“Truth and timeliness together make the full preacher . . . First, seek always truth first and timeliness second, never timeliness first and truth second.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 161
Teeny Tiny
“In the cosmic scheme of things, the work that is assigned to us, and which God has given us to do, is tiny. The work that we will do by the grace of God, and to which God will respond with ‘well done, good and faithful servant,’ will be work that is teeny tiny. Finitude is one of our glories. God will not say well done to any human whose work is the size of three galaxies. He will say well done to pipsqueaks with a couple of fists full of nanoworks . . . A short space of time looking through a telescope should convince you that we actually live in Whoville.”
Ploductivity, pp. 71-72
Windows in the Wall, Not Murals on the Wall
“Those who look to the means alone, stopping there, are superstitious and blind. They think Jesus is the bread and wine. They think salvation is the sinner’s prayer. They think God dwells in houses made with human hands.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 83
We Are Not Stoics
“At the same time, although the faith can thrive in times of persecution, we are not to pray for persecution. We are instructed to pray for quiet and peaceable lives (1 Tim. 2:2). A Christian should be able to be content whether he is out in the cold, or inside by the fire (Phil. 4:12). But even so, everything else being equal, the apostle Paul knew enough to come in out of the rain. We know which way to go, which way to pray, which direction to set our sights as we work.”
Ploductivity, pp. 69-70
Which Seems Obvious . . . I Think
“Everyone in the world thinks he understands. That is what it means to think. In other to think, you have to think something. And whatever it is that you think, that is what you think.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 81
A Deadly Snare
“There is truth in the belief that much of the best thinking and preaching of the land is done in obscure parishes and by unfamous preachers . . . To set one’s heart on being popular is fatal to the preacher’s best growth. To escape from that desire one needs to know that the men who are in no sense popular favorites do much of the very best work of the ministry.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, pp. 156-157
The Math Portion is Not Difficult
“Would you rather work hard for seven unblessed days, or work hard for six blessed days? Would you rather try to live on 100% of an unblessed income or on 90% of a blessed income? Would you rather have smaller barns blessed or larger barns unblessed (Lk. 12:20)?”
Ploductivity, p. 69
Birth and Growth
“If the point of the world is for humanity to grow up into the perfect man, then the point of every part of the world is to grow up into its portion of that perfect man . . . the task of the church here on the Palouse is therefore birth and growth.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 79
Which Can Be Disconcerting
“Often the horse knows the rider better than the rider knows the horse.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 155
Under the Blessing
“Living and working in the presence of God is essential because what constitutes a truly productive person is the fact that they are laboring under the blessing of God. This is because you can have people who strive to do everything technically right, but it is somehow not blessed. There are others who look to the world like they are a walking slapdash, and yet everything lands right side up for them. They are blessed. And there are two other categories as well—there are folks who do everything wrong, and it looks like it, as we see with the sluggard in Proverbs, and then you have that irritating handful of people who do everything right, and they are blessed by God on top of everything else.”
Ploductivity, p. 68