Rooted Along the River of Life.

1 John 2:1-2 “My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.”

Well, our cruise of the New England states and Canada turned into a race to dodge hurricane Earl. As we cruise back to New York City, I’ve come to the end of this great book on Blasé Pascal’s Pensees. Though written in the mid-1600’s, the Christian principles are timelessly valuable for any generation to read and apply to their day, because they are always true. The great Christian writers of the past wrote to us, to help us in our understanding and walk with the Lord. So I close the book with these finals thoughts from the pen of Pascal. “The God of the Christians is a God who makes the soul aware that he is its only good. In Him alone it can find peace. Only in loving Him can it find joy. He is a God who at the same time fills the soul with loathing for those things that hold it back and thus prevent it from loving God with all its might. Self-love and lust, which keep it back, are intolerable. So God makes the soul aware of this underlying self-love which destroys it. Seeing nobody on which it depends, believes it is dependent only on itself and so makes it the focus of its own existence. God alone can cure it. Without such a counterpoise, this dignity would make him horribly vain. How little pride that Christian feels in being at one in Union with God! The Incarnation reveals to man the enormity of his misery through the greatness of the remedy it requires.”

1 Corinthians 15:1-4 “Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures."

“How I marvel at this original and inspiring faith, wholly divine in its authority, its continuance, its antiquity, its morality, its conduct, its doctrine, and in its effects. So I stretch out my hands to my Savior, who is having been foretold for some four thousand years, came to earth to die and suffer for me in the time and circumstances foretold. By his grace I await even death in tranquility, in the hope of being eternally united to him. Meanwhile I live full of joy, with the blessings he has pleased to bestow upon me or in the afflictions he will send for my own good and which he reaches me how to endure by faith’s example.”

Romans 1:16-17 “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."

“Happy are those who are beside those rivers, neither inundated nor swept away, but immovably rooted beside these streams, not standing but sitting in a humble and safe place. They will not arrogantly exalt themselves above the light, but resting in peace, stretch out their hands to Him who will exalt them to stand upright and resolute in the porches of the kingdom of Heaven.”

In Christ, Brian