Bulletin 6.14.26
For Your righteousness, O God, reaches to the heavens, You who have done great things; O God, who is like You? Psalm 71:19
Reflection Before The Service
Reflection Before The Service
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now
— Bob Dylan, “My Back Pages” (from the
1964 album, Another Side of Bob Dylan)
I began to understand it under surprising circumstances. While working a few years ago on an essay about Alcoholics Anonymous, I attended some AA meetings around the country. There I met some desperate, and remarkably eloquent, people who found themselves in the grip of an addiction (Puritans would have called it a sin) from which they had sworn a thousand times to free themselves, but which they had never really escaped. One Saturday morning in a New York church basement I was listening to a crisply dressed young man whose every word and gesture gave the impression of grievously wounded pride. He talked at length about his faultlessness and his determination to avenge himself upon the many people who had traduced him. While he was speaking, the man sitting next to me – a black man of about forty, in dreadlocks and shades – leaned over and whispered, “I used to feel that way too, before I achieved low self-esteem.” This was more than a good line. For me, it was the moment, I understood in a new way the religion I had claimed to know something about. As the speaker bombarded us with phrases like “taking control of my life,” “believing in myself, ” “toughing it out, ” the man beside me took refuge in the old Calvinist doctrine that pride is the enemy of hope. What he meant by his joke about self - esteem was that no one can save himself by dint of his own efforts. He thought the speaker was still lost – lost in himself, but without knowing it.
Andrew DelBanco, The Real American Dream: A
Meditation on Hope (Harvard University Press, 1999; emph added)
Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.
— John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion(1559; opening words)
The Call To Worship
The Call To Worship
Psalm 71. 14-19
But as for me, I will hope continually,
And will praise You yet more and more.
My mouth shall tell of Your righteousness
And of Your salvation all day long;
For I do not know the sum of them.
I will come with the mighty deeds of the Lord GOD;
I will make mention of Your righteousness, Yours alone.
O God, You have taught me from my youth,
And I still declare Your wondrous deeds.
And even when I am old and gray, O God, do not forsake me,
Until I declare Your strength to this generation,
Your power to all who are to come.
For Your righteousness, O God, reaches to the heavens,
You who have done great things; O God, who is like You?
(Prayer)
Reflection Before The Service
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now
— Bob Dylan, “My Back Pages” (from the
1964 album, Another Side of Bob Dylan)
I began to understand it under surprising circumstances. While working a few years ago on an essay about Alcoholics Anonymous, I attended some AA meetings around the country. There I met some desperate, and remarkably eloquent, people who found themselves in the grip of an addiction (Puritans would have called it a sin) from which they had sworn a thousand times to free themselves, but which they had never really escaped. One Saturday morning in a New York church basement I was listening to a crisply dressed young man whose every word and gesture gave the impression of grievously wounded pride. He talked at length about his faultlessness and his determination to avenge himself upon the many people who had traduced him. While he was speaking, the man sitting next to me – a black man of about forty, in dreadlocks and shades – leaned over and whispered, “I used to feel that way too, before I achieved low self-esteem.” This was more than a good line. For me, it was the moment, I understood in a new way the religion I had claimed to know something about. As the speaker bombarded us with phrases like “taking control of my life,” “believing in myself, ” “toughing it out, ” the man beside me took refuge in the old Calvinist doctrine that pride is the enemy of hope. What he meant by his joke about self - esteem was that no one can save himself by dint of his own efforts. He thought the speaker was still lost – lost in himself, but without knowing it.
Andrew DelBanco, The Real American Dream: A
Meditation on Hope (Harvard University Press, 1999; emph added)
Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.
— John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion(1559; opening words)
The Call To Worship
Psalm 71. 14-19
But as for me, I will hope continually,
And will praise You yet more and more.
My mouth shall tell of Your righteousness
And of Your salvation all day long;
For I do not know the sum of them.
I will come with the mighty deeds of the Lord GOD;
I will make mention of Your righteousness, Yours alone.
O God, You have taught me from my youth,
And I still declare Your wondrous deeds.
And even when I am old and gray, O God, do not forsake me,
Until I declare Your strength to this generation,
Your power to all who are to come.
For Your righteousness, O God, reaches to the heavens,
You who have done great things; O God, who is like You?
(Prayer)
14/06/26