yet there He was,
Before we found Him and affronted Him
With numerous ingenuities of evil,
Of which one, with His aid, is to be swept
And washed out of the world with fire and blood.
Once I believed it might have come to pass
With a small cost of blood; but I was dreaming—
Dreaming that I believed. The Voice I heard
143
When I left you behind me in the north,—
To wait there and to wonder and grow old
Of loneliness,—told only what was best,
And with a saving vagueness, I should know
Till I knew more. And had I known even then—
After grim years of search and suffering,
So many of them to end as they began—
After my sickening doubts and estimations
Of plans abandoned and of new plans vain—
After a weary delving everywhere
For men with every virtue but the Vision—
Could I have known, I say, before I left you
That summer morning, all there was to know—
Even unto the last consuming word
That would have blasted every mortal answer
As lightning would annihilate a leaf,
I might have trembled on that summer morning;
I might have wavered; and I might have failed.
And there are many among men today
To say of me that I had best have wavered.
So has it been, so shall it always be,
For those of us who give ourselves to die
Before we are so parcelled and approved
As to be slaughtered by authority.
We do not make so much of what they say
As they of what our folly says of us;
They give us hardly time enough for that,
And thereby we gain much by losing little.
Few are alive to-day with less to lose.
Than I who tell you this, or more to gain;
And whether I speak as one to be destroyed
For no good end outside his own destruction,
Time shall have more to say than men shall hear
Between now and the coming of that harvest
Which is to come. Before it comes, I go—
By the short road that mystery makes long
For man’s endurance of accomplishment.
I shall have more to say when I am dead.
~ Edwin Arlington Robinson,

169:He gazed and gazed and gazed and gazed,
Amazed, amazed, amazed, amazed.

Like (7) 2
Saul
I.

Said Abner, ``At last thou art come! Ere I tell, ere thou speak,
``Kiss my cheek, wish me well!'' Then I wished it, and did kiss his cheek.
And he, ``Since the King, O my friend, for thy countenance sent,
``Neither drunken nor eaten have we; nor until from his tent
``Thou return with the joyful assurance the King liveth yet,
``Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the water be wet.
``For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space of three days,
``Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of prayer nor of praise,
``To betoken that Saul and the Spirit have ended their strife,
``And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch sinks back upon life.

II.

``Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved! God's child with his dew
``On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and blue
``Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as if no wild beat
``Were now raging to torture the desert!''

III.

Then I, as was meet,
Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose on my feet,
And ran o'er the sand burnt to powder. The tent was unlooped;
I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and under I stooped
Hands and knees on the slippery grass-patch, all withered and gone,
That extends to the second enclosure, I groped my way on
Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. Then once more I prayed,
And opened the foldskirts and entered, and was not afraid
But spoke, ``Here is David, thy servant!'' And no voice replied.
At the first I saw nought but the blackness but soon I descried
A something more black than the blackness-the vast, the upright
Main prop which sustains the pavilion: and slow into sight
Grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of all.
Then a sunbeam, that burst thro' the tent-roof, showed Saul.

IV.

He stood as erect as that tent-prop, both arms stretched out wide
On the great cross-support in the centre, that goes to each side;
He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there as, caught in his pangs
And waiting his change, the king-serpent all heavily hangs,
Far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliverance come
With the spring-time,-so agonized Saul, drear and stark, blind and dumb.

V.

Then I tuned my harp,-took off the lilies we twine round its chords
Lest they snap 'neath the stress of the noon-tide-those sunbeams like swords!
And I first played the tune all our sheep know, as, one after one,
So docile they come to the pen-door till folding be done.
They are white and untorn by the bushes, for lo, they have fed
Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's bed;
And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows star
Into eve and the blue far above us,-so blue and so far!

VI.

-Then the tune, for which quails on the cornland will each leave his mate
To fly after the player; then, what makes the crickets elate
Till for boldness they fight one another: and then, what has weight
To set the quick jerboa amusing outside his sand house-
There are none such as he for a wonder, half bird and half mouse!
God made all the creatures and gave them our love and our fear,
To give sign, we and they are his children, one family here.
VII.

Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their wine-song, when hand
Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, and great hearts expand
And grow one in the sense of this world's life.-And then, the last song
When the dead man is praised on his journey-``Bear, bear him along
``With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets! Are balm-seeds not here
``To console us? The land has none left such as he on the bier.
``Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!''-And then, the glad chaunt
Of the marriage,-first go the young maidens, next, she whom we vaunt
As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling.-And then, the great march
Wherein man runs to man to assist him and buttress an arch
Nought can break; who shall harm them, our friends?-Then, the chorus intoned
As the Levites go up to the altar in glory enthroned.
But I stopped here: for here in the darkness Saul groaned.

VIII.

And I paused, held my breath in such silence, and listened apart;
And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered: and sparkles 'gan dart
From the jewels that woke in his turban, at once with a start,
All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies courageous at heart.
So the head: but the body still moved not, still hung there erect.
And I bent once again to my playing, pursued it unchecked,
As I sang,-

IX.

``Oh, our manhood's prime vigour! No spirit feels waste,
``Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced.
``Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock,
``The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock
``Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear,
``And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair.
``And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust divine,
``And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of wine,
``And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell
``That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well.
``How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ
``All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy!
``Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, whose sword thou didst guard
``When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for glorious reward?
``Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held up as men sung
``The low song of the nearly-departed, and bear her faint tongue
``Joining in while it could to the witness, `Let one more attest,
`` `I have lived, seen God's hand thro'a lifetime, and all was for best'?
``Then they sung thro' their tears in strong triumph, not much, but the rest.
``And thy brothers, the help and the contest, the working whence grew
``Such result as, from seething grape-bundles, the spirit strained true:
``And the friends of thy boyhood-that boyhood of wonder and hope,
``Present promise and wealth of the future beyond the eye's scope,-
``Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch; a people is thine;
``And all gifts, which the world offers singly, on one head combine!
``On one head, all the beauty and strength, love and rage (like the throe
``That, a-work in the rock, helps its labour and lets the gold go)
``High ambition and deeds which surpass it, fame crowning them,-all
``Brought to blaze on the head of one creature-King Saul!''

X.

And lo, with that leap of my spirit,-heart, hand, harp and voice,
Each lifting Saul's name out of sorrow, each bidding rejoice
Saul's fame in the light it was made for-as when, dare I say,
The Lord's army, in rapture of service, strains through its array,
And up soareth the cherubim-chariot-``Saul!'' cried I, and stopped,
And waited the thing that should follow. Then Saul, who hung propped
By the tent's cross-support in the centre, was struck by his name.
Have ye seen when Spring's arrowy summons goes right to the aim,
And some mountain, the last to withstand her, that held (he alone,
While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) on a broad bust of stone
A year's snow bound about for a breastplate,-leaves grasp of the sheet?
Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously down to his feet,
And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, your mountain of old,
With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages untold-
Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each furrow and scar
Of his head thrust 'twixt you and the tempest-all hail, there they are!
-Now again to be softened with verdure, again hold the nest
Of the dove, tempt the goat and its young to the green on his crest
For their food in the ardours of summer. One long shudder thrilled
All the tent till the very air tingled, then sank and was stilled
At the King's self left standing before me, released and aware.
What was gone, what remained? All to traverse, 'twixt hope and despair;
Death was past, life not come: so he waited. Awhile his right hand
Held the brow, helped the eyes left too vacant forthwith to remand
To their place what new objects should enter: 'twas Saul as before.
I looked up and dared gaze at those eyes, nor was hurt any more
Than by slow pallid sunsets in autumn, ye watch from the shore,
At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean-a sun's slow decline
Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'erlap and entwine
Base with base to knit strength more intensely: so, arm folded arm
O'er the chest whose slow heavings subsided.

XI.

What spell or what charm,
(For, awhile there was trouble within me) what next should I urge
To sustain him where song had restored him?-Song filled to the verge
His cup with the wine of this life, pressing all that it yields
Of mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty: beyond, on what fields,
Glean a vintage more potent and perfect to brighten the eye
And bring blood to the lip, and commend them the cup they put by?
He saith, ``It is good;'' still he drinks not: he lets me praise life,
Gives assent, yet would die for his own part.

XII.

Then fancies grew rife
Which had come long ago on the pasture, when round me the sheep
Fed in silence-above, the one eagle wheeled slow as in sleep;
And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world that might lie
'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt the hill and the sky:
And I laughed-``Since my days are ordained to be passed with my flocks,
``Let me people at least, with my fancies, the plains and the rocks,
``Dream the life I am never to mix with, and image the show
``Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly shall know!
``Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the courage that gains,
``And the prudence that keeps what men strive for.'' And now these old trains
Of vague thought came again; I grew surer; so, once more the string
Of my harp made response to my spirit, as thus-

XIII.

