Quote of the Day – From the Institutes of Christian Religion by Calvin

The result of being in God’s presence is humility and an awe-striking sense of God’s greatness:

Hence that dread and amazement with which as Scripture uniformly relates, holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God. When we see those who previously stood firm and secure so quaking with terror, that the fear of death takes hold of them, nay, they are, in a manner, swallowed up and annihilated, the inference to be drawn is that men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance, until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God.
-Calvin

El estar en la presencia de Dios resulta en una repentina humildad de nuestra parte al sentir la magnificencia de Dios. Como lo relata Calvin:

Es una manera terrible e impresionante, que nos cuentan las Escrituras, con la que se encontraron hombres santos al ser sobrecogidos por la presencia de Dios. Cuando vemos aquellos que estaban solidos en sus pies temblar de terror con un real temor de morir, o aun mas, de ser aniquilados es de lo cual inferimos que los hombres no son propiamente concocedores y convencidos de su insignificancia hasta que se han contrastado con la majestad de Dios.

One Solitary Life

Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.

He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put His foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself…

While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. While He was dying His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth – His coat. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen long centuries have come and gone, and today He is a centerpiece of the human race and leader of the column of progress.

I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.

Dr James Allan Francis