Providence

Coincidences are God’s way of remaining anonymous.

Here lies the tremendous mystery—that God should be all-powerful, yet refuse to coerce. He summons us to cooperation. We are honored in being given the opportunity to participate in his good deeds. Remember how He asked for help in performing his miracles: Fill the water pots, stretch out your hand, distribute the loaves.

The future of the human family rides on… a promise spoken and not forgotten. A man named Abraham strode off into an unpredictable future because he gambled on the loyalty of a Promise uttered by a Presence he had scarcely begun to feel. And so a new possibility for history began. Moses tried to get a better fix on the identity of this Presence: "…what is your name?" he dared to ask. And the answer came: "…I am he who will be there with you" (Exod. 3:14). …Then a man from Galilee talked to his friends about sealing this ancient promise in his blood; and a day later he spilled it… on a mound they call Golgotha. "I am he who will be there with you" was there with us — dying, then rising, and then being with us until the end of the world. …Human destiny rests on a promise freely given and reliably remembered. Whenever you and I make and keep a promise, we are as close to being like God as we can ever be. When you say to anyone that you will be there with them, you are only a millimeter beneath the angels.

Have no fear for the unsettlement or the disturbance of the Kingdom of heaven. It began in eternity, it will go on through everlasting; there is no panic in the divine personality. God is peace, God gives peace, God gives rest.

God is, and all is well.

I didn’t invent the rainy day, man. I just own the best umbrella.

God gives his gifts where he finds the vessel empty enough to receive them.

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.

The Lord in his infinite wisdom does not shield anyone from trials and sorrow.

If God be God, then no insoluble problem exists. And if God be my God, then no problem of mine is without its appropriate solution.

The miracles in fact are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.

Nothing works out according to plan, but it always works out. local motto in Chihuahua, Mexico

The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.

ALL MANKIND is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators: some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation; and his hand shall hind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another: As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this hell calls us all…. No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

What you have made me see,” answered the Lady, “is as plain as the sky, but I never saw it before. Yet it has happened every day. One goes into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one’s mind. Then, it may be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of. One joy was expected and another is given. But this I had never noticed before—that at the very moment of the finding there is in the mind a kind of thrusting back, or setting aside. The picture of the fruit you had not found is still, for a moment, before you. And if you wished—if it were possible to wish—you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other…the world is so much larger than I thought.  I thought we went along paths—but it seems there are no paths. The going itself is the path.  

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world. C.S.

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans. The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

Whence comes this idea that if what we are doing is fun, it can't be God's will? The God who made giraffes, a baby's fingernails, a puppy's tail, a crooknecked squash, the bobwhite's call, and a young girl's giggle, has a sense of humor. Make no mistake about that.

It is a vain thought to flee from the work that God appoints us, for the sake of finding a greater blessing, instead of seeking it where alone it is to be found - in loving obedience.

The most important events make no stir on their first taking place, nor indeed in their effects directly. They seem hedged about by secrecy. It is concussion, or the rushing together of air to fill a vacuum, which makes a noise. The great events to which all things consent, and for which they have prepared the way, produce no explosion, for they are gradual, and create no vacuum which requires to be suddenly filled; as a birth takes place in silence, and is whispered about the neighborhood. Corn grows in the night.