``Yea, my King,''
I began-``thou dost well in rejecting mere comforts that spring
``From the mere mortal life held in common by man and by brute:
``In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our soul it bears fruit.
``Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree,-how its stem trembled first
``Till it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler then safely outburst
``The fan-branches all round; and thou mindest when these too, in turn
``Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect: yet more was to learn,
``E'en the good that comes in with the palm-fruit. Our dates shall we slight,
``When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow? or care for the plight
``Of the palm's self whose slow growth produced them? Not so! stem and branch
``Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while the palm-wine shall staunch
``Every wound of man's spirit in winter. I pour thee such wine.
``Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for! the spirit be thine!
``By the spirit, when age shall o'ercome thee, thou still shalt enjoy
``More indeed, than at first when inconscious, the life of a boy.
``Crush that life, and behold its wine running! Each deed thou hast done
``Dies, revives, goes to work in the world; until e'en as the sun
``Looking down on the earth, though clouds spoil him, though tempests efface,
``Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must everywhere trace
``The results of his past summer-prime'-so, each ray of thy will,
``Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long over, shall thrill
``Thy whole people, the countless, with ardour, till they too give forth
``A like cheer to their sons, who in turn, fill the South and the North
``With the radiance thy deed was the germ of. Carouse in the past!
``But the license of age has its limit; thou diest at last:
``As the lion when age dims his eyeball, the rose at her height
``So with man-so his power and his beauty for ever take flight.
``No! Again a long draught of my soul-wine! Look forth o'er the years!
``Thou hast done now with eyes for the actual; begin with the seer's!
``Is Saul dead? In the depth of the vale make his tomb-bid arise
``A grey mountain of marble heaped four-square, till, built to the skies,
``Let it mark where the great First King slumbers: whose fame would ye know?
``Up above see the rock's naked face, where the record shall go
``In great characters cut by the scribe,-Such was Saul, so he did;
``With the sages directing the work, by the populace chid,-
``For not half, they'll affirm, is comprised there! Which fault to amend,
``In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, whereon they shall spend
``(See, in tablets 'tis level before them) their praise, and record
``With the gold of the graver, Saul's story,-the statesman's great word
``Side by side with the poet's sweet comment. The river's a-wave
``With smooth paper-reeds grazing each other when prophet-winds rave:
``So the pen gives unborn generations their due and their part
``In thy being! Then, first of the mighty, thank God that thou art!''

XIV.

And behold while I sang but O Thou who didst grant me that day,
And before it not seldom hast granted thy help to essay,
Carry on and complete an adventure,-my shield and my sword
In that act where my soul was thy servant, thy word was my word,-
Still be with me, who then at the summit of human endeavour
And scaling the highest, man's thought could, gazed hopeless as ever
On the new stretch of heaven above me-till, mighty to save,
Just one lift of thy hand cleared that distance-God's throne from man's grave!
Let me tell out my tale to its ending-my voice to my heart
Which can scarce dare believe in what marvels last night I took part,
As this morning I gather the fragments, alone with my sheep,
And still fear lest the terrible glory evanish like sleep!
For I wake in the grey dewy covert, while Hebron upheaves
The dawn struggling with night on his shoulder, and Kidron retrieves
Slow the damage of yesterday's sunshine.

XV.

I say then,-my song
While I sang thus, assuring the monarch, and ever more strong
Made a proffer of good to console him-he slowly resumed
His old motions and habitudes kingly. The right-hand replumed
His black locks to their wonted composure, adjusted the swathes
Of his turban, and see-the huge sweat that his countenance bathes,
He wipes off with the robe; and he girds now his loins as of yore,
And feels slow for the armlets of price, with the clasp set before.
He is Saul, ye remember in glory,-ere error had bent
The broad brow from the daily communion; and still, though much spent
Be the life and the bearing that front you, the same, God did choose,
To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, never quite lose.
So sank he along by the tent-prop till, stayed by the pile
Of his armour and war-cloak and garments, he leaned there awhile,
And sat out my singing,-one arm round the tent-prop, to raise
His bent head, and the other hung slack-till I touched on the praise
I foresaw from all men in all time, to the man patient there;
And thus ended, the harp falling forward. Then first I was 'ware
That he sat, as I say, with my head just above his vast knees
Which were thrust out on each side around me, like oak-roots which please
To encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked up to know
If the best I could do had brought solace: he spoke not, but slow
Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it with care
Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my brow: thro' my hair
The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back my bead, with kind power-
All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a flower.
Thus held he me there with his great eyes that scrutinized mine-
And oh, all my heart how it loved him! but where was the sign?
I yearned-``Could I help thee, my father, inventing a bliss,
``I would add, to that life of the past, both the future and this;
``I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages hence,
``As this moment,-had love but the warrant, love's heart to dispense!''

