"Gift?"

http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2010/12/02/dad-rod-thursdays-gift/Dad Rod Thursdays – “Gift?”

Dec.02, 2010 by WHI Admin in Dad Rod Thursdays

How do we come to faith in Christ? How is that faith sustained and grown? How are we able to have a desire for Christ and to worship and glorify Him?

They’re relatively simple questions, but the correct answer is a tough one for sinners. It is tough because we sinners get no credit whatsoever. We receive our faith and its benefits—including the maintenance of our faith and any outward signs—purely as God’s gracious gift.

But we sinners don’t like that. The old Adam in us wants credit for something in regards to his faith and works. We much prefer to think that even if God comes most of the way to help us, that we are still “keeping our end of the bargain” in some way, as though we could in any way do even one single instance of it without God’s gifts.

The truth is that we don’t get credit for any part of our faith and Christian lives; just as the bones spoken to in the valley get no credit for rising up and getting flesh back on their skeletons; just as Lazarus got no credit for rising from the dead. That’s tough for sinners to swallow. So the old Adam in us works like crazy to find something… anything for which he can get some kind of credit.

We only bring one thing to the bargaining table in the courtroom of judgment: sin. The trouble is Christ Himself makes clear that the law demands that we “be perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect”. Sin once and it’s over. You can’t be “even-more-than-perfect” to erase the sin and then go back to being plain ol’ perfect again.

Dr. Rosenbladt tackles some of this in a sermon he once gave for Reformation Day, entitled, “Gift?”. It is a simple discussion between a sinner and God. But he minces no words when it comes to revealing exactly how much desire for God there is in the sinner’s heart. That is: none.

Dr. Rosenbladt offers this caveat regarding this sermon: “Don’t let anybody tell you I don’t hold to Sola Scriptura. This is strictly a literary device, no more!” Below is an excerpt. You can read the entire sermon at New Reformation Press.

God:	I told you. I hate religion. Religion was your idea – not Mine. You have forgotten what Anselm said: “You have not yet considered the depth of your sin.”
Sinner:	But I want to show you I have. I really have. I know it is really deep. Talk to me. Teach me sanctification.
God:	I told you. You aren’t ready for sanctification yet. You just imagine that you are ready. You are arrogant and you don’t know it.
Sinner:	What do you mean? I am ready.
God:	You are not. If you were, you wouldn’t be talking like you are talking.
Sinner:	Well, what then?
God:	Just sit there. Sit there for a long while.
Sinner:	And do what?
God:	Consider the shed blood. Consider that the blood was enough. Think about the fact that it isn’t your repenting that has saved you. Think about the fact that it isn’t your faith that is saving you.
Sinner:	Can’t I just, as you said, just think about my sin and the depth of it?
God:	That is a start. But you like doing that. You like it too much.
Sinner:	This makes no sense. What are you saying?
God:	I am saying that you like atoning for yourself by feeling guilty. And you like atoning for yourself by thinking about your faith.
Sinner:	Well, what else is there?
God:	There is Jesus Christ – but you don’t consider Him. You are not used to gifts. You don’t think much about them. Gifts make you nervous and tense. You don’t know what to do, so you jump to trying to impress Me. I am not impressible.

Tags: Rod Rosenbladt

Memorize Scripture Sermon Jam

Every Moment in 2013 God Will Be Doing 10,000 Things in Your Life

http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/every-moment-in-2013-god-will-be-doing-10-000-things-in-your-life
by John Piper | January 1, 2013
“God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them.” That was one of our most widely spread tweets in 2012. So we want to say it again for 2013 and make this promise even more solid.

Not only may you see a tiny fraction of what God is doing in your life; the part you do see may make no sense to you.

