The Dream Factory: Nothing Trivial - December 18 Memories

My Spirit Rejoices

The Great Expectation

Nothing Trivial - December 18 Memories

December 18, 2023

Born this day in 1835 – Lyman Abbott, American Congregationalist theologian, editor, and author.

"If I could conceive it possible that this universe were governed by a wisdom no greater than I am able to comprehend, I should not be able to believe in a God of infinite wisdom; for finite wisdom cannot comprehend infinite wisdom."

"Every life is a march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice."

"The problem of sin is not to be confounded with the fact of sin. As to the fact, there is no room for question. All the great dramatists have recognized it in their portrayal of remorse, indignation, penalty, repentance, forgiveness, restoration. The great historians have recognized it, in depicting the struggle of righteousness with moral evil. Religious worship is largely founded upon it; for religious worship is largely an endeavor of the worshiper to rid himself of the present burden and the future penalty of sin. All government recognizes it; for certainly the first if not also the chief function of government is to protect the innocent from the sins of the sinful. He who denies the fact of sin denies the police and the prison, the temple and the priest, the battle-field and the martyrdom, Shakespeare and Aeschylus. The problem is not, Is there sin? but, Whence comes it? If we are to cure a disease, we must know its nature and origin. What is the nature and origin of sin, the cure of which is alike the problem of government, education, and religion,— of the courts, the school, and the church?"

"God has put His children in the world, as pupils are put in a laboratory, and has set them to work on the great problems of life — Who am I? What does this world mean? Who is over me? What are the laws of the moral life? How must I conduct myself toward my neighbor? How must he conduct himself toward me? What is our future destiny? These problems God has left us to work out for ourselves, by our own quest, under His patient, guiding, inspiring influence. The Bible is a record of man's laboratory work in the spiritual realm, a history of the dawning of the consciousness of God and of the divine life in the soul of man. It contains the story of his spiritual aspirations, his dim, half-seen visions of truth, his fragments of knowledge, his blunders, his struggles with the errors of others, and with his own prejudices."

"The Bible always anticipates something higher, larger, nobler than was ever known in the past. When Abraham goes out of the land of paganism to a land he knows not what, he is not called back to Eden. When Moses calls the children of Israel out of the land of Goshen into the Promised Land, it is to a new land that is to be opened up to them; their looking back is continually reprobated and condemned. When the exiles are called out of Babylon, it is not with any conception that the old condition of things is to be restored; it is to a new and larger glory, when " Gentiles shall come to thy light, and the nations to thy rising." When Christ comes, He never bids His disciples look back for the golden age. He tells them of a kingdom to come, not of a kingdom that has been. He tells them that greater works than He has done, His disciples shall do; the future has more for them than the past. Paul never suggests that the race is to go back to Eden, to Isaiah, to David, to Moses. His call is always toward a nobler future. Finally, the last book of the Bible is a prophetic book; the garden it portrays is not the garden of Eden. In this garden of the Apocalypse the very leaves are for the healing of the nations, and the fruit is of many kinds, yielded every month, and all freely to be plucked; and alongside this garden is the great city, the New Jerusalem, the fruit of centuries of Christian civilization."

"Vengeance does not satisfy. It sometimes gluts, but it does not satisfy. The duelist, angered by insult or wrong, challenges his enemy to a duel, runs his sword through the body of his opponent, leaves the life-blood oozing out of his arteries, wipes his sword, and walks off in the brightness of the morning. Satisfied? Never! Nemesis follows him; the vision is ever before his eyes; he has taken his vengeance, and the vengeance itself nestles in his heart and breeds future penalty."

"Nothing is trivial to God which is of consequence to us. He is not so absorbed with the affairs of state that he can give no time or thought to the minor concerns of his children's life."

“And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest.” – Psalm 55:6

It was November 21, 1783 in Paris, France. Physicist Jean Francois Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes fulfilled the dreams of generations when they became the first humans to fly.

Rising to a height of 3000 feet, they drifted for 25 minutes before landing 5 miles from where they started in a hot air balloon.

For as long as human memory has been recorded, men and women have admired the great birds of the sky and wondered what it would be like to soar above the clouds.

Helen Keller said, “One cannot consent to creep when one has an impulse to soar.”

The psalmist mused about the possibility of soaring above the cares of life, above his circumstances, and above his limitations until he came to a place of rest and fulfillment.

