Sunday 4 February 2007

You too are a Mighty Sinner

If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here we have to sin. This life is not the dwelling place of righteousness but, as Peter says, we look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. It is enough that by the riches of God's glory we have come to know the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world. No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Do you think that the purchase price that was paid for the redemption of our sins by so great a Lamb is too small? Pray boldly--you too are a mighty sinner.

Letter From Luther to Melanchthon


Must remember to believe and to pray-boldly. A comment I left elsewhere reminded me of this-again-then Of course I had to go looking for it to read again-such a great quote.
Don't you just wish sometimes you had a little of Luther's, what's the word, bombast? Blurgh.

6 comments:

mem said...

Things are going better, yes.

Re: luther. His quote is a good one—I am reminded of it fairly often. (I first heard it from a Lutheran on a newsgroup I used to frequent.) It puts me in mind of a sermon I heard while I was in Florida. A guest preacher spoke on Luke 7; it remains one of my fonder memories of my time down South.

Re: strange ideas. I have plenty. The good news is that most of them occur while dreaming, and I don't remember them. Maybe I will submit the pictures for my mug shots next time I'm arrested.

Re: tablets. I am not particularly artistic in the concrete—I'm a bit too cut and dry for it, I think. I do better in the abstract, but I'm not skilled at executing it very faithfully. So I thought perhaps a tablet would allow me to fine-tune some of the things that I can create digitally. (So far, just slime. :-P) Being left-handed, my manual control is all left—but I'm right-dominant, so my "mouse hand" is my right hand. This presents problems when doing anything remotely artistic digitally, because I don't have the fine motor skill to control the mouse.

Re: back health. It's pretty important. Do you know any exercises for strengthening it? I'd recommend them. And I would NOT recommend sleeping on your stomach. That will definitely FUBAR things. My dad just waited too long to try to take care of things.

Re: liturgical churches. I actually like liturgy quite a bit. My current church is mostly P/W oriented, which bugs me (mostly for the lyrics), but the services are verse by verse. That kind of makes up for the bubble gum, even if they're not reformed enough. At least it gets the juices going.

mem said...

Ha, Monty Python. I am not much of a Pythonite (and don't know the reference), but I am quite fond of Quest for the Holy Grail. My brother got me the Extraordinarily Deluxe edition for Christmas—complete with 37 seconds of extra footage! So much great stuff in there. "Who made you king? I didn't vote for you!"

You know, you could maybe try sleeping on your back. You'll roll over during the night, if you actually manage to fall asleep, so I'd recommend tying something to your stomach to keep you upright—maybe the WMRC? (That might just keep you up all night, though; but given your sleep schedule...)

And for whatever it's worth, just consider the communion garments a side perk of joining a liturgical church. It could be more entertaining than buying them off the web from a shady underground dealer of clerical clothing.

mem said...

My goodness!

That was pretty funny, I agree. "I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK!" (Have you heard John's song, "I'm OK"? I don't think I'm going to be able to listen to it ever again without laughing now.)

"Next of kin?"


Now I'm scared to get my haircut again...

And no worries about typos. Three messages all at once! I almost feel popular. ;)

mem said...

As far as I'm concerned, life is too short to laugh like a big wuss. Your mother obviously understands.

Regarding sleep, I have never found being nocturnal very good. Of course, you are probably awake right now, laughing at me because I am at work and you are surfing the Internet looking for pictures of pokers.

mem said...

And I just watched Upperclass Twit of the Year. Hilarious. I wish we would do this for real sometimes! ;)

mem said...

Soddie hut? Without power? Says the girl from Bumble, Canada. :-P Of course I've seen The Price Is Right. That's precisely why I don't watch it. *theatrical sigh*