June 5th, 2013

here’s group of the awesome graphics. i have truly been blessed by these moving, apropos works of devotion and praise.

June 1st, 2013
May 31st, 2013
Why do bad things happen to good people? That only happened once, and He volunteered
R.C. Sproul Jr.  (via bearyourcross)

(Source: inthefray611, via bearyourcross)

Holy Mary, mother/daughter of God

i was driving the other day, heading to the pharmacy to pick up my wife’s pills when i saw an awesome sticker on the back of a car with a rosary in the shape of a heart. they did a continuous line drawing of the rosary with an image of Mary, complete with halo, in the middle; again all with one continuous, flowing line. truly beautiful, even to these protestant eyes. thinking on the halo, i began to think a thought; a thought so moving, i actually laughed aloud upon thinking it, leading my son in the back of the car to ask why i was laughing, to which i simply said a thought. after getting my wife’s prescription i rushed to write it down before i forgot it. later that day, i shared the thought with my wife, who insisted i had to post it, being too good in her mind to be relegated to the piles of crumpled notes and half-finished thoughts which clutter every corner of our home. and so, here is what crept across my mind that day:
yes, Mary is holy, but only for the same reason you or i are Holy; Jesus Christ. if Christ had not died on the cross, simply being the mother of Jesus wouldn’t mean a thing. if not for His blood, Mary would be in Hell right now, just like anyone else outside of Christ; but He did, and she believed, and she is indeed Holy and glorified in Heaven. Mary is not Holy because she gave birth to Christ; Mary is Holy because Christ gave birth to her.

May 29th, 2013
For these reasons, and for many more, I for one have come to believe in going back to fundamentals. Such is the general idea of this book. I wish to deal with my most distinguished contemporaries, not personally or in a merely literary manner, but in relation to the real body of doctrine which they teach. I am not concerned with Mr. Rudyard Kipling as a vivid artist or a vigorous personality; I am concerned with him as a Heretic — that is to say, a man whose view of things has the hardihood to differ from mine. I am not concerned with Mr. Bernard Shaw as one of the most brilliant and one of the most honest men alive; I am concerned with him as a Heretic — that is to say, a man whose philosophy is quite solid, quite coherent, and quite wrong. I revert to the doctrinal methods of the thirteenth century, inspired by the general hope of getting something done.

G. K. Chesterton, Heretics

Wow! Now that’s how to throw down a gauntlet and start a book.

May 27th, 2013
The anchorite rolling on the stones in a frenzy of submission is a healthier person fundamentally than many a sober man in a silk hat who is walking down Cheapside. For many such are good only through a withering knowledge of evil. I am not at this moment claiming for the devotee anything more than this primary advantage, that though he may be making himself personally weak and miserable, he is still fixing his thoughts largely on gigantic strength and happiness, on a strength that has no limits, and a happiness that has no end. Doubtless there are other objections which can be urged without unreason against the influence of gods and visions in morality, whether in the cell or street. But this advantage the mystic morality must always have — it is always jollier. A young man may keep himself from vice by continually thinking of disease. He may keep himself from it also by continually thinking of the Virgin Mary. There may be question about which method is the more reasonable, or even about which is the more efficient. But surely there can be no question about which is the more wholesome… Mr. Foote dismissed very contemptuously any attempts to deal with the problem of strong drink by religious offices or intercessions, and said that a picture of a drunkard’s liver would be more efficacious in the matter of temperance than any prayer or praise. In that picturesque expression, it seems to me, is perfectly embodied the incurable morbidity of modern ethics. In that temple the lights are low, the crowds kneel, the solemn anthems are uplifted. But that upon the altar to which all men kneel is no longer the perfect flesh, the body and substance of the perfect man; it is still flesh, but it is diseased. It is the drunkard’s liver of the New Testament that is marred for us, which we take in remembrance of him…Mr. H.G. Wells, that exceedingly clear-sighted man, has pointed out in a recent work that this has happened in connection with economic questions. The old economists, he says, made generalizations, and they were (in Mr. Wells’s view) mostly wrong. But the new economists, he says, seem to have lost the power of making any generalizations at all. And they cover this incapacity with a general claim to be, in specific cases, regarded as “experts”, a claim “proper enough in a hairdresser or a fashionable physician, but indecent in a philosopher or a man of science.” But in spite of the refreshing rationality with which Mr. Wells has indicated this, it must also be said that he himself has fallen into the same enormous modern error. In the opening pages of that excellent book Mankind in the Making, he dismisses the ideals of art, religion, abstract morality, and the rest, and says that he is going to consider men in their chief function, the function of parenthood. He is going to discuss life as a “tissue of births.” He is not going to ask what will produce satisfactory saints or satisfactory heroes, but what will produce satisfactory fathers and mothers. The whole is set forward so sensibly that it is a few moments at least before the reader realises that it is another example of unconscious shirking. What is the good of begetting a man until we have settled what is the good of being a man? You are merely handing on to him a problem you dare not settle yourself.
It is as if a man were asked, “What is the use of a hammer?” and answered, “To make hammers”; and when asked, “And of those hammers, what is the use?” answered, “To make hammers again.” Just as such a man would be perpetually putting off the question of the ultimate use of carpentry, so Mr. Wells and all the rest of us are by these phrases successfully putting off the question of the ultimate value of the human life.

G. K. Chesterton, Heretics

Ok, really, read this guy. Chesterton is an amazing intellect, and I look forward to spending eternity conversing with men like him.

May 25th, 2013
Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, “Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good—” At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.
G. K. Chesterton, Heretics
May 24th, 2013
May 23rd, 2013
the view from here  (at “it’s a small world” Toy Shop)

the view from here (at “it’s a small world” Toy Shop)

Nariah had lots of fun at Disney for her birthday

Nariah had lots of fun at Disney for her birthday