Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed at itโhow fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We arenโt adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as a proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home.
Sheldon VanaukenBetween the probable and proved there yawns A gap. Afraid to jump, we stand absurd, Then see behind us sink the ground and, worse, Our very standpoint crumbling. Desperate dawns Our only hope: to leap into the Word That opens up the shuttered universe.
Sheldon VanaukenThe adult must seem to mislead the child, and the Master the dog. They misread the signs. Their ignorance and their wishes twist everything. You are so sure you know what the promise promised! And the danger is that when what He means by โwindโ appears you will ignore it because it is not what you thought it would beโas He Himself was rejected because He was not like the Messiah the Jews had in mind.
Sheldon VanaukenReligiously, we longed for the lively life in Christ, but we did not fully see that we were equally longing for the lively life of the mind - the delights of conversation at once serious and gay, which is, whatever its subject, Christ or poetry or history, the ultimately civilized thing.
Sheldon VanaukenIt is not possible to be incidentally a Christian. The fact of Christianity must be overwhelmingly first or nothing.
Sheldon Vanauken...So Englishmen saw it. Lincoln's insincerity was regarded as proven by two things: his earlier denial of any lawful right or wish to free the slaves; and, especially, his not freeing the slaves in 'loyal' Kentucky and other United States areas or even in Confederate areas occupied by United States troops, such as New Orleans.
Sheldon Vanauken