Friday, September 28, 2012

An excerpt from William Barclay's "The Parables of Jesus"


"If we are ever to know God we have need of humility. Two things are necessary in real religion. (i) First we need a sense of our own inadequacy. When people complained to Abraham Lincoln that he wasted time in prayer, he answered "I would be the greatest fool on earth if I thought that I could carry the burdens which are laid upon me for one day without the help of one who is greater and wiser than I." We need the realization that we cannot cope with life by ourselves (ii) We need the sense of sin. The astonishing thing is that it was the best of men who were most conscious of their own sin. Paul can write of himself that he is the foremost of sinners (1 Timothy 1: 15). Francis of Assisi can say of himself "no where is there a more wretched a more miserable, a poorer creature than I"

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