But Herod believed. At least, enough to worry. He was one prone to err on the side of caution, and so it was enough for him that the Magi had come so far, laden with such gifts. And if there was such a king, maybe the Magi could lead him there. Maybe if he feigned a desire to bring a tribute of his own, the Magi would trust him and lead him to this new king. “When you find him,” Herod told the visitors, “come back and tell me where he is. I have a little something of my own I want to give him.” (Mt 2: 8) After hearing him out, the Magi left for Bethlehem. It wasn’t long before their familiar star rose again, leading them as a shepherd leads its sheep to a house on the outskirts of town. When they found the king, it was no wonder he was nothing more than a murmur in Jerusalem. They entered the place where he lay and beheld a child in the arms of a young woman, practically still a girl. There was no crown or majesty that would attract them to him, no miracle they could see, no signs of greatness. Just a woman and her child. But there was something about that moment that only the woman, her husband, the Magi, and the child knew—something that bent the knees of those scholars to the posture of worship when they saw him… …For most of the residents of Bethlehem, Jesus’ birth went unnoticed, but heaven and earth converged in this little pocket of the Promised Land for the most important birth in history. The angels orchestrated the unlikely meeting of the poor, the displaced, and the curious to announce the coming of the Savior of the world. To some they appeared in dreams. To others they spoke from the sky. To others still, perhaps they shone like a star, leading the Magi to the place where the child was born. Through it all, the angels of the heavenly host had their eyes fixed on this village south of Jerusalem. Since the fall of man, God’s promise to redeem and restore has permeated the air and found its way into the lyrics of kings and criminals. It has been the anthem of the helpless, blind, lame, and guilt-ridden—a song of hope in the night, rolling in from some distant country with the trace of a melody known by heart. In the pasture-lands outside Bethlehem, this song rose like a celestial orchestra, crashing, singing, resounding with the music, holding nothing back. Then all at once, as with the fall of a curtain, the night fell silent, and the audience went back to their homes. Bethlehem went back to being the ordinary town it had been for as long as anyone could remember. But the world would never be the same.

Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment “as to the Lord.” It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.

The human spirit will not even begin to try and surrender self-will as long as all seem to be well with it. Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim suspects their existence; they are masked evil. Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil; every man knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt…And pain is not only immediately recognizable evil, but evil impossible to ignore. We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities; and anyone who has watched gluttons shoveling down the most exquisite foods as if they did not know what they were eating, will admit that we can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

... I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps, by God’s grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources. But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys: I am even anxious, God forgive me, to banish from my mind the only thing that supported me under the threat because it is now associated with the misery of those few days. Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is only too clear. God has had me for but forty-eight hours and then only by dint of taking everything else away from me. Let Him but sheathe that sword for a moment and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over—I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness, if not in the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed. And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless. CS Lewis- THE PROBLEM OF PAIN “Human Pain”

[God] is a [useful] hypothesis to keep order in the world so that if he didn't exist, he would have to be invented. -

Put first things first and we get second things thrown in. -CS Lewis (a letter)

Aslan: "Child, I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no-one any story but his own."

A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.

There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature's numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming.

It's wonderful for today, but what about tomorrow?

But he never disagreed with her. Maybe to her destiny was “something”; that was none of his business. But to him, destiny was “someone.”

And so it turned out that Ove became a night cleaner instead. And if this hadn’t happened, he would never have come off his shift that morning and caught sight of her. With those red shoes and the gold brooch and all her burnished brown hair. And that laughter of hers, which, for the rest of his life, would make him feel as if someone was running around barefoot on the inside of his breast. She often said that “all roads lead to something you were always predestined to do.” And for her, perhaps, it was something. But for Ove it was someone.

And the world being after all full of strange creatures beyond count, these little people seemed of very little importance. But in the days of Bilbo, and of Frodo his heir, they suddenly became, by no wish of their own, both important and renowned, and troubled the counsels of the Wise and the Great.

wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo. ‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

‘There was more than one power at work, Frodo.

My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many –yours not least.

Why was I chosen?’ ‘Such questions cannot be answered,’ said Gandalf. ‘You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess: not for power or wisdom, at any rate. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.’

‘Neither brave nor silly, I think. I could hardly help myself. I seemed to be drawn somehow.

Whether it was set there, or let fall by chance, I cannot say; but it brings hope to me.

‘Yes, fortune or fate have helped you,’ said Gandalf, ‘not to mention courage. For your heart was not touched, and only your shoulder was pierced; and that was because you resisted to the last.

‘Well, well, he is gone,’ said Gandalf. ‘We have no time to seek for him again. He must do what he will. But he may play a part yet that neither he nor Sauron have foreseen.

And both my fear and my hope proved ill-founded. For my hope was founded on a fat man in Bree; and my fear was founded on the cunning of Sauron. But fat men who sell ale have many calls to answer; and the power of Sauron is still less than fear makes it.

‘The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.’ ‘Very well, very well, Master Elrond!’

But you know well enough now that starting is too great a claim for any, and that only a small part is played in great deeds by any hero.