• You may find yourself in prison, and God may be advancing the gospel among the guards, and making the free brothers bold. (Philippians 1:12–14)
• You may find yourself with a painful thorn, and God may be making the power of Christ more beautiful in weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:8)
• You may find yourself with a dead brother that Jesus could have healed, and God may be preparing to show his glory. (John 11)
• You may find yourself sold into slavery, accused falsely of sexual abuse, and forgotten in a prison cell, and God may be preparing you to rule a nation. (Genesis 37-50)
• You may wonder why a loved one is left in unbelief so long, and find that God is preparing a picture of his patience and a powerful missionary. (Galatians 1:15; 1 Timothy 1:12-16)
• You may live in all purity and humility and truth only to end rejected and killed, and God may be making a parable of his Son and an extension of his merciful sufferings in yours. (Isaiah 53:3; Mark 8:31; Colossians 1:24)
• You may walk through famine, be driven from your homeland, lose husband and sons, and be left desolate with one foreign daughter-in-law, and God may be making you an ancestor of a king. (Ruth 1–4)
• You may find the best counselor you’ve ever known giving foolish advice, and God may be preparing the destruction of your enemy. (2 Samuel 17:14)
• You may be a sexually pure single person and yet accused of immorality, and God may be preparing you as a virgin blessing in ways no one can dream. (Luke 1:35)
• You may not be able to sleep and look in a random book, and God may be preparing to shame your arrogant enemy and rescue a condemned people. (Esther 6:1–11)
• You may be shamed and hurt, and God may be confirming your standing as his child and purifying you for the highest inheritance. (Hebrews 12:5–11)

There are three granite foundation stones under this confidence for 2013: God’s love. God’s sovereignty. God’s wisdom.

Love: In the death of Christ on our behalf God has totally removed his wrath from us (Romans 8:3; Galatians 3:13). Now there is not only no condemnation (Romans 8:1), but now God is only merciful (Romans 8:32). Even his discipline is all mercy.

Sovereignty: There is no power in the universe that can stop him from fulfilling his totally good plans for you. “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2).

Wisdom: God’s infinite wisdom always sees a way to bring the greatest good out of the most painful and complex situations. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Romans 11:33).

Therefore, no matter what you face this year, God will be doing 10,000 things in your life that you cannot see. Trust him. Love him. And they will all be good for you.

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Recent posts from John Piper
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New Year's Resolutions

http://paultrippministries.org/new-years-resolutions

New Year's Resolutions

Well, it's that season once again. It's the fodder for blogs, newspaper articles, TV magazine shows and way too many Twitter posts. It's the time for the annual ritual of dramatic New Year's resolutions fueled by the hope of immediate and significant personal life change.

But the reality is that few smokers actually quit because of a single moment of resolve, few obese people have become slim and healthy because of one dramatic moment of commitment, few people who were deeply in debt have changed their financial lifestyle because they resolved to do so as the old year gave way to the new, and few marriages have been changed by the means of one dramatic resolution.

Is change important? Yes, it is for all of us in some way. Is commitment essential? Of course! There's a way in which all of our lives are shaped by the commitments we make. But biblical Christianity - which has the gospel of Jesus Christ at its heart - simply doesn't rest its hope in big, dramatic moments of change.

Living in the Utterly Mundane

The fact of the matter is that the transforming work of grace is more of a mundane process than it is a series of a few dramatic events. Personal heart and life change is always a process. And where does that process take place? It takes place where you and I live everyday. And where do we live? Well, we all have the same address. Our lives don't careen from big moment to big moment. No, we all live in the utterly mundane.

Most of us won't be written up in history books. Most of us only make three or four momentous decisions in our lives, and several decades after we die, the people we leave behind will struggle to remember the events of our lives. You and I live in little moments, and if God doesn't rule our little moments and doesn't work to recreate us in the middle of them, then there is no hope for us, because that's where you and I live.

The little moments of life are profoundly important precisely because they're the little moments that we live in and that form us. This is where I think "Big Drama Christianity" gets us into trouble. It can cause us to devalue the significance of the little moments of life and the "small-change" grace that meets us there. And because we devalue the little moments where we live, we don't tend to notice the sin that gets exposed there. We fail to seek the grace that is offered to us.

10,000 Little Moments

You see, the character of a life is not set in two or three dramatic moments, but in 10,000 little moments. The character that was formed in those little moments is what shapes how you respond to the big moments of life.

