tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663796893295918209.post8122618857211536545..comments2023-06-16T06:12:41.280-05:00Comments on Day by Day: Mental Gymnastics: and other forays into the dark and cobweb strewn recesses of my mindtheMomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01484800094220282147noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663796893295918209.post-21566745511905901432013-10-26T17:29:52.379-05:002013-10-26T17:29:52.379-05:00I see I never responded to this nice comment from ...I see I never responded to this nice comment from Sleepless in Virginia. <br /><br />I do understand what you're saying, Sleepless, and I agree. Luther, in his Large Catechism, too, in the Ten commandments section specifically, warns us against seeing some vocational callings are holier than others. <br /><br />And I guess that's not really what I was trying to address. The thing I was trying to get at is the constant difficulty of life in this world. We are saint and sinner. Both. <br /><br />I want to be good, because I am saved by the blood of Christ and thankful for that Salvation. The Cleansing Flood. <br /><br />But I'm also bad. It's scary sometimes to try to "be yourself," when you know being yourself will get you into trouble betimes. <br /><br />But yet, hiding oneself is also not a righteous option, either. <br /><br />I guess the primary thing I was bemoaning, and that which was on my mind at the time of the original post, is how to we deny ourselves and be a new creature, and yet live our lives boldly and confidently rejoicing in salvation through Christ alone, rather than through our "works" of trying to "be good." <br /><br />I guess I still don't have really god words for what I was trying to say, ... theMomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01484800094220282147noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663796893295918209.post-50416735350933970542013-10-26T17:29:38.968-05:002013-10-26T17:29:38.968-05:00I see I never responded to this nice comment from ...I see I never responded to this nice comment from Sleepless in Virginia. <br /><br />I do understand what you're saying, Sleepless, and I agree. Luther, in his Large Catechism, too, in the Ten commandments section specifically, warns us against seeing some vocational callings are holier than others. <br /><br />And I guess that's not really what I was trying to address. The thing I was trying to get at is the constant difficulty of life in this world. We are saint and sinner. Both. <br /><br />I want to be good, because I am saved by the blood of Christ and thankful for that Salvation. The Cleansing Flood. <br /><br />But I'm also bad. It's scary sometimes to try to "be yourself," when you know being yourself will get you into trouble betimes. <br /><br />But yet, hiding oneself is also not a righteous option, either. <br /><br />I guess the primary thing I was bemoaning, and that which was on my mind at the time of the original post, is how to we deny ourselves and be a new creature, and yet live our lives boldly and confidently rejoicing in salvation through Christ alone, rather than through our "works" of trying to "be good." <br /><br />I guess I still don't have really god words for what I was trying to say, ... theMomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01484800094220282147noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8663796893295918209.post-59792142122130575972012-10-06T03:04:30.306-05:002012-10-06T03:04:30.306-05:00I stumbled onto your blog and (uncharacteristical...I stumbled onto your blog and (uncharacteristically) I read this entry and (even more uncharacteristically I am adding a comment. (I average <2 posts/year on my Facebook page.)<br />Anyway, I don’t know if I “heard” you completely, but I would suggest that you look at a brief YouTube video from a friend of mine, Hugh Whelchel, who is the president of the Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics and wrote a book entitled How Then Should We Work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hjd-PlpENQ<br />You seem to be expressing the feeling that you have been standing still while the world and other friends and acquaintances have been galloping down the road to fulfillment and self-discovery. I wanted to remind you of a couple of quotes from the book The Call by Os Guinness.<br />(p. 33-35)<br /> “Into that long-established, rigidly hierarchical, and spiritually aristocratic world [the Middle Ages], Martin Luther’s The Babylonian Captivity of the Church exploded like a thunderclap in 1520. Writing as an Augustinian monk himself, Luther recommended the abolition of all orders and abstention from all vows. Why? Because the contemplative life has no warrant in the Scriptures; it reinforces hypocrisy and arrogance; and it engenders ‘conceit and a contempt of the common Christian life.’<br /> “But even these radical-sounding proposals pale beside the next paragraph Luther wrote: ‘The work of monks and priests, however holy and arduous they be, do not differ one whit in the sight of God from the works of the rustic laborer in the field or the woman going about her household tasks, but that all works are measured before God by faith alone. . . . Indeed, the menial housework of a manservant or maidservant is often more acceptable to God than all the fastings and other works of a monk or priest, because the monk or priest lacks faith.’<br /> “If all that a believer does grows out of faith and is done for the glory of God, then all dualistic distinctions are demolished. There is no higher/lower, sacred/secular, perfect/permitted, contemplative/active, or first class/second class. Calling is the premise of Christian existence itself. Calling means that everyone, everywhere, and in everything fulfills his or her (secondary) calling in response to God’s (primary) calling. For Luther, the peasant and the merchant—for us, the business person, the teacher, the factory worker, and the television anchor—can do God’s work (or fail to do it) just as much as the minister or the missionary.<br /> “For Martin Luther and subsequent reformers, the recovery of the holistic understanding of calling was dramatic. Writing about ‘The Estate of Marriage’ in 1522, Luther declared that God and the angels smile when a man changes a diaper. William Tyndale wrote that, if our desire is to please God, pouring water, washing dishes, cobbling shoes, and preaching the Word ‘is all one.’ William Perkins claimed polishing shoes was a sanctified and holy act. John Milton wrote in Paradise Lost:<br />To know<br />That which before us lies in daily life<br />Is the prime wisdom.<br /> “Bishop Thomas Bacon wrote, ‘Our Saviour Christ was a carpenter. His apostles were fishermen. St. Paul was a tentmaker.’<br /> “Perkin’s A Treatise of the Vocations or Callings of Man provides a typical Reformation summary: ‘The action of a shepherd in keeping sheep, performed as I have said in his kind, is as good a work before God as is the action of a judge in giving sentence, or of a magistrate in ruling, or a minister in preaching.’<br /> “Little wonder that the cultural implications of recovering true calling were explosive. Calling gave to everyday work a dignity and spiritual significance under God that dethroned the primacy of leisure and contemplation. Calling gave to humble people and ordinary tasks an investment of equality that shattered hierarchies and was a viral impulse toward democracy. . . . in the famous saying of the great Dutch prime minister, Abraham Kuyper: ‘There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry out, “This is mine! This belongs to me!”’“<br />Sleepless in VirginiaAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com