“Human tribunals are very much like a spider’s web: they enfold the powerless and weak; but the mighty and the rich break through by main force.”

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.

“Cursed be he that trusteth in man, even if he be a pious man, or, perhaps, particularly if he be a pious man” (Reinhold Niebuhr)

"Happy families are all alike; unhappy families are each unhappy in their own way." Tolstoy

This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. (Genesis 5:1)

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. (Matthew 1:1)

Everyone knew GENESIS was a book written by God.

Matthew comes along and says: “the book I wrote. . . well, it’s the same kind of book as Genesis: God wrote it.”

You are going to die. The stats are pretty compelling. Death’s batting average is nearly a thousand.

“O for eternity's leisure, to look on Him, to feast upon a
sight of His face! O for the long summer day of endless ages to stand beside Him and enjoy Him! O time, O sin, be removed out of the way! O day! O fairest of days, dawn!” S. Rutherford

Almighty God, it is truly right and fitting for us to sing to You, to bless You, to praise You, to give thanks to You, and to worship You in every place of Your dominion. For You are the God who is ineffable, beyond conception, invisible, and incomprehensible—eternally existing and forever the same. You brought us from non-existence into being. When we fell away, You raised us up again. You did not cease to act on our behalf until You had lifted us to heaven and bestowed upon us Your Kingdom which is to come. For all these things we thank You—for everything we know and everything we do not know, and for all the blessings You have poured out upon us, whether seen or unseen. To You be glory forever. Amen.

“You cannot stop yourself from aging, which is to say that you cannot sub out of this extremely rough, full-contact (no pads) game. You cannot throw a diva fit backstage in this production and force the understudy to take your place. You are in every scene. You are on the field for every play. And you go into the next one and the next one and the next one carrying the baggage and the wounds and the weariness of the last one and the last one and the last one.”

“Imagine a world that is truly and intrinsically and explosively accidental. Explain time in that world, in the world with no narrative and no narrator. Why time? Why progression? Before hydrogen had its alleged and infamous cosmic hiccup, did something aphysical and philosophically flammable snafu first? Perhaps nirvanic nothingness is more unstable than we thought; after all, it would have to spontaneously generate progression and causation (as laws and/or authoritative patterns) before hyper-hydrogen could get flatulent and before that flatulence could begin seeking radically sophisticated order. (Sidenote: By nirvanic nothingness I mean nothingness—nothingness as in what your teeth see only less, nothingness as in take a glass and empty it, erase the glass, remove the table on which it sat, part the electrons in the air where it once was and step between them into the black coldness of space, and then remove the cold and the blackness, remove the ability of anything to take up space, remove space, remove causation, and while you’re at it, remove God.)”

“The world is a fallen world because it has fallen away from the awareness that God is all in all. The accumulation of this disregard for God is the original sin that blights the world. And even the religion of this fallen world cannot heal or redeem it, for it has accepted the reduction of God to an area called “sacred” (“spiritual,” “supernatural”)—as opposed to the world as “profane.” It has accepted the all-embracing secularism which attempts to steal the world away from God.”

“If you could see an ancient Israelite preparing for a feast, you’d see him pick an unblemished animal from his flock or herd, prepare flour or bread, and grab a flagon of wine. If you didn’t know better, you might suspect he’s preparing for a barbeque. Because he is.”