XVI.

Then the truth came upon me. No harp more-no song more! outbroke-

XVII.

``I have gone the whole round of creation: I saw and I spoke:
``I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received in my brain
``And pronounced on the rest of his hand-work-returned him again
``His creation's approval or censure: I spoke as I saw:
``I report, as a man may of God's work-all's love, yet all's law.
``Now I lay down the judgeship he lent me. Each faculty tasked
``To perceive him, has gained an abyss, where a dewdrop was asked.
``Have I knowledge? confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare.
``Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite Care!
``Do I task any faculty highest, to image success?
``I but open my eyes,-and perfection, no more and no less,
``In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God
``In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod.
``And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew
``(With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too)
``The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all-complete,
``As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his feet.
``Yet with all this abounding experience, this deity known,
``I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of my own.
``There's a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to hoodwink,
``I am fain to keep still in abeyance, (I laugh as I think)
``Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst
``E'en the Giver in one gift.-Behold, I could love if I durst!
``But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake
``God's own speed in the one way of love: I abstain for love's sake.
``-What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? when doors great and small,
``Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the hundredth appal?
``In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the greatest of all?
``Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift,
``That I doubt his own love can compete with it? Here, the parts shift?
``Here, the creature surpass the Creator,-the end, what Began?
``Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man,
``And dare doubt he alone shall not help him, who yet alone can?
``Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, much less power,
``To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvellous dower
``Of the life he was gifted and filled with? to make such a soul,
``Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering the whole?
``And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears attest)
``These good things being given, to go on, and give one more, the best?
``Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the height
``This perfection,-succeed with life's day-spring, death's minute of night?
``Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul the mistake,
``Saul the failure, the ruin he seems now,-and bid him awake
``From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set
``Clear and safe in new light and new life,-a new harmony yet
``To be run, and continued, and ended-who knows?-or endure!
``The man taught enough, by life's dream, of the rest to make sure;
``By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss,
``And the next world's reward and repose, by the struggles in this.

XVIII.

``I believe it! 'Tis thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive:
``In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to believe.
``All's one gift: thou canst grant it moreover, as prompt to my prayer
``As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air.
``From thy will, stream the worlds, life and nature, thy dread Sabaoth:
``I will?-the mere atoms despise me! Why am I not loth
``To look that, even that in the face too? Why is it I dare
``Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair?
``This;-'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!
``See the King-I would help him but cannot, the wishes fall through.
``Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich,
``To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would-knowing which,
``I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me now!
``Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst thou-so wilt thou!
``So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown-
``And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down
``One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by no breath,
``Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death!
``As thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved
``Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being Beloved!
``He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most weak.
``'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for! my flesh, that I seek
``In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be
``A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,
``Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a Hand like this hand
``Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!''

XIX.

I know not too well how I found my way home in the night.
There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right,
Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware:
I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there,
As a runner beset by the populace famished for news-
Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her crews;
And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot
Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not,
For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed
All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest,
Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest.
Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth-
Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth;
In the gathered intensity brought to the grey of the hills;
In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills;
In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling still
Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill
That rose heavily, as I approached them, made stupid with awe:
E'en the serpent that slid away silent,-he felt the new law.
The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers;
The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine-bowers:
And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low,
With their obstinate, all but hushed voices-``E'en so, it is so!''
The jumping hare.

One of the three cities of Refuge.
*
A brook in Jerusalem.

~ Robert Browning, Rhyme for a Child Viewing a Naked Venus in a Painting of 'The Judgement of Paris'
,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

WORDNET

* WISDOM TROVE *

* NEWFULLDB 2.4M *