Quotes
Quotes about Gifts
Commemoration of Sundar Singh of India, Sadhu, Evangelist, Teacher, 1929 The breadth and depth of [William] Carey's missionary service [in India] is well illustrated in the principles laid down for themselves by the Serampore Brotherhood to be read three times a year in each station in their charge. Here is a summary: To set an infinite value on men's souls. To abstain from whatever deepens India's prejudice against the Gospel. To watch for every chance of doing the people good. To preach Christ crucified as the grand means of conversions. To esteem and treat Indians always as equals. To be instant in the nurture of personal religion. To cultivate the spiritual gifts of the Indian brethren, ever pressing upon them their missionary obligation, since only Indians can win India for Christ.
Whatever may be our differences of colour, culture, and class, the unity that is ours in Christ is given visible expression at every Synod. Here we all gather around the one Altar, here we all share in shaping the policy of the Church in this diocese; here we all take part in making provision for carrying on the work of the Church during the coming year. At this time, year by year, we are specially conscious of our unity in Christ, and are made aware afresh that we are members of this new race of human beings which is made up of all those of every ethnic group who have been added to Christ. We are members of that Kingdom in which all human antagonisms are transcended. Yet we shall not interpret aright this unity which is ours in Christ Jesus unless we continually remind ourselves that it has its origin in His death and resurrection. The Church springs out of the deeds of Jesus done in the flesh, and we can only fulfill our destiny in the Church as we learn that we are utterly dependent upon the whole Body of Christ. . . . Whatever gifts we possess belong to the Body, and are useful only as they are used in the common life of the Church. All this is made very plain in the New Testament Epistles, for in them we are taught that each local Christian community is a fellowship in which every member is to live in humility and in love to the brethren. Yet no local church is to live to it self. Again and again, local churches are reminded of their close relationship to one another, in life, work, worship, pain, and death. Not that such a relationship is to be regarded either as a matter of convenience or as a question of organization. On the contrary, this intimate relationship is seen as the direct outcome of the saving work of Christ. This unity with one another, and of local churches with each other, is the unity which belongs to the Body of Christ, arising from the unity of God Himself, uttered in the dying and rising again of Jesus, and now expressed in the order and structure of the Church.
Commemoration of Samuel & Henrietta Barnett, Social Reformers, 1913 & 1936 Within the life of the church, the paths of the single and the married should not be allowed to diverge. The shared life of the Christian community must become a context in which the differing gifts can be used for each other. There is much still to be learned about this. Are the homes of married Christians an added support for the single? Is the availability of the single Christian put at the disposal of his married friends, for "babysitting" duties and the like. And what is true of the mutual support of married and single needs to be true in a wider way of the care exercised by the married and the single for each other, so that nobody's home life becomes completely cut off from support and help.
We must face the recognition that what the early Christians saw in Jesus Christ, and what we must accept if we look at him rather than at our imaginations about him, was not a person characterized by universal benignity, loving God and loving man. His love of God and his love of neighbor are two distinct virtues that have no common quality but only a common source. Love of God is adoration of the only true good; it is gratitude to the bestower of all gifts; it is joy in holiness; it is "consent to Being." But the love of man is pitiful rather than adoring; it is giving and forgiving rather than grateful. It suffers for them in their viciousness and profaneness; it does not consent to accept them as they are, but calls them to repentance. The love of God is nonpossessive Eros; the love of man pure Agape; the love of God is passion; the love of man, compassion. There is duality here, but not of like-minded interest in two great values, God and man. It is rather the duality of the Son of Man and Son of God, who loves God as man should love Him, and loves man as only God can love, with powerful pity for those who are foundering.
Feast of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, Martyr, c.107 There is a false self-distrust which denies the worth of its own talent. It is not humilityâit is petty pride, withholding its simple gifts from the hands of Christ because they are not more pretentious. There are men who would endow colleges, they say, if they were millionaires. They would help in the work of Bible study if they were as gifted as Henry Drummond. They would strive to lead their associates into the Christian life if they had the gifts of Dwight L. Moody. But they are not ready to give what they have and do what they can and be as it has pleased God to make them, in His serviceâand that is their condemnation.
For little children everywhere A joyous season still we make; We bring our precious gifts to them, Even for the dear child Jesus' sake.
Technology... is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.
If you can look back on your life with contentment, you have one of man's most precious giftsâa selective memory.
Daughter of Time, the hypocrite Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands; To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdom, stars, and sky that holds them all; I, in my pleached garden watched the pomp Forgot my morning wishes, hastily Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day Turned and departed silent. I too late Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.
The day are ever divine as to the first Aryans. They are of the least pretension, and of the greatest capacity of anything that exists. They come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party; but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.
O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there, From me, whose love was of that dignity That it went hand in hand even with the vow I made to her in marriage, and to decline Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor To those of mine!
Gifts, believe me, captivate both men and Gods, Jupiter himself was won over and appeased by gifts.
In suggesting gifts: Money is appropriate, and one size fits all.
Liberality consists less in giving a great deal than in gifts well-timed.
Gifts are hooks.
He ne'er consider'd it as loth To look a gift-horse in the mouth, And very wisely would lay forth No more upon it than 'twas worth; But as he got it freely, so He spent it frank and freely too: For saints themselves will sometimes be, Of gifts that cost them nothing, free.
It is not the weight of jewel or plate, Or the fondle of silk or fur; "Tis the spirit in which the gift is rich, As the gifts of the Wise Ones were, And we are not told whose gift was gold, Or whose was the gift of myrrh.
It is said that gifts persuade even the gods.
Gifts come from above in their own peculiar forms. [Ger., Die Gaben Kommen von oben herab, in ihren eignen Gestalten.]
A woman's mind is affected by the meanest gifts. [Lat., Parvis mobilis rebus animus muliebris.]
Take gifts with a sigh: most men give to be paid.
To receive gifts is to lose freedom.
Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts. It means freedom from thinking about yourself at all.
Ah! what avail the largest gifts of Heaven, When drooping health and spirits go amiss? How tasteless then whatever can be given! Health is the vital principle of bliss, And exercise of health.
The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.
