Category: Speaking to the Soul

The Lord’s coming every year to Jerusalem for the Passover with his parents is an indication of his human humility. It is characteristic of human beings to gather to offer God the votive offerings of spiritual sacrifices, and by plentiful prayers and tears to dispose their Maker toward them. Therefore the Lord, born a human being among human beings, did what God, by divine inspiration through his angels, prescribed for human beings to do. He himself kept the law which he gave in order to show us,

As Azariah’s friend, Sherwood Eddy, watched Azariah process down the aisle at his consecration next to the aging English Metropolitan, it suggested to him “the passing of one regime and the beginning of a new and indigenous development in Indian missions.” Sadly, however, “regimes” rarely give up leadership easily, even within the church.

A name is a holy place. The name is a womb that nourishes the one who bears it with all the love and hope mingled in the giving of the name. If not dictated by some angel, names are chosen carefully for saints or statesmen, prophets or poets, family doctors or relatives or places with wonderful sounds. Names are chosen with love in gratitude or by faith in potential or for hope of intercession. Names carry meanings within them, every year of life drawing out the meaning of the life of the named. . . .

The little Mission Church of St. Stephen’s was opened on the 1st January, 1872, and from time to time converts were baptized, and the little assembly of believers increased. But the superstition of the priests and their votaries constantly made the little church the object of their persecuting hatred. Again and again its members were compelled to meet in the secrecy of the forest for prayer. The hour of martyrdom had come; some few could not stand the test, but very many gloriously held faithful to their Lord.

As the deputy sheriff unlocked the cell doors and let the men out into the hall where we were locked in, the prisoners not knowing us, eyed us with suspicion. I held out my hand to Murray, and shook hands with him as the sheriff introduced us. I told him we had come to cheer and help him, and recommend to him a Friend who was his only hope now. He smiled and said, “This is new to me, I’ve never had anyone to visit me and pray with me before, and I’ve been in many prisons; but it’s too late now.

On Christmas Day, . . the archbishop ascended the pulpit and delivered a sermon to the people. At the end of the sermon he predicted that the time of his death was at hand, and that he would soon leave his people. And when he made this prediction, tears more than words came forth, and the hearts of those listening were also very disturbed and contrite. Throughout the whole church you would have seen and heard the tears and laments of the congregation, who murmured among themselves,

There is something else here worth noticing, one touching the magi and the other touching the Child. The issue is why didn’t the magi remain with the Child? And why didn’t the Child remain in Bethlehem? Both had to escape as fugitives shortly after they were received with joy: the magi to Persia and the holy family to Egypt.

As when our ship is near shore and cities and ports pass in view before us that on the open sea vanish and leave nothing to fix the eye on, so the Evangelist here takes us with him in his flight above the created world leaving the eye to gaze upon emptiness and an unlimited expanse. . . .

The Greek word Stephen means “crowned” in Latin. In a very beautiful way he anticipated by the portent of his name what he was about to experience in reality—“abjectly stoned but crowned on high.” In Hebrew, however, his name means “your norm.” Whose norm, if not that of the subsequent martyrs, for whom, by being the first to suffer, he became the model of dying for Christ? . . .

Bethlehem has opened Eden:

Come, let us see!

We have found joy hidden!

Come, let us take possession of the paradise within the cave.

There the unwatered stem has appeared,