‘If I understand aright all that I have heard,’ he said, ‘I think that this task is appointed for you, Frodo; and that if you do not find a way, no one will.

This is the hour of the Shire-folk, when they arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and counsels of the Great. Who of all the Wise could have foreseen it? Or, if they are wise, why should they expect to know it, until the hour has struck?

You will meet many foes, some open, and some disguised; and you may find friends upon your way when you least look for it.

Even now he plays a game with peril and wins a throw.

‘Unlooked-for?’ said Gandalf. ‘I said that I would return and meet you here.’

Gandalf laughed long and merrily. ‘The trees?’ he said. ‘Nay, I see the wood as plainly as do you. But that is no deed of mine. It is a thing beyond the counsel of the wise. Better than my design, and better even than my hope the event has proved.’ ‘Then if not yours, whose is the wizardry?’ said Théoden. ‘Not Saruman’s, that is plain. Is there some mightier sage, of whom we have yet to learn?’ ‘It is not wizardry, but a power far older,’ said Gandalf: ‘a power that walked the earth, ere elf sang or hammer rang.

But the time draws swiftly to some great conclusion. Storm is coming. Hasten while you may! If you are ready, let us go. The Sun will soon rise above the shadow.’

But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually –their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on –and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same –like old Mr. Bilbo. But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we’ve fallen into?’

When shall I see a sign that it will ever be otherwise?’ ‘Turn your face from the green world, and look where all seems barren and cold!’ said Gandalf.

For it is said that, though the fruit of the Tree comes seldom to ripeness, yet the life within may then lie sleeping through many long years, and none can foretell the time in which it will awake. Remember this. For if ever a fruit ripens, it should be planted, lest the line die out of the world.

For central in the classic Christian understanding of the world is a concept of the way things are supposed to be. They ought to be as designed and intended by God,

According to Scripture, God’s original design included patterns of distinction and union and distinction-within-union that would give creation strength and beauty.

Everything in the universe is all jumbled together. So God begins to do some creative separating: he separates light from darkness, day from night, water from land, the sea creatures from the land cruisers. God orders things into place by sorting and separating them. At the same time God binds things together: he binds humans to the rest of creation as stewards and caretakers of it, to himself as bearers of his image, and to each other as perfect complements —a matched pair of male and female persons who fit together and whose fitting harmony itself images God. (Older

motive, purpose, and character typical of someone who fits snugly into God’s broad design for shalom. A spiritually hygienic person is one who combines strengths and flexibilities, disciplines and freedoms, all working together from a renewable source of vitality. This is a person who flourishes like a fine sapling rooted into the bank of a dependable stream.

We are persons of seemingly endless possibilities and of immense power, but we are also creatures utterly dependent on the good offices of our Creator. So we live on the edge of our finitude and freedom, anxious lest we miss opportunities and anxious anew when we have exploited them.

Evil wants good; in fact, evil needs good to be evil. Satan himself, as C. S. Lewis explains, is God’s Satan —a creature of God who can be really wicked only because he comes from the shop of a master and is made from his best stuff.

Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness…

In him we live and move and have our being.

Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God.

You have searched me, LORD, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.

The LORD is my shepherd; I lack nothing.

The LORD watches over you—the LORD is your shade at your right hand… The LORD will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life.

The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms…

And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.

Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

He upholds the universe by the word of his power.

The LORD does whatever pleases him, in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and all their depths.

All things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

He changes times and seasons; he deposes kings and raises up others.

I am the Alpha and the Omega… who is, and who was, and who is to come.

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

The LORD is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works.

God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind.

I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you.

The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.

If there is one single molecule in this universe running around loose, totally free of God's sovereignty, then we have no guarantee that a single promise of God will ever be fulfilled.

God's plan to send Christ is the reason we have the Bible; indeed, the reason there is a human race.

No one ever disbelieved God because he promised too little. God promises the impossible.

Actually I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect 'history' to be anything but a 'long defeat' — though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.

The Author of the book is writing us into his book, we aren't writing him into ours. We find ourselves in the book as followers of Jesus.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, The clouds ye so much dread Are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head.