God in Our Image?   “We are willing God should be our benefactor, but not our ruler; we are content to admire His excellency and pay Him a worship, provided He will walk by our rule. This commits a riot upon His nature: To think Him to be what we ourselves ‘would have Him, and wish Him to be’ (Ps. 50:21), we would amplify His mercy and contract His justice; we would have His power enlarged to supply our wants, and straitened when it goes about to revenge our crimes; we would have Him wise to defeat our enemies, but not to disappoint our unworthy projects; we would have Him all eye to regard our indigence, and blind not to discern our guilt; we would have Him true to His promises, regardless of His precepts, and false to His threatenings; we would new mint the nature of God according to our models, and shape a God according to our own fancies, as He made us at first according to His own image; instead of obeying Him, we would have Him obey us; instead of owning and admiring His perfections, we would have Him strip Himself of His infinite excellency, and clothe Himself with a nature agreeable to our own. This is not only to set up self as the law of God, but to make our own imaginations the model of the nature of God.”     -- Stephen Charnock (1628-1680)   Divine Providence   “To the Divine providence, it has seemed good to prepare, in the world to come for the righteous, good things, which the unrighteous shall not enjoy; and for the wicked evil things, by which the good shall not be tormented.  But as for the good things of this life, and its ills, God has willed that these should be common to both; that we might not too eagerly covet the things which wicked men are seen equally to enjoy, nor shrink with an unseemly fear from the ills which even good men often suffer.”   -- Augustine (354-430)     ---------------- Holy Places Wherever souls of men have worshiped, there Is God:  where old cathedrals climb the sky, Or shining hillsides lift their heads on high, Or silent woodland spaces challenge prayer, Or inner chambers shut the heart from care; Where broken temples of old faiths now lie Forgotten in the sun, or swallows cry At dusk about some crossroads chapel, bare Alike of bells and beauty; where saints walked Of old with speaking presences unseen, Or dreaming boys with quiet voices talked In pairs last night on some still college green; Where Moses’ Sinai flamed, or Jesus trod The upward way apart:  there, here, is God!   -- Herbert D. Gallaudet (1876-1944) Worship God Lord, if Thy word had been ‘Worship Me not, For I than thou am holier:  draw not near’: We had besieged Thy Face with prayer and tear And manifold abasement in our lot, Our crooked ground, our thorned and thistled plot; Envious of flawless Angels in their sphere, Envious of brutes, and envious of the mere Unliving and undying unbegot. But now Thou hast said, ‘Worship Me, and give Thy heart to Me, My child’; now therefore we Think twice before we stoop to worship Thee: We proffer half a heart while life is strong And strung with hope; so sweet it is to live! Wilt Thou not wait?  Yea, Thou hast waited long.   -- Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)