Basil the Great (ca. 329-279), Letter 22.1[i]

“The Christian ought to regard all the things that are given him for his use, not as his to hold as his own or to lay up. Moreover, giving careful heed to all things as the Lord’s, he should not overlook any of the things that are being thrown aside and disregarded, should this be the case. No Christian should think of himself as his own master, but each should rather so think and act as though given by God to be slave to his fellow brothers and sisters. But ‘every person in his own order.’”

AP Wealth

[i] Cited in Francis Martin, ed., Acts: Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament V (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006), p.57.

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), The Everlasting Man (1925)

“Art is the signature of man.”

AP Art

John Bunyan (1628-1688), The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which is to Come (written in 1675, published in 1678)

Then it came to pass a while after, that there was a post in the town that inquired for Mr. Honest. So he came to the house where he was, and delivered to his hand these lines: Thou art commanded to be ready against this day seven-night, to present thyself before thy Lord at his Father’s house. And for a token that my message is true, "All the daughters of music shall be brought low." Eccles. 12:4. Then Mr. Honest called for his friends, and said unto them, I die, but shall make no will. As for my honesty, it shall go with me; let him that comes after be told of this. When the day that he was to be gone was come, he addressed himself to go over the river. Now the river at that time over-flowed its banks in some places; but Mr. Honest, in his lifetime, had spoken to one Good-conscience to meet him there, the which he also did, and lent him his hand, and so helped him over. The last words of Mr. Honest were, Grace reigns! So he left the world.

AP Good Conscience

Oh, how blessed our families will be if we live according to God’s design! How blessed are the children who grow up in a home devoted to God’s purposes, with mothers and fathers who fulfill their parenting role first of all by loving the Lord their God with all their heart and soul and might and then by passing that love on to their offspring.

AP Parenting

[i] Marva J. Dawn. Is It a Lost Cause?: Having the Heart of God for the Church’s Children. Michigan: Eerdmans, 1997. p 117.

“Our age is suffering because of the rift between the spiritual and the temporal. It is suffering not only because of the despiritualization of the world, but also because of the disincarnation of the church. The church, it seems to me, has separated itself from real life and thus simply abandoned the world to its practical difficulties and taken refuge in an ivory tower. And for this it bears a heavy responsibility for our present crisis. True, it still goes on preaching, but far from the public place where the practical life of men is lived.”[1]

AP All Things New

[1] Paul Tournier, The Whole Person in a Broken World (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p. 159.

Francis A. Schaeffer

“We will destroy the church if we do not have the courage in a radical day like ours to hold onto the convictions of the Word of God regardless of the cost. But also when we train children to take equally what the Bible says and what people will think, we destroy the Bible’s authority when the chips are down in the university.”

Download this week's study: AP Civic Courage.