
Dismas, the thief
Source: A Child is Born (1942)
Dismas, the thief
A Child is Born (1942)
Context: I see that I've said something you don't like,
Something uncouth and bold and terrifying,
And yet, I'll tell you this:
It won't be till each one of us is willing,
Not you, not me, but every one of us,
To hang upon a cross for every man
Who suffers, starves and dies,
Fight his sore battles as they were our own,
And help him from the darkness and the mire,
That there will be no crosses and no tyrants,
No Herods and no slaves.
Dismas, the thief
Source: A Child is Born (1942)
The Bridge
Song lyrics, The Captain & the Kid (2006)
“If Jesus bore the cross, and died on it for me, ought I not to be willing to take it up for Him?”
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 170.
Source: Demian (1919), p. 9. Prologue
Context: Novelists when they write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude toward their subject, pretending to a total comprehension of the story, a man's life, which they can therefore recount as God Himself might, nothing standing between them and the naked truth, the entire story meaningful in every detail. I am as little able to do this as the novelist is, even though my story is more important to me than any novelist's is to him — for this is my story; it is the story of a man, not of an invented, or possible, or idealized, or otherwise absent figure, but of a unique being of flesh and blood. Yet, what a real living human being is made of seems to be less understood today than at any time before, and men — each one of whom represents a unique and valuable experiment on the part of nature — are therefore shot wholesale nowadays. If we were not something more than unique human beings, if each one of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet, story telling would lose all purpose. But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.
Few people nowadays know what man is. Many sense this ignorance and die the more easily because of it, the same way that I will die more easily once I have completed this story.
“If a man dies when you hang him, keep hanging him until he gets used to it.”
[Rommel? Gunner Who? A Confrontation in the Desert, 1989-12-01, Penguin Books Ltd, ISBN 978-0140041071]
“Let us leave tomorrow’s trouble for the One who bore our troubles on the cross.”
Encouraging The SCOAN congregation following the fulfillment of his prophecy about the death of Michael Jackson - "Prophet TB Joshua Predicted The Death Of Michael Jackson" http://www.africanews.com/site/PROPHET_TB_JOSHUA_PREDICTED_THE_DEATH_OF_MICHAEL_JACKSON/list_messages/25728 Africa News (June 29, 2009)
Source: Discipleship (1937), Discipleship and the Cross, p. 87