I’ve been gearing up for the next year of preaching here at City Light. I’ve been reading, thinking and praying for inspiration and direction. Sometimes I go back to “older voices” for inspiration. I love the puritans and older preachers who bring us back to fundamental temptations and realities. Here’s Phillips Brooks:
“The great danger facing all of us… is not that we shall make an absolute failure of life, nor that we shall fall into outright viciousness, nor that we shall be terribly unhappy, nor that we shall feel [that] life has no meaning at all – not these things. The danger is that we may fail to perceive life’s greatest meaning, fall short of its highest good, miss its deepest and most abiding happiness, be unable to tender the most needed service, be unconscious of life ablaze with the light of the Presence of God – and be content to have it so – that is the danger: that some day we may wake up and find that always we have been busy with (husks and) trappings of life and have really missed life itself. For life without God, to one who has known the richness and joy of life with Him, is unthinkable, impossible. That is what one prays one’s friends may be spared – satisfaction with a life that falls short of the best, that has in it no tingle or thrill that comes from a friendship with the Father.”
I realized that’s the great temptation for so many of us. The greatest danger is not that we’ll make a failure out of life or lose our faith entirely or that we’ll become miserable. The greatest danger is that we’ll miss out on God’s greatest blessings. The biggest enemey of the great is the good. The greatest danger is that we’ll settle for having a good marriage, a good career and good friends. Those are good things but not the greatest thing. The danger is that those good things will keep us from the greatest thing – LIFE ABLAZE with the glory of God.
Filed under: Bible, City Light
