with intention

meditated today on this:: "the light shines in the darkness > but the darkness does not overcome it"
This world is messed up... thick with sin. I was never one for Calvins thoughts on Total Depravity but today they click with me.
Check this out:: "the heart is so steeped in the poison of sin, that it can breath out nothing but a loathsome stench." That stench seemed to be rather potent today at work. BACK BITTING; FOULNESS; IMPURITY; LIGHTHEARTED PERVERSION; HYPOCRISY; DECIETFULNESS; EVEN WITCHCRAFT. In the very next breath i could agree that these were seemingly good people. Calvin goes on "But here it ought to accur to us that amid this corruption of nature there is some place for God's grace; not such grace as to cleanse it, but to restrain it inwardly....but if some men occasionally make a show of good, their minds nevertheless ever remain enveloped in hypocrisy and decietful craft, and their hearts bound by inner perversity"

yet in the wesleyan tradition I can hope in the thoughts of prevenient grace. this grace comprises "all the drawings of the Father - the desires after God, which if we yield to them, increase more and more." and this grace implies "some tendency toward life; some degree of salvation; the beginning of a deliverance from a blind, unfeeling heart, quite insensible of God and things of God." Wesley's Works 6:44

this writings of Wesley on God's work in the life of the natural man encourage me on days like this. all I can see with my eyes and feel with my heart is what Calvin writes about ... what i hope in is what Wesley speaks of. And what gives me the best perspective is my own journey and that I still need a savior. I still need God. I still need repentance, grace, and more grace.