Ancient Anglican
A Modern Perspective on Early Christian Thought.
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Think through the issues that are present in any company that you keep. It is human nature to want to be liked by others and therefore to adopt their outlook on fundamental matters.
But is in the Dark Night of the Soul where transformation ultimately takes place. Think back to those dark places in your life when God appeared to be absent and see how you are now different on the other side.
Reflect on how war, suffering, or any other evil in human society can often be a means of turning people towards God. Also, reflect on how the modern world’s concealment of death and suffering can prevent us from turning fully towards God.
Another means of distracting the Patient from true prayer, Screwtape writes, is to have the Patient pray to something and not the Enemy.
In the letters, Screwtape shares with Wormwood his knowledge, experience, and skill derived from his many years of tempting humans to abandon “the Enemy” (i.e. God).
Is the foreign policy the result of our need to avenge American honor or American deaths, as Jonah advocates, or is the policy rooted in the mercy and loving-kindness of God?
I would like to think that Jonah finally meets his God in his silence.
In his wish for death, however, Jonah is simply stating the obvious that a refusal to change is a choice for death.
It is the king of Nineveh and his subject who fulfill the perfect fast of repentance as described in Isaiah 58:6.
The sign of Jonah goes beyond simply the understanding that Jesus, like Jonah, will spend three days in the belly of Sheol. The Sign of Jonah is only complete when the fish vomits the incorruptible Jonah out.
As we read through Jonah’s prayer, it is a prayer that we can make our own. It is a prayer of deliverance and thanksgiving said in the space between the chaos ending and restoration being obtained.
Jonah flees from God and God’s instruction into a tempestuous chaos. Like Jonah, the natural and consequent result in fleeing from God is that life becomes chaotic, and we are tossed like a ship caught in a tempest upon the sea.