In a mirror, dimly

I was in Borders the other day and caught sight of the range of magnets they have that contain a quotation from some source or another. One caught my eye in particular:

I was flicking though an old journal this evening and I came across entries alluding to answering basically the same question back when our pastor was running a training class called “discover your SHAPE” that helped people to understand their Spiritual gifts, their Heart, etc. In the questionaire was a question that my journal shows I was wrestling with for 3 weeks - “If you could snap your fingers and know the next thing you did wouldnt fail, what would you do?”

Three weeks.

Here I am now staring at the magnet thats on the wall and wondering why it is that God saw fit to take me back 4 or more years, back to the same thing, reminding me of the process that resulted in going through the VLI. I bought it to remind me that the process that took me through VLI isnt finished yet. God isnt finished with me yet. He wants me to use the training. There are still steps to take, a plan to be part of, things that He is doing that I can be a part of.

On my belief page I quote a latin maxim:

“Verbo dicam: Si nos servaremus IN necesariis Unitatem, IN non-necessariis Libertatem, IN UTRISQUE Charitatem, optimo certe loco essent res nostrae.”

translated, that is:

In a word, I’ll say it: if we preserve unity in essentials, liberty in non-essentials, and charity in both, our affairs will be in the best position.

In a comment to the site tigger lily asked me:

I like your closing sentence very, very much - who is it by again?

I have heard the phrase used by many people and had to do quite some digging before I could uncover the “original” form (the latin and its translation that quoted on my website). The quote is widely, but wrongly, attributed to St. Augustine.

It was, in fact, originally written in 1627 by Rupertus Meldenius (a German Lutheran scholar) anxious for the peace within the church. Not much is known about Meldenius, but the phrase appears in a tract published around 1627, and quoted by disparate groups ever since.