I've had this on the wall of my school room for a bunch of years.
It is from John Wesley's sermon on the General Deliverance in which he makes a sensible exegetical case for the redemption and restoration of all of creation, including all those pets we love. It's been a long time since I've read the sermon so don't sue me if it turns out he doesn't actually use the word 'pets'.
I've always loved this line, even stripped of its context (I know, I'm sorry, don't ever do that) because it applies to so many things. The human heart continually strays towards prejudice, personal preference, judgementalism, legalism, intolerance, self aggrandizement, spiritual blindness, and wickedness. Then, to crown all these, the human heart takes the very word of God, that holy and life giving scripture, and mashes it around and makes it more complicated than it really is, and pretends not to understand it, and finally decides that it is irrelevant and ultimatly evil.
I can imagine a frustrated John Wesley, peering down from some wonderful pulpit, summing up for himself the foolish blindness of all the people in his pews, and then thundering this line. Let the Word of God take place! Let it do it's work. Don't hobble it and shut it up and explain it away. Of the two, you and Scripture, you are the vulgar one.
The children haven't noticed or internalized this great thought except to stand on stools and try to draw on the tiny plain restful place of white paper. They draw on everything they can with whatever implement they can grasp. I am in constant frustration. “I can't,” I say to Matt every day, “have anything nice.”
So, after all these years, I rewrote it on what I had laying about, which is long yellow lined school paper.
And I tacked it back up on the wall.
Speaking of home done. And terrible photography. I'm so jealous, to admit of blink prejudicial wickedness, of people who take beautiful pictures. I feel like my school room could photograph nicely, but I don't have the will or ability to do it. Probably, it go ahead and descend further into the mire, the people who are good at photography are terrible at everything else…I'm just kidding. They're all wonderful, I'm sure.
And now, out to shovel the driveway…just kidding about that too. Just going to stay here in the warm and try not to curse the day of my birth.
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