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Instead of defining success by the results we achieve, we should define it by the actions we take.
“The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the Church is famishing for want of His Presence.”
― The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine
― The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine
“Bob Kauflin Kauflin argues that Christians tend to fall into one of three categories when it comes to the relationship between music and words: (1) music supersedes the word; (2) music undermines the word; (3) music serves the word. Arguing for this third paradigm, Kauflin suggests three implications: (1) Singing can help us remember words, which means that we should use melodies that are effective, sing words that God wants us to remember, and seek to memorize songs. (2) Singing can help us engage emotionally with words, which means that we need a broader emotional range in the songs we sing, and that singing them should be an emotional event. (3) Singing can help us use words to demonstrate and express our unity, which means singing songs that unite us instead of divide us, recognizing that musical creativity in the church has functional limits and that it is ultimately the gospel, not music, that unites us in Christ.”
― The Power of Words and the Wonder of God
― The Power of Words and the Wonder of God
“this fellowship with the Lord, is not wholly in the future. As we have seen, we are invited even now to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps 34:8). We can “see” and “taste” his love, at least in part, now (2 Cor 3:18). The great eighteenth-century hymn writer William Cowper suffered from bouts of depression, but he was able to write: Sometimes a light surprises the Christian as he sings; it is the Lord who rises, with healing in his wings: When comforts are declining, He grants the soul again A season of clear shining, to cheer it after rain. In holy contemplation we sweetly then pursue The theme of God’s salvation, and find it ever new. Set free from present sorrow, we cheerfully can say, Let the unknown tomorrow bring with it what it may. It may be fitful and episodic, but fellowship with God is available now.”
― Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God
― Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God
“It’s true: if we live behind a mask we can impress but we can’t connect.”
― Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy
― Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy
“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres-
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholy new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
― Four Quartets
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres-
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholy new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
― Four Quartets
Joe’s 2025 Year in Books
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