Westminster Shorter Catechism: Q. 37.

What benefits do believers receive from Christ at death?

The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory; and their bodies, being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection.

They crown your head with thorns, they smite, they scourge you;
with cruel mockings to the cross they urge you;
they give you gall to drink, they still decry you; they crucify you.

Whence come these sorrows, whence this mortal anguish?
It is my sins for which you, Lord, must languish;
yes, all the wrath, the woe that you inherit,
this I do merit.

What punishment so strange is suffered yonder!
The Shepherd dies for sheep that loved to wander; the Master pays the debt his servants owe him,
who would not know him.

The sinless Son of God must die in sadness,
the sinful child of man may live in gladness;
we forfeited our lives, yet are acquitted;
God is committed.

I’ll think upon your mercy without ceasing,
that earth’s vain joys to me no more be pleasing;
to do your will shall be my sole endeavor
henceforth forever.

And when, dear Lord, before your throne in heaven to me the crown of joy at last is given,
where sweetest hymns your saints forever raise you, I too shall praise you.

O dearest Jesus, what law have you broken
that such sharp sentence should on you be spoken? Of what great crime have you to make confession, what dark transgression?

“That which the thrust of the spear ascertained as a fact, the burial colored and characterized, and thus made public.”

Klaas Schilder

Adam’s sin was a failure to make war on the serpent.

God once rode a donkey.

"Religious liberty was a development that grew up out of the Protestant West. It is our baby. We invented it. So people shouldn’t talk as though a decided Protestant culture is the enemy of such liberty . . . it is the historic foundation for it."

https://dougwils.com/books-and-culture/books/virgin-mary-parades-in-a-free-republic.html

"A great book is like a voyage of discovery. There are stormy seas to be crossed before the traveller attains the golden strand. Too many give up while still in sight of home, but the reader who presses on to unknown realms of thought will many a time experience an exhilaration which is akin to that of an astronomer who finds a new star. Put to sea prayerfully in a volume of Owen or Goodwin and you will marvel at what you discover, even if the first ten pages threatened shipwreck."

Psalm 23:5

You prepare a table before me in the sight of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil;
My cup runs over.

Psalm 36 describes the joys of those who find shelter in God’s house:

They are amply sated by the abundance of your house,
And you give them drink from the river of your delights.
For with you is the fountain of life;
In your light we see light.

“For solitude sometimes is best society,
And short retirement urges sweet return.”
Milton
Paradise Lost

1/3 of the Bible is poetry.

“poetry is more natural than we may think. Everyone uses figurative language during the course of a typical day. We speak of

road hogs,
game changers,
cliff hangers,
and nightmare tests, even though we know that none of these is literally true.

No one has ever literally juggled a schedule or killed time, but we keep speaking in these terms anyway.” Leland Ryken

“If the child cannot understand what a parent is saying, is it rational for the parent to speak to him or her? Baptist parents as well as others speak to their infants, and do not expect the child to understand or to talk back for many months. They see nothing irrational in this. They speak to their children, that is, they employ symbols, not because they think the infant understands all that is being said or because they expect an immediate response. They speak to their children so that the child will learn to understand and talk back. So too, we baptize babies not because they can fully understand what is happening to them, nor because we expect them to undergo some kind of immediate moral transformation. We baptize them, and consistently remind them of their baptism and its implications, so that they will come to understanding and mature faith.” Leithart