“The sermons are like rivers, moving strongly in one direction, alive with eddies and cross-currents, now thundering in cataracts, now a calm mirror of the banks and sky; but never still, never stagnant.”
Parker, Calvin’s Preaching, p. 132
Truly Centered, In Other Words
“He admired his abilities and cheerfulness, and yet he was put off somewhat by Trevor’s moral center apparently having nothing whatever to do with any procedure manuals.”
Which Comes as a Surprise to Some
“It is that faith is never without combats; that we cannot serve God without being men of war.”
Calvin, as quoted in Parker, Calvin’s Preaching, p. 118
Standing Straight in the Corner
“He had gotten the internship because of the pull his grandmother had, and her convictions and demeanor were of a similar nature to his. If she had been a piano, she would have been a nineteenth-century upright.”
Drive It Home Like a Spear
“Calvin frequently said that it was useless for the preacher merely to declare the truths of the Bible and leave the congregation to accept them or not without more ado.”
Parker, Calvin’s Preaching, p. 114
Like They Were Legos
“When enough of a staff assembled to constitute a quorum for getting yelled at, in the presence of his secretary Susan, Parker Parkson, and two interns, he dumped out two buckets of cuss words onto the carpet, and then spent a good ten minutes kicking them around the room with his cowboy boots.”
A Visual Echo
“Earlier we spoke of the expository preacher as a chameleon, taking his color from that of the passage on which he was alighted.”
Parker, Calvin’s Preaching, p. 103
In Order to Say Hi
“The sun had barely gotten one elbow on the edge of the world that constituted the top of his garden wall.”
And So Should You
“Calvin believed in the universal relevance of Holy Scripture.”
Parker, Calvin’s Preaching, p. 89
Which Can Be Pretty Aggrieved
“Prater, filled with the kind of aggrieved righteousness that you usually see in a cat that has been hosed down by a ten-year-old boy, had decided that it was time to act.”