Keith Francis

“Advent is designed to show that the meaning of Christmas is diminished to the vanishing point if we are not willing to take a fearless inventory of the darkness.”
― Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

“Amazing Love! Is it true that God is love to me as a Christian? And does the love of God mean all that has been said? If so, certain questions arise. Why do I ever grumble and show discontent and resentment at the circumstances in which God has placed me? Why am I ever distrustful, fearful or depressed? Why do I ever allow myself to grow cool, formal and halfhearted in the service of the God who loves me so? Why do I ever allow my loyalties to be divided, so that God has not all my heart? John wrote that “God is love” in order to make an ethical point, “Since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 Jn 4:11). Could an observer learn from the quality and degree of love that I show to others—my wife? my husband? my family? my neighbors? people at church? people at work?—anything at all about the greatness of God’s love to me? Meditate upon these things. Examine yourself.”
― J.I. Packer, Knowing God

“If you know that God the Creator and Judge of all things is truly sovereign over all of human and cosmic history, then your small concerns will begin to become part of a great pattern, and they will worry you less as your commitment to your fellow Christians means more and more. If you know that the reconciliation of all things is the grand design of the Creator of the universe, then your own individual and communal acts of faithfulness to one another become signs in this world of the world to come.”
― Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

“Wisdom will not go with comforting illusions, false sentiment, or the use of rose-colored glasses. Most of us live in a dream world, with our heads in the clouds and our feet off the ground; we never see the world, and our lives in it, as they really are.”
― J.I. Packer, Knowing God