What leads to significant personal change?

• • 10,000 moments of personal insight and conviction
• • 10,000 moments of humble submission
• • 10,000 moments of foolishness exposed and wisdom gained
• • 10,000 moments of sin confessed and sin forsaken
• • 10,000 moments of courageous faith
• • 10,000 choice points of obedience
• • 10,000 times of forsaking the kingdom of self and running toward the kingdom of God
• • 10,000 moments where we abandon worship of the creation and give ourselves to worship of the Creator.

And what makes all of this possible? Relentless, transforming, little-moment grace. You see, Jesus is Emmanuel not just because he came to earth, but because he makes you the place where he dwells. This means he is present and active in all the mundane moments of your daily life.

His Work to Rescue and Transform

And what is he doing? In these small moments he is delivering every redemptive promise he has made to you. In these unremarkable moments, he is working to rescue you from you and transform you into his likeness. By sovereign grace he places you in daily little moments that are designed to take you beyond your character, wisdom and grace so that you will seek the help and hope that can only be found in him. In a lifelong process of change, he is undoing you and rebuilding you again - exactly what each one of us needs!

Yes, you and I need to be committed to change, but not in a way that hopes for a big event of transformation, but in a way that finds joy in and is faithful to a day-by-day, step-by-step process of insight, confession, repentance and faith. And in those little moments we commit ourselves to remember the words of Paul in Romans 8:32

"He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us, how will he not also with him freely give us all things."

So, we wake up each day committed to live in the small moments of our daily lives with open eyes and humbly expectant hearts.

Story of Jonah

Do You Believe in a Santa Christ?

http://www.ligonier.org/blog/do-you-believe-in-a-santa-christ/

FROM Nathan W. Bingham Dec 14, 2012 Category: Articles

In Dr. Sinclair Ferguson’s book, In Christ Alone, he shares the sad reality that many Christians have a Christology that is more informed by Santa Claus than Scripture. For them, the message of the incarnation has been so twisted or diluted that they have in fact created for themselves a savior who is nothing more than a Santa Christ.

As you prayerfully read Dr. Ferguson’s words, ask yourself the following question this Christmas season: “Do I believe in a Santa Christ?”

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1. A Pelagian Jesus is a Santa Christ

Santa Christ is sometimes a Pelagian Jesus. Like Santa, he simply asks us whether we have been good. More exactly, since the assumption is that we are all naturally good, Santa Christ asks us whether we have been “good enough.” So just as Christmas dinner is simply the better dinner we really deserve, Jesus becomes a kind of added bonus who makes a good life even better. He is not seen as the Savior of helpless sinners.

2. A Semi-Pelagian Jesus is a Santa Christ

Or Santa Christ may be a Semi-Pelagian Jesus — a slightly more sophisticated Jesus who, Santa-like, gives gifts to those who have already done the best they could! Thus, Jesus’ hand, like Santa’s sack, opens only when we can give an upper-percentile answer to the none-too-weighty probe, “Have you done your best this year?” The only difference from medieval theology here is that we do not use its Latin phraseology: facere quod in se est (to do what one is capable of doing on one’s own, or, in common parlance, “Heaven helps those who help themselves”).

3. A Mystical Jesus is a Santa Christ

Then again, Santa Christ may be a mystical Jesus, who, like Santa Claus, is important because of the good experiences we have when we think about him, irrespective of his historical reality. It doesn’t really matter whether the story is true or not; the important thing is the spirit of Santa Christ. For that matter, while it would spoil things to tell the children this, everyone can make up his or her own Santa Christ. As long as we have the right spirit of Santa Christ, all is well.

But Jesus is not to be identified with Santa Claus; worldly thinking — however much it employs Jesus-language — is not to be confused with biblical truth.

Who is the Biblical Christ of Christmas?

The Scriptures systematically strip away the veneer that covers the real truth of the Christmas story. Jesus did not come to add to our comforts. He did not come to help those who were already helping themselves or to fill life with more pleasant experiences. He came on a deliverance mission, to save sinners, and to do so He had to destroy the works of the Devil (Matt. 1:21; 1 John 3:8b).

