Thursday, March 28, 2013

Water and Wine


“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap 

grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring 

repentance, baptism without church discipline,

 Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace

 without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without 

Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” 


 Dietrich Bonhoeffer - The Cost of Discipleship

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Why it's a good thing to read history...

From a text that I often refer to when I either watch too much news or read media about the current state of government...

“Cato V, November 22, 1787

In my last number I endeavored to prove that the language of the article relative to the establishment of the executive of this new government was vague and inexplicit, that the great powers of the President, connected with his duration in office would lead to oppression and ruin. That he would be governed by favorites and flatterers, or that a dangerous council would be collected from the great officers of state;—that the ten miles square, if the remarks of one of the wisest men, drawn from the experience of mankind, may be credited, would be the asylum of the base, idle, avaricious and ambitious, and that the court would possess a language and manners different from yours; that a vice president is as unnecessary, as he is dangerous in his influence--that the president cannot represent you because he is not of your own immediate choice, that if you adopt this government, you will incline to an arbitrary and odious aristocracy or monarchy the that the president possessed of the power, given him by this frame of government differs but very immaterially from the establishment of monarchy in Great-Britain, and I warned…”

 -The Anti-Federalist Papers, Patrick Henry and George Clinton

George Clinton
George Clinton

There IS a reason why these authors have a significant "marbled" position in our nation's capitol building.