Giving Thanks for Human Instruments of Divine Mediation

The following quote ought to cause us to be grateful for those human beings God used to mediate the knowledge of himself to us:

Though the knowledge of God is intimate and personal it does not come to us directly; it is always mediated, usually through another human being. Whether this be a mother teaching her child the Lord's Prayer, a bishop expounding a passage from the gospels, a missionary explaining the words of the Apostles' Creed, or someone telling a friend how her life has been changed by Christ, the truth that Christians confess is transmitted through other persons, through the Christian community, the church.

--Taken from The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, Robert Louis Wilken

Christian Witness in the First Person

The following quote is a reminder that, in some sense, truth does not become meaningful until it becomes personal.

It is not enough, Origen explained, to say, "Christ was crucified": one must say with Saint Paul, "I am crucified with Christ." Likewise it is not enough to say, "Christ is raised." One who knows Christ says, "We shall also live with him" (Rom. 6:10).

All Christian witness is in the first person...

--Taken from The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, Robert Louis Wilken