Sunday, April 6, 1997
Commemoration of Albrecht Dürer, artist, 1528, and Michelangelo Buonarrotti, artist, spiritual writer, 1564

We think of the enormous sacrifices of those early Christians; but what struck them was the immensity of their inheritance in Christ. Take that one phrase (surely the most daring that the mind of man ever conceived), “We are the heirs of God.” That is what they felt about it, that not God Himself could have a fuller life than theirs, and that even He would share all that He had with them! Tremendous words that stagger through their sheer audacity! And yet, here we are, whispering about the steepness of the way, the soreness of the self-denial, the heaviness of the cross, whining and puling, giving to those outside the utterly grotesque impression that religion is a gloomy kind of thing, a dim, monastic twilight where we sit and shiver miserably, out of the sunshine that God made for us, and meant us to enjoy; [that it is] all a doing that nobody would naturally choose, and refraining from what everyone would naturally take; a species of insurance money grudgingly doled out lest some worse thing come upon us.

... A. J. Gossip (1873-1954), From the Edge of the Crowd, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1924, p. 8 (see the book; see also Rom. 8:16-17; Ps. 37:28-29; Acts 20:32; Eph. 1:11-14; Tit. 3:7; Heb. 1:14; Rev. 1:5-6; more at Bearing, Church, Giving, Gloom, God, Inheritance, Religion, Sacrifice, Self-sacrifice)

 
Compilation Copyright, 1996-2024, by Robert McAnally Adams,
        Curator, Christian Quotation of the Day,
        with Robert Douglas, principal contributor
Logo image Copyright 1996 by Shay Barsabe, of “Simple GIFs”, by kind permission.
Send comments to curator@cqod.com.

Last updated: 07/05/22

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