Category: Quote of the Day

As in every other field, there are some misfits in the ministry. There are wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matthew 7:15). A wolf is doubly dangerous wearing a sheepskin and a preacher who makes a living in the church whose faith he denies is the worst of hypocrites. At least Bob Ingersoll stayed out of the pulpit! Then there are Davids in Saul’s armor, loaded down with paraphernalia from a conventional arsenal when God meant for them to use sling and stone. There are servants upon horses and princes on foot (Ecclesiastes 10:7). Preachers who can’t preach sometimes occupy chief seats in the synagogue while truly great preachers often minister in Podunk. We shall be surprised both ways at the judgment and will need to revise Who’s Who in the Ministry. If it were a matter of merit, some now on horseback would be hitchhiking. But whether one’s travel be equestrian or pedestrian, his one responsibility is to be faithful. If time fails to recognize the truly great, eternity will reveal them.

The whole creation is on tiptoe…” (Romans 8:18, Phillips) and groans awaiting the redemption of nature. Who can listen to the robin’s “all clear” in springtime, or the wood thrush at sundown singing his vespers, without sensing the longing of creation for a better time to come? Was Goethe thinking of this when he wrote, “Often have I had the sensation as if nature in waiting sadness entreated something of me so that not to understand what she longed for cut me to the heart”? Dr. A. T. Robertson wrote “This mystical sympathy of physical nature with the work of grace is beyond the comprehension of most of us. But who can disprove it?” John Keble put it this way:

It was not then a poet’s dream
An idle vaunt of song,
Such as beneath the moon’s soft beam
On vacant fancies throng,
Which bids me see in heaven or earth,
In all things fair around,
Strong yearnings for a blest new birth
With sinless glories crowned.