• Those whose lives were bound up with the events of the first Christmas did not find His coming an easy and pleasurable experience.
• Mary and Joseph’s lives were turned upside down.
• The shepherds’ night was frighteningly interrupted, and their futures potentially radically changed.
• The magi faced all kinds of inconvenience and family separation.
• Our Lord Himself, conceived before wedlock, born probably in a cave, would spend His early days as a refugee from the bloodthirsty and vindictive Herod (Matt. 2:13-21).

There is, therefore, an element in the Gospel narratives that stresses that the coming of Jesus is a disturbing event of the deepest proportions. It had to be thus, for He did not come merely to add something extra to life, but to deal with our spiritual insolvency and the debt of our sin. He was not conceived in the womb of Mary for those who have done their best, but for those who know that their best is “like filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6)—far from good enough—and that in their flesh there dwells no good thing (Rom. 7:18). He was not sent to be the source of good experiences, but to suffer the pangs of hell in order to be our Savior.

Adapted from In Christ Alone by Sinclair Ferguson.

The Garden as the Place of the First Mountain in a Series of Mountains

http://grbcav.org/2012/08/the-garden-as-the-place-of-the-first-mountain-in-a-series-of-mountains/

In G. K. Beale’s The Temple and the Church’s Mission, he says, “The prophet Ezekiel portrays Eden on a mountain (Ezek. 28:14, 16). Israel’s temple was on Mount Zion (e.g., Exod. 15:17), and the end-time temple was to be located on a mountain (Ezek. 40:2; 43:12; Rev. 21:10).”[1]

The fact that the Garden is viewed as the place of the first mountain is very interesting in light of the Bible’s emphasis on mountains and temples. Beale notes that early Jewish commentary also saw a unique relationship between Eden, a high mountain, and Israel’s temple. He references 1 Enoch 24-25 and comments:

The early Jewish book of 1 Enoch says the tree of life would be transplanted from Eden, which was on a ‘high mountain’, to the ‘Holy Place beside the temple of the Lord’ in Jerusalem…, implying that the tree’s former location in Eden was also a sanctuary.[2]

The entry for “Mountain” in Dictionary of Biblical Imagery reads:

Almost from the beginning of the Bible, mountains are sites of transcendent spiritual experiences, encounters with God or appearances by God. Ezekiel 28:13-15 places the *Garden of Eden on a mountain. *Abraham shows his willingness to sacrifice Isaac and then encounters God on a mountain (Gen 22:1-14). God appears to Moses and speaks from the *burning bush on “Horeb the mountain of God” (Ex 3:1-2 NRSV), and he encounters Elijah on the same site (1 Kings 19:8-18). Most impressive of all is the experience of the Israelites at Mt. *Sinai (Ex 19), which *Moses ascends in a *cloud to meet God.
A similar picture emerges from the NT, where Jesus is associated with mountains. Jesus resorted to mountains to be alone (Jn 6:15), to *pray (Mt 14:23; Lk 6:12) and to teach his listeners (Mt 5:1; Mk 3:13). It was on a mountain that Jesus refuted Satan’s temptation (Mt 4:8; Lk 4:5). He was also transfigured on a mountain (Mt 17:1-8; Mk 9:2-8; Lk 9:28-36), and he ascended into heaven from the Mount of Olives (Acts 1:10-12).[3]

Jesus also designated a mountain in Galilee from which he gave the Great Commission to the eleven (Matthew 28:16). Jesus is both the tabernacle of God among men (John 1:14) and a temple (John 2:19-22) who builds the new temple (Ephesians 2:19-22 [his body, the church]). Hebrews 12:18-24 contrasts Mount Sinai and Mount Zion in the context of the transition from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant. God’s people have gone from one mountain to another. Surely these mountains are symbols of the Old Covenant and the New Covenant and have their foundation in the first mountain-temple, the Garden of Eden.

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[1] Beale, Temple and the Church’s Mission, 73.

