Ladder To Heaven Quotes

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If God built me a ladder to heaven, I would climb it and elbow drop the world
Mick Foley
You grieve Not that heaven does not exist but That it exists without us
W.S. Merwin (The Second Four Books of Poems: The Moving Target / The Lice / The Carrier of Ladders / Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment)
Whether our days trip along like the angels mounting on Jacob's ladder to heaven or grind along like the wagons that Joseph sent for Jacob, they are in each case ordered by God's mercy.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Grace: God's Unmerited Favor)
Christ's death is the Christian's life. Christ's cross is the Christian's title to heaven. Christ "lifted up" and put to shame on Calvary is the ladder by which Christians "enter into the holiest," and are at length landed in glory.
J.C. Ryle (John (Expository Thoughts on the Gospels): Vol. 1)
Individually the disciple and friend of Jesus who has learned to work shoulder to shoulder with his or her Lord stands in this world as a point of contact between heaven and earth, a kind of Jacob’s ladder by which the angels of God may ascend from and descend into human life. Thus the disciple stands as an envoy or a receiver by which the kingdom of God is conveyed into every quarter of human affairs.
Dallas Willard (Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God)
Apart from the cross there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven.
St. Rose of Lima
And if you decide to kill somebody, make it anybody and not somebody: some men are made of more special, precious parts: do not kill if you will a president or a King or a man behind a desk - these have heavenly longitudes enlightened attitudes. If you decide, take us who stand and smoke and glower; we are rusty with sadness and feverish with climbing broken ladders
Charles Bukowski
...I am for going on, and venturing my eternal state with Christ, whether I have comfort here or no; if God doth not come in, thought I, I will leap off the ladder even blindfold into eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come hell; Lord Jesus, if thou wilt catch me, do; if not, I will venture for thy name.
John Bunyan (Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners)
The text says that when the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, _he_ loved her. God was saying, 'I am the real bridegroom. I am the husband of the husbandless. I am the father of the fatherless.' This is the God who saves by grace. The gods of moralistic religions favor the successful and the overachievers. THe are the ones who climb the moral ladder up to heaven. But the God of the Bible is the one who comes down into this world to accomplish a salvation and give us a grace we could never attain ourselves.
Timothy J. Keller (Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters)
Plot these days is anti-intellectual and verboten, the mark of the Philistine, the huckster with a pen. There mustn't be too much story and that should be fog-bound and shrouded in heavy symbolism, including the phallic, like a sort of covoluted charade. Symbolism now carries the day, it's the one true ladder of literary heaven.
Robert Traver (Anatomy of a Murder)
xxx all souls are equal in heaven. Only in heaven, I thought. And this is not heaven. This is a place for snakes and ladders, and though I was once high up on a ladder propped up against the Tree of Life, now I've slid down a snake. How gratifying for the others to witness my fall!
Margaret Atwood (The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale, #2))
My simple explanation of why we human beings, the most advanced species on earth, cannot find happiness, is this: as we evolve up the ladder of being, we find three things: the first, that the tension between the range of opposites in our lives and society widens dramatically and often painfully as we evolve; the second, that the better informed and more intelligent we are, the more humble we have to become about our ability to live meaningful lives and to change anything, even ourselves; and consequently, thirdly, that the cost of gaining the simplicity the other side of complexity can rise very steeply if we do not align ourselves and our lives well.
Dr Robin Lincoln Wood
Jacob’s Ladder represents a bridge between Jacob’s secular mindset to make it in this world and the reality of Heavenly things.
R.C. Sproul (The Holiness of God)
If we talk about sexual purity apart from the gospel, we will create chaste Pharisees instead of imperfect disciples. Obedience is a response to grace, not a ladder to heaven.
Rachel Joy Welcher (Talking Back to Purity Culture: Rediscovering Faithful Christian Sexuality)
A Quote from Monty's journal in God Must Be Weeping, "I, too, wished to climb the ladder of life and reach the stars spangling by the gates of the Milky Way, where the wondrous mysteries of Heaven unfurled.
J.D. Winston (God Must Be Weeping)
Where do [writers] get [their] ideas? And the answer is that no one knows where the come from and nobody should know. They evolve in thin air, they float down from some mysterious heaven, and we reach and grab one, to grasp in our imagination, and to make it our own. One writer might overhear a conversation in a cafe and a whole novel will be built from that moment. Another might see an article in a newspaper and a plot will suggest itself immediately. Another might hear about an unpleasant incident that happened to a friend of a friend in a supermarket . . . .
John Boyne (A Ladder to the Sky)
I have got acquainted with Lofty John. Ilse is a great friend of his and often goes there to watch him working in his carpenter shop. He says he has made enough ladders to get to heaven without the priest but that is just his joke.
L.M. Montgomery (Emily of New Moon (Emily, #1))
Be at peace with your own soul then heaven & earth will be at peace with you. Enter eagerly into the treasure house that is within you, And you will see the things that are in heaven, for there is but one single entry to them both. The ladder that leads to the Kingdom is hidden within your soul… Dive into yourself and in your soul and you will discover the stairs by which to ascend.
Isaac of Nineveh
Jacob’s ladder could be touching the soil of this very road. Where you are walking, angels might be ascending and descending. The problem is that like Jacob, most of us spend our days not knowing. The Lord is never far. It is our blindness that makes Him seem so. The veil between heaven
Tessa Afshar (In the Field of Grace)
Revenge is a color, a color that never fades. A beautiful color. It is the color of the sky at dawn when lovers are hauled out of their beds and garroted in the middle of the street; the color of the ancient sea when Noah’s Ark has been breached below the water line; the color of Jacob’s Ladder as it collapses while Jacob has climbed only half-way to heaven. But it is more than that, much more. It contains the pigment that colors the eyes of the lovers that betray you.
Mark Romel (The Mistletoe Murders: A Nietzschean Murder Mystery)
The Christian knows to serve the weak not because they deserve it but because God extended his love to us when we deserved the opposite. Christ came down from heaven, and whenever his disciples entertained dreams of prestige and power he reminded them that the greatest is the one who serves. The ladder of power reaches up, the ladder of grace reaches down.
Philip Yancey (What's So Amazing About Grace?)
Heaven is not gained at a single bound; But we build the ladder by which we rise From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, And we mount to its summit round by round.
J.G. Holland
If Jacob's ladder reached all the way to heaven, so, too, did ours.
Sue Monk Kidd (The Book of Longings)
I said "show me the ladder, that I may climb up to heaven ' He said "your head is the ladder, bring your head down under your feet
Rumi (Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi)
It wasna a man,’ said Andrew Kerr broadly. ‘T’was my aunty. I tellt ye. I’m no risking cauld steel in ma wame for a pittance, unless all that’s mine is well lookit after—