Some interesting things have popped out at me during my morning devotional this week:
1) I am so glad that I took Mother’s Interpreter’s Bible when we were cleaning out the house last March, because it includes her marginalia; it’s valuable to me to see what was meaningful, or prompted insight, to her. Right now I’m going through Luke. Beside Luke 8:47, “When the woman saw that she could not deceive him, she came trembling, and fell down and worshipped him; and she said i the presence of all the people for what purpose she had touched him, and how she was healed immediately,” Mother pencilled “She spoke the reason she needed Jesus.” I think it must have been the idea of a public declaration of one’s individual need for Christ that moved her to make that note.
1a) On a scrap of lined paper on the page before this she wrote in pencil “Luke 8:45-56 AFFECTION.”
2) Those were yesterday. Today, somewhat preoccupied with thoughts of world leaders, I came to Luke 9:25: “For how can a man be benefited, if he gain the whole world, but lose his own soul, or even weakens it?” How indeed!
3) And immediately afterward, from my beloved Gracian’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom, #106, something in the same vein: “Don’t flaunt your good fortune. It is more offensive to take excessive pride in your high office than in yourself. Don’t play the “great man” - it is odious - and don’t be proud of being envied. The more strenuously you seek esteem from others, the less of it you will have. It depends on respect. You can’t simply grab it, you have to deserve it and wait for it. Important occupations call for a certain gravity and decorum. Keep only what the occupation requires, what you need to fulfill your obligations. Don’t squeeze it dry; help it along . . . even a king ought to be venerated more because of his person than because of his pomp and circumstance.”