This Sunday’s readings: Luke 1:26-38
Reflections
He looked round again and could hardly believe his eyes. There was the blue sky overhead, and grassy country spreading as far as he could see in every direction, and his new friends all round him laughing. ‘It seems, then,’ said Tirian, smiling to himself, ‘that the stable seen from within and the stable seen from without are two different places.’ ‘Yes,’ said the Lord Digory. ‘Its inside is bigger than its outside.’ ‘Yes,’ said Queen Lucy. ‘In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.’
~ C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle
He Who sits upon the sublime and heavenly Throne, now lies in a manger. And He Who cannot be touched, Who is simple, without complexity, and incorporeal, now lies subject to the hands of men. He Who has broken the bonds of sinners, is now bound by an infant’s bands.
~ Cyril of Alexandria, 378-444, Patriarch of Alexandria
A great man is always willing to be little.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
We catch sight of a new key principle — the power of the Higher, just in so far as it is truly Higher, to come down, the power of the greater to include the less. Thus solid bodies exemplify many truths of plane geometry, but plane figures no truths of solid geometry: many inorganic propositions are true of organisms but no organic propositions are true of minerals; Montaigne became kittenish with his kitten but she never talked philosophy to him. Everywhere the great enters the little — its power to do so is almost the test of its greatness.
~ C.S. Lewis, Miracles
When the Christian faith is not only felt, but thought, it has practical results which may be inconvenient.
~ T. S. Eliot, 1888-1965, British writer and social critic
The assumption that the human-divine encounter takes place primarily in the realm of ‘religious experience’… is challenged fundamentally by the heart of the Christian gospel. The earliest Christian…confession…[was] ‘Jesus is Lord’. And ‘Jesus is Lord’ was never merely a statement of personal devotion. It was an announcement of a decisive event of secular human history, that had universal, indeed cosmic implications….
~ Vinoth Ramachandra, Sri Lankan writer and human rights advocate