Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert … Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.

The Resurrection is Only as Real as the Death is Real

“This, then, is the Christ that Jesus would have us know and accept and (O Christian!) reflect:

One who came to die.

One who, in the assessment of this age, failed – an embarrassment, a folly, a stumbling block. An offense!

One crucified.

Here in the world, the Christ and His followers hang ever on a cross. The cross is foremost, because a faithless world cannot see past it to the resurrection.

And even for the faithful the cross must always be first, because the Resurrection is only as real (both in history and in our hearts) as the death is real. …

If ever we persuade the world (or ourselves) that we have a hero in our Christ, then we have lied. Or else we are deceived, having accepted the standards of this world.”

Walter Wangerin Jr. Reliving the Passion

Sin is the Abuse of God's Intentions for Us

Every sin is the distortion of an energy breathed into us – an energy which, if not thus distorted, would have blossomed into one of those holy acts whereof “God did it” and “I did it” are both true descriptions. We poison the wine as He decants it into us; murder a melody He would play with us as the instrument. We caricature the self-portrait He would paint. Hence all sin, whatever else it is, is sacrilege.”
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

Facing the True "I"

“We imply, and often believe, that habitual vices are exceptional single acts and make the opposite mistake about our virtues – like the bad tennis player who calls his normal form his ‘bad days’ and mistakes his rare successes for his normal. I do not think it is our fault that we cannot tell the real truth about ourselves; the persistent, life-long, inner murmur of spite, jealousy, prurience, greed, and self-complacence, simply will not go into words. But the important thing is that we should not mistake our inevitably limited utterances for a full account of the worst that is inside.”

C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

True Humility is Born in the Presence of Christ

“The true way to be humble is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is.” Phillip Brooks

“He, Jesus, understands the relationship of faith: that if anyone continues in loving relationship with Him, it is His love that preserves it, not the love of the other, nor all the piety, nor all the goodness a Christian can muster. …” His heart cries out to His vulnerable Friend, “Peter, Peter, Christian! Soon, in pain, you will discover that it’s not your love, not your goodness or knowledge, or prayer, no, not all your strength that keeps us together. I do that. I alone, your Lord, do that.”

Walter Wangerin Jr., Reliving the Passion

Pharisees ... The Great Pretenders

The deadliest attitude of the Pharisees that we exhibit today is not hypocrisy but that which comes from unconsciously living a lie.

Oswald Chambers

Remember

“People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.”
Samuel "Dr." Johnson

Particular Persons

“ O Lord, catch us up … in the whirl of your holy history. We seem to be but particles in the wind; but you declare each one of us to be a particular person, spokes in the great wheel of your covenant-loving of the world.

Let us be meek in your kingdom, but not abject; humble, not self-pitiful; obedient, not obsequious; servants, not servile; childlike, not childish; yours in love and willingness, and then our smallness shall be your greatness indeed.”

Walter Wangerin Jr., Preparing for Jesus

God ... You Must Do This I Cannot!

"The moral law may exist to be transcended: but there is no transcending it for those who have not first admitted its claims upon them, and then tried with all their strength to meet that claim and fairly and squarely faced the fact of their failure. ...

All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, ‘You must do this. I cannot.’"
C.S. Lewis