Inspirational Quotes for the WEEKEND

By Dr Charles Leyman Kachitsa

We all desire to connect with nature in its purity. This takes various forms. It could be by being conscious of the food that we eat, making sure it\’s all vegetarian, grown naturally. In some cases it would be through how we conduct ourselves, for instance in caring about wild animals and the vegetation around their habitants. It could also be making sure that we are not causing pollution which as scientists have discovered, has long term dire consequences for all living things on this planet.

Though human beings have in our modern era more than before become sensitised about what taking care of nature entails, a lot of practices do not support that assertion. Man\’s appetite for prestigious things have meant that at times he looks away and throw all caution to the wind as he desires possession of that which gives him some resemblance of magnificence. A good example of such conducts where man has painfully looked the other way whilst causing destruction of self is in mining of minerals. Of course others may argue that everything on earth was created for man\’s use.

How do we make sure we are more connected to nature in its purity? Recently watching one popular BBC TV programs, The Dragon\’s Den, I was intrigued by the revelation from one of the Dragons, Deborah Meaden, who said every morning she walks barefooted in her home outside garden in order to be connected to nature and mother earth. A ritual she has done ever since she can not remember. Other people get their sense of connection to mother earth (nature) by time and again visiting including going for walks to nature areas such as forests. Some do that by tending wild animals in their homes or caring for them right in the animals\’ natural habitants.

The quotes this week are a final extraction from the book that narrates some of history\’s moments of time when events have shaped the world to be in a direction that looking back has meant people would say such was pivotal for subsequent happenings. I am sure the selected quotations below from this book will enlighten you to one or two life lessons, read and enjoy:

TURNING POINTS by Mark A Noll

\”The churches\’ failure in politics was matched by Protestant limitations in core areas of the faith. As indicated by the work in Germany of Johann Arndt, the labors in England of Richard Baxter and John Bunyan, and the hymn-writing of Philip Nicolai in Germany or of Thomas Ken in England (1637-1711, author of \’Doxology\’), serious attention to spiritual life was not absent in the Protestant churches of the seventeenth century. But neither was such attention dominant or particularly dynamic. The protestant state church establishments were often more effective at nurturing parishioners through the ordinary crises of the life cycle than later reformers would admit. But throughout the seventeenth and into the eighteenth centuries – with some local exceptions (like the Czech educator Johannes Comenius (1592-1670) – they were not doing as well in Christian instruction as the Jesuits or other renewed Catholic orders. They were not successful in freeing themselves from the political restraints of their own establishments. And (again by comparison with the Roman Catholics) they showed almost no interest in taking the gospel into non-Christian cultures.\”

\”Furthermore, a new class of professional scientists employed by governments and universities worked energetically and rapidly to show why their systematic research qualified them to replace amateur naturalists, many of whom had been clergymen, in providing definitive information about what the natural world was really like.\”

\”…… Reaction to the seventeenth-century wars of religion included the rise of various forms of the enlightenment, which promoted religious tolerance much more than Christian zeal. The major churches in Europe and North America were, in general, more concerned with maintaining the status quo than with expansion………\”

\”There exists a close connection and communication between sacred tradition and sacred scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. For sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine spirit. ……\”