Day 49 Co-operation

The Annunciation: The Virgin Mary by Mikhail Nesterov

“…intelligent co-operation in this divine work is our bounden duty and service.”

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“Our Co-operation Indispensible. -- Our co-operation appears to be the indispensable condition of all the divine workings. We recognise this in what we call spiritual things, meaning the things that have to do more especially with our approaches to God; but the new thing to us is, that grammar, for example, may be taught in such a way as to invite and obtain the co-operation of the Divine Teacher, or in such a way as to exclude His illuminating presence from the schoolroom. We do not mean that spiritual virtues may be exhibited by the teacher, and encouraged in the child in the course of a grammar lesson; this is no doubt true, and is to be remembered; but perhaps the immediate point is that the teaching of grammar by its guiding ideas and simple principles, the true, direct, and humble teaching of grammar; without pedantry and without verbiage, is, we may venture to believe, accompanied by the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit, of whom is all knowledge.
Teaching that Invites and that Repels Divine Co-operation––The contrary is equally true. Such teaching as enwraps a child's mind in folds of many words that his thought is unable to penetrate, which gives him rules and definitions, and tables, in lieu of ideas––this is teaching which excludes and renders impossible the divine co-operation.”
 
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“They do not covet (those who come to the Light) the praise of well-doing but the far more joyful promotion of being co-workers with the Highest, through whom He condescends to work.”
 
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“But ‘God so loved the world,’ etc., and to each of us is given the privilege of doing some little of the work Christ came to do.”

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“There is but one way in which man can ever help God – that is, by letting God help him: and there is no way in which his name is more guiltily taken in vain, than by calling the abandonment of our own work, the performance of His.”

                                                    ~ Ruskin

 
“For if I am ignorant of the nature, extent and limits of what I can and must do with reference to God, I shall be equally ignorant and uncertain of the nature, extent and limits of what God can and will do in me—though God, in fact, works all in all.”
 
                                                   ~ C.S. Lewis
 
 
 
 
Examen: “Show that divine teaching waits upon our co-operation.” “What manner of teaching invites and what repels divine co-operation?”
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...intelligent co-operation in:  Charlotte M. Mason, Parents and Children, 2:90.
Our Co-operation Indispensible: Mason, 2:274.
They do not covet: Mason, Scale How Meditations, 109.
But ’God so loved: Mason, 113.
There is but: “The Ethics of the Dust, by John Ruskin,” 129.
For if I: James Stuart Bell and Anthony P. Dawson, From the Library of C. S. Lewis: Selections from Writers Who Influenced His Spiritual Journey (Random House Publishing Group, 2012), 149.
Show that divine: Parents, 2:307.

Day 49 Co-operation meditation/100 Days copyright Laurie Bestvater 2025

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