This is a concise, thoughtful, and extremely helpful article in regards to how a historic and thoughtful Christian should approach Holy Scripture.
https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2015/08/14/top-10-rules-bible-reading/
A site that publishes some brief articles and other teaching of Father Thomas Reeves, the Priest/Pastor at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Bloomington, IL (stmattsblm.org)
This is a concise, thoughtful, and extremely helpful article in regards to how a historic and thoughtful Christian should approach Holy Scripture.
https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2015/08/14/top-10-rules-bible-reading/
Two months before his death C.S. Lewis wrote:
"[We are] a seed patiently waiting in the earth: waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener's good time, up into the real world, the real waking. I suppose that our whole present life, looked back on from there, will seem only a drowsy half-waking. We are here in the land of dreams. But cock-crow is coming."
McGrath, pg. 360
Wonderful article regarding a pandemic, death, and the hope of Christmas from a bishop in 1623:
By their fruits, you will know them Matt. 7:20
We find out what people are really like by the way they take the things that happen to them. One might think a woman very charming, yet find her fail in the day of trouble, or one might be with a man when a fire broke out at a theatre, and find that he was immediately in a panic; or one might see someone, whom one had always regarded as very commonplace, do a very beautiful act. In each case, one would say, 'Well, I never thought he or she was like that! The circumstances of life reveal character.
Our Lord willed to come into this world and bring with Him nothing, to start with the poorest and to meet life as it came, and each thing as he met it revealed His character. Hate came to him, and He revealed His love. Success came to Him, and he revealed His humility. Failure came and revealed his faith. All things came to Him, eventually death, and death itself contributed to his royalty, for it revealed that He is alive forevermore.
Life finds us out, and our first discovery may be very like the discovery of St. Peter when he went out and wept bitterly after denying his Lord. But that was not the last word about Simon Peter, nor need our failures ever be the last word about ourselves. We can learn by our mistakes, and, if life finds us out, we can find out our God in our lives, and through its challenge and His grace bring forth the fruit that shall make us known as His children.
Father Andrew - Meditations, pg. 273
James 1:
2 My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; 4 and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.
The surprising statement no doubt came out of St. James's own experience. The only way in which we can read "trials" is by taking it as being for the testing of the will, and that is surely what the apostle means. It has to be proved that we are doing right from the highest motives; that we are doing right because it is right, and not because it is profitable; that we are doing the true thing because it is true, and not because it is polotic (politically expedient).... if we do right from thoughts of punishment or reward, we may be doing right things but we are not really doing right.
-Father Andrew, Meditations, pg. 272
"There is nothing new under the sun". -Song of Solomon