[2] Beale, Temple and the Church’s Mission, 79.

[3] “Mountain” in Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarstiy Press, 1998), 572-74.

Holiness Beyond Words

 

  
http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/holiness-beyond-words
 by David Mathis | August 23, 2012

Holiness starts with God. Discussions about holiness get off on the wrong foot when they begin with what we don’t do, rather than with who God is.
This is essential to keep in mind as we talk about sanctification — the process of our becoming holy. Before we get too far down the road with the derivative holiness of the creature, let’s tune into the original holiness of the Creator.
The holiness of God, says R.C. Sproul in his classic book, is “one of the most important ideas that a Christian can ever grapple with. It is basic to our whole understanding of God and of Christianity” (12).

Holiness Carries Us to the Brink

In trying to define the almost indefinable, John Piper draws in an illustration from the end of C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. There Reepicheep, the gallant mouse, sails to the end of the world in his little coracle. Says Piper, “The word ‘holy’ is the little boat in which we reach the world’s end in the ocean of language.”

The possibilities of language to carry the meaning of God eventually run out and spill over the edge of the world into a vast unknown. “Holiness” carries us to the brink, and from there on, the experience of God is beyond words.
The reason I say this is that every effort to define the holiness of God ultimately winds up by saying: God is holy means God is God. . . . The very god-ness of God means that he is separate from all that is not God. There is an infinite qualitative difference between Creator and creature. God is one of a kind. Sui generis. In a class by himself. In that sense he is utterly holy. But then you have said no more than that he is God.
. . . God is the absolute reality beyond which is only more of God. When asked for his name in Exodus 3:14, he said, “I am who I am.” His being and his character are utterly undetermined by anything outside himself. He is not holy because he keeps the rules. He wrote the rules! God is not holy because he keeps the law. The law is holy because it reveals God. God is absolute. Everything else is derivative.

God’s Utterly Unique Divine Essence

Having set the table, Piper then asks, What is the holiness of God? Before venturing a definition, he bids us listen to three texts.

1 Samuel 2:2: “There is none holy like the Lord: for there is none besides you”
Isaiah 40:25: “To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One.”
Hosea 11:9: “I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst.”

He draws it together with this explanation:

In the end, God is holy in that he is God and not man. . . . He is incomparable. His holiness is his utterly unique divine essence. It determines all that he is and does and is determined by no one.
His holiness is what he is as God which no one else is or ever will be. Call it his majesty, his divinity, his greatness, his value as the pearl of great price.
In the end, language runs out. In the word “holy,” we have sailed to the world's end in the utter silence of reverence and wonder and awe. There may yet be more to know of God, but that will be beyond words.

Once we’ve stood in utter silence, captured by his god-ness, speechless with wonder and awe, filled with reverence and unmatched admiration for our Creator and Redeemer, then we’re ready to talk about holiness in the created and redeemed. And only then.
How mind-numbing is it that this holy God not only stoops to pardon our sin, but also empowers us to share in his holiness? True to the word holy, it’s a reality that carries us beyond words.
http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/holiness-beyond-words

First Things First: Making the Most of Your Morning

http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/first-things-first-making-the-most-of-your-morning

by David Mathis | August 9, 2012

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“Do first things first” is the takeaway from Laura Vanderkam’s new eBook What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast. Morning is “prime time for self-improvement,” USA Today reports in reviewing Vanderkam’s work. The article says,

Here are some of the things she says go-getters do before most people finish their first cup of coffee:
•Exercise. A dawn workout is common among CEOs and other high-powered types.
•Meditate or pray. Monks aren't the only ones who start the day on a spiritual note.
•Work, often on personal or long-term projects outside the scope of their daily duties.
•Fix a family breakfast — sometimes as a substitute for a family dinner — or play with their kids.

The counsel is to tackle the most important things first, “before the demands of the day intrude. Interruptions and emergencies tend to strike later in the day; motivation tends to wilt. And people who start the day with a win can build on the momentum all day long . . . .”
So it seems the old commonsensical proverb holds: Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

Starting on a Spiritual Note

Family, work, and exercise are all important, but perhaps it’s the mention of meditation and prayer that most distinctively catches the Christian attention. Which raises the question, Vanderkam’s work aside, Is there a Christian way to make the most of your mornings?
While some may think of morning as “prime time for self-improvement,” would the Christian approach be to treat morning as prime time for sanctification — or at least as a spiritual fueling up for the day?

Early in the Morning

The history of the church is filled with men and women who put “first things first” through going Godward to start their day. This shouldn’t be that surprising given that it’s recorded of our great Hero himself that “rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35).
And, of course, his “very early” morning resurrection (Mark 16:2) is pregnant with significance.

Getting Your Soul Happy in God

George Mueller (1805–1898) is remembered for his massive ministry to orphans in England over a century ago. But here’s something else to remember about Mueller. He writes in his autobiography about the life-changing find he made about the power of mornings. His discovery was that

the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was . . . how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished . . .

For Mueller, this meant that “the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the word of God and to meditation on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, while meditating, my heart might be brought into experimental communion with the Lord.”

Obtaining Food for the Inner Man

And Mueller gets practical. He says that, after a short prayer, asking for God’s blessing on his time of reading, “the first thing I did . . . was to begin to meditate on the word of God, searching as it were into every verse to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the word; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my soul.” This is not self-improvement, but feasting one’s soul at the banquet of God.
By meditation, Mueller means “not the simple reading of the word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.”

A Happy State of Heart

Mueller found the result of such Bible meditation soon became prayer in its varied forms — whether confession, thanksgiving, intercession, or supplication — and “that my inner man almost invariably is almost sensibly nourished and strengthened and that by breakfast time, with rare exceptions, I am in a peaceful if not a happy state of heart.”
In short,

. . . it is as plain to me as anything that the first thing the child of God has to do morning by morning is to obtain food for the inner man. As the outward man is not fit for work for any length of time, except we take food, and as this is one of the first things we do in the morning, so it should be with the inner man. . . .
How different when the soul is refreshed and made happy early in the morning, from what it is when, without spiritual preparation, the service, the trials, and the temptations of the day come upon one!

Encouragement and Challenge

Vanderkam’s book and Mueller’s experience should be no small encouragement for those who are naturally morning larks, bouncing out of bed before dawn, ready to face the challenges of the day with their best energies. If this is you, harness it. Make the most of your morning by seeking your soul’s happiness in God. When you think of “doing first things first,” consider going deep in the Scriptures, scouring them for fresh glimpses of Jesus, and daily rehearsing their central message — the gospel — that is always for the Christian “of first importance” (1 Corinthians 15:3).
For the in-betweeners who can do either late nights or early mornings (but not usually both in the same day!), you have your challenge — with good incentive — for taking intentional steps to seek the Spiritual discipline of getting to bed earlier. A practical key to getting up early, and getting right away to the day’s most important things, is getting to bed early. Which is so much tougher than it sounds. Vanderkam recognizes this is the deal-killer for many. "Going to bed early is not that easy for many people."

Jesus for Night Owls Too

For the natural night owls and late-risers — who may not feel motivated by this discussion, but discouraged, and even condemned, by the whole thing — consider this: The Jesus who got up early, while it was still dark, to pray, and rose from the dead very early in the morning, is the same Jesus who will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick (Matthew 12:20). He is not just our example, but our Substitute. He is the one who says,

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28–30)

In this Jesus is grace enough for utter freedom from condemnation, and grace enough for unexpected change and small strides forward over time. This Jesus is worth running to straightaway for soul-satisfaction — whether you’re up before the sun or rolling out of bed at the crack of afternoon.

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Prayer of St. Frances

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
    Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
    Where there is injury, pardon.
    Where there is doubt, faith.
    Where there is despair, hope.
    Where there is darkness, light.
    Where there is sadness, joy.

    O Divine Master,
    grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
    to be understood, as to understand;
    to be loved, as to love.
    For it is in giving that we receive.
    It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
    and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

    Amen.