christian living on Duty

No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.

Make it a point to do something every day that you don’t want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

J. I. Packer and Carolyn Nystrom’s book on prayer has a subtitle that sums all this up nicely. Prayer is “Finding Our Way through Duty to Delight.” That is the journey of prayer.

Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. That is his duty.

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

"The one secret of life and development, is not to devise and plan . . . but to do every moment’s duty aright . . . and let come—not what will, for there is no such thing—but what the eternal Tho...

I say my prayers, I read a book of devotion, I prepare for, or receive, the Sacrament. But while I do these things there is, so to speak, a voice inside me that urges caution. It tells me to be carefu...

Brother Lawrence, a 16th-century Carmelite monk, spent his days scrubbing pots and mending shoes. Largely uneducated, he filled his free time writing letters and notes that, after his death, friends g...

The world might stop in ten minutes; meanwhile, we are to go on doing our duty. The great thing is to be found at one’s post as a child of God, living each day as if it were our last, but planning as ...

One of the gravest dangers to the Christian faith is its wholesale appropriation of the larger culture. When this happens, the citizens of those places cannot recognize the difference between their cu...

If the Prof is 10 min late... I was in my freshman year in college, and Statistics was the final class before Thanksgiving break. When the professor was ten minutes late, I and several others got up ...

Is God really “in” all things? And would it matter if the answer was “yes” or “no”? How? Jean-Pierre de Caussade was an 18th century French Jesuit preacher, theologian, and spiritual director who t...

Compassionate God—In Christ, you enter our condition; you experience our sorrow and our joy ... and redeem them. By Your Holy Spirit, you carry us along: in crisis and celebration, in despair and acco...

O God, the Father of the forsaken, the help of the weak, the supplier of the needy, you have distributed and proportioned your gifts to body and soul, in such sort that all may acknowledge and perform...

O God, we thank you that you have not treated us as we deserve. We thank you that, though you are Creator, Judge and King, you are also Father, so that, though we are wandering children, there is alw...

​O my all-merciful God and Lord, Jesus Christ, full of pity: Through Your great love You came down and became incarnate in order to save everyone. O Savior, I ask You to save me by Your grace! If You ...

Tell me dear tree on which my Lord, my blessed Lord did hang, How could you hold the spotless Lamb, be party with the gang? That cheerless day, that shadowy hour, my blessed Savior died, to free my so...

Lord of families, tribes, peoples, nations and all the world: it’s for freedom You’ve set us free from sin, guilt, and judgment; free to do what is right and just, what is compassionate, gracious and ...

While sexual sin, financial scandals, and toxic work environments hurt pastoral credibility, a more subtle, and probably more common danger is carelessness with the truth. Intellectual integrity matte...

In his seminal work, The Cross of Christ , British pastor and author John Stott describes the unique, upside-down kingdom instituted on the cross: One of the fascinating features of the Gospel writ...

Saul's Confident Error Last week, we considered Abram and the way that God may send us out on a journey, waiting to see his will without knowing the destination.  Today we move forward to Saul on...

I asked her what was so scary about unmerited free grace? She replied something like this: “If I was saved by my good works — then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through....

There is no mere world or matters of fact for covenant theology; there is always the wonder and duty to the concrete moment at hand, where God’s illimitable gift of life is given into our hands – to h...

Saul of Tarsus did not intend to be a pilgrim when he set off to go from Jerusalem to Damascus. Indeed, why would any pilgrim make that journey? Pilgrims went to Jerusalem, not away from it. No: Saul,...

Sometimes moments of forgiveness and friendship come from unexpected places. In 2018, the comedian Pete Davidson appeared on the “Weekend Update” segment of Saturday Night Live (SNL). Davidson made a ...

Let us, who are on the way, hasten home; for our whole life is like the journey of a single day. Our first duty is to love nothing here; but let us place our affections above, our desires above, our w...

During his 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy often closed his speeches with the story of Colonel Davenport, the Speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives. One day in 1789, the sky ...

To pursue joy is to lose it. The only way to get it is to follow steadily the path of duty, without thinking of joy, and then, like sheep, it comes most surely unsought, and we "being in the way,...

In sixteenth-century Holland, the Mennonites were outlawed and, when caught, often executed. One of them, Dirk Willens, was being chased across an icefield when his pursuer broke through and fell in. ...

If love is the soul of Christian existence, it must be at the heart of every other Christian virtue. Thus, for example, justice without love is legalism; faith without love is ideology; hope without l...