Soon after the Paris flight, ballooning became a popular recreation. Yet still today, it is cause for amazement and imagination. To fly away and see our little worlds below from the vantage of eternity is a longing that God has placed in our hearts. To rise above our impossibilities is a God-shaped and God-sized dream.

Where places a longing, God plants the possibility and the power within us. He has not made us to be ordinary, sedentary, or earth-bound. He has made us to soar.

https://www.history.co.uk/this-day-in-history/21-november/first-balloon-flight-over-paris

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG137377

https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/tag/jean-francois-pilatre-de-rozier/

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“Deus creator omnium.”

“God, creator of all things.”

-St.Augustine

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Tags: Lyman Abbott, on this day, significant, trivial

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Born this day in 1835 – Lyman Abbott, American Congregationalist theologian, editor, and author.

"If I could conceive it possible that this universe were governed by a wisdom no greater than I am able to comprehend, I should not be able to believe in a God of infinite wisdom; for finite wisdom cannot comprehend infinite wisdom."

"Every life is a march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice."

"The problem of sin is not to be confounded with the fact of sin. As to the fact, there is no room for question. All the great dramatists have recognized it in their portrayal of remorse, indignation, penalty, repentance, forgiveness, restoration. The great historians have recognized it, in depicting the struggle of righteousness with moral evil. Religious worship is largely founded upon it; for religious worship is largely an endeavor of the worshiper to rid himself of the present burden and the future penalty of sin. All government recognizes it; for certainly the first if not also the chief function of government is to protect the innocent from the sins of the sinful. He who denies the fact of sin denies the police and the prison, the temple and the priest, the battle-field and the martyrdom, Shakespeare and Aeschylus. The problem is not, Is there sin? but, Whence comes it? If we are to cure a disease, we must know its nature and origin. What is the nature and origin of sin, the cure of which is alike the problem of government, education, and religion,— of the courts, the school, and the church?"

"God has put His children in the world, as pupils are put in a laboratory, and has set them to work on the great problems of life — Who am I? What does this world mean? Who is over me? What are the laws of the moral life? How must I conduct myself toward my neighbor? How must he conduct himself toward me? What is our future destiny? These problems God has left us to work out for ourselves, by our own quest, under His patient, guiding, inspiring influence. The Bible is a record of man's laboratory work in the spiritual realm, a history of the dawning of the consciousness of God and of the divine life in the soul of man. It contains the story of his spiritual aspirations, his dim, half-seen visions of truth, his fragments of knowledge, his blunders, his struggles with the errors of others, and with his own prejudices."

"The Bible always anticipates something higher, larger, nobler than was ever known in the past. When Abraham goes out of the land of paganism to a land he knows not what, he is not called back to Eden. When Moses calls the children of Israel out of the land of Goshen into the Promised Land, it is to a new land that is to be opened up to them; their looking back is continually reprobated and condemned. When the exiles are called out of Babylon, it is not with any conception that the old condition of things is to be restored; it is to a new and larger glory, when " Gentiles shall come to thy light, and the nations to thy rising." When Christ comes, He never bids His disciples look back for the golden age. He tells them of a kingdom to come, not of a kingdom that has been. He tells them that greater works than He has done, His disciples shall do; the future has more for them than the past. Paul never suggests that the race is to go back to Eden, to Isaiah, to David, to Moses. His call is always toward a nobler future. Finally, the last book of the Bible is a prophetic book; the garden it portrays is not the garden of Eden. In this garden of the Apocalypse the very leaves are for the healing of the nations, and the fruit is of many kinds, yielded every month, and all freely to be plucked; and alongside this garden is the great city, the New Jerusalem, the fruit of centuries of Christian civilization."

"Vengeance does not satisfy. It sometimes gluts, but it does not satisfy. The duelist, angered by insult or wrong, challenges his enemy to a duel, runs his sword through the body of his opponent, leaves the life-blood oozing out of his arteries, wipes his sword, and walks off in the brightness of the morning. Satisfied? Never! Nemesis follows him; the vision is ever before his eyes; he has taken his vengeance, and the vengeance itself nestles in his heart and breeds future penalty."

"Nothing is trivial to God which is of consequence to us. He is not so absorbed with the affairs of state that he can give no time or thought to the minor concerns of his children's life."

“And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest.” – Psalm 55:6

/> /> />

“Deus creator omnium.”

“God, creator of all things.”

-St.Augustine