For many years the Christians met in homes and never possessed any special buildings for their gatherings. As religio illicita, no thought could be had of a permanent structure for gatherings. This would only facilitate matters for the Roman government in its merciless persecutions. The early Church was very conscious of its pilgrim character in a world which was at enmity with God.

It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll. This is how God does things.

Continuing a short series on authenticity: "Prayer in the Name of Christ", though it is essentially a mystical phrase, also contains a surface meaning which is very valuable to those who grasp and apply it. The more Jesus becomes our standard and inspiration in prayer, the more confident we may be of a favorable hearing.

Commemoration of Rose of Lima, Contemplative, 1617 Fallacies about Christianity must always be faced as deterrents to right living, and not merely as mistakes in the mind, for it is the effect they have on our actions which matters most. So soon as we abstract them from our lives and think of them only as faults in our mental machinery, we tend to embrace the greatest fallacy of all -- which is to think of Christianity as a way of looking at life instead of a way of changing it.

Commemoration of Caroline Chisholm, Social Reformer, 1877 I can see no intellectual objection to the statement that God's power is not limited by anything outside His own creative purpose: in that sense He is omnipotent, but it is even impossible for Him to exercise that power in certain ways without thereby ceasing to be our Father. In that sense God is not omnipotent: He is limited by His own nature, by His perfect goodness and mercy; for the omnipotence of God means nothing apart from His Fatherly love. In particular, this limitation of the power of God is to be found in the measure of freedom which, as His children, we enjoy. God shares His power with us so that, for a time at least, if we so determine, we can break His laws and frustrate His plans, but also so that we can give to Him, if we choose, the free allegiance of our hearts and minds, and become children at His Family Table, drawn together by the compulsion of His love, and not the exercise of His might.

Jesus lived His life in complete dependence upon God, as we all ought to live our lives. But such dependence does not destroy human personality. Man is never so fully and so truly personal as when he is living in complete dependence upon God. This is how personality comes into its own. This is humanity at its most personal.