Random thinking.
“The word “revival” is used in various ways today. Literally it means a return to life. Though it is sometimes used for evangelism, it more correctly refers to those who have had their spiritual life renewed.”
From Valerie Griffiths in Not Less Than Everything
I like the word superrationality – seeing a bigger picture of reality – from this quote.
“There are times when you choose to believe something that would normally be considered absolutely irrational. It doesn’t mean that it is actually irrational. Perhaps there is superrationality; reason beyond the normal definitions of fact or data-based logic; something that only makes sense if you can see a bigger picture of reality. Maybe that is where faith fits in.”
From The Shack by William P. Young
I always wondered how we could grow to look like Jesus but still keep our individuality. Character-wise, like Jesus, but . . . see what C.S. Lewis writes at the end of “Problem of Pain.”
“What can be more a man’s own than a new name which even in eternity remains a secret between God and him? (See Rev 2:17, To him that overcomes I will give a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knows except he that receives it.)
What shall we take this secrecy to mean? Surely, that each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the Divine beauty better than any other creature can. Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently?
And this difference, so far from impairing, floods with meaning the love of all blessed creatures for one another, the communion of the saints.
If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the Church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be like an orchestra in which all the instruments played the same note.
. . . each has something to tell all the others–fresh and ever fresh news . . .
. . . For doubtless the continually successful, yet never complete, attempt by each soul to communicate its unique vision to all others – – is also among the ends for which the individual was created.”
Mr. Lewis, I couldn’t have said it better!
A great challenge for Christian missions is on the last page of Ignite, A Heart for the Nations.
By Mike Wall in Ignite, A Heart for the Nations. Published by Henderson Hills Baptist Church, September 2009.
Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering. . . . It is for people whom we care nothing about that we demand happiness on any terms: with our friends, our lovers, our children, we are exacting and would rather see them suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes. If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness.
By C.S.Lewis, in The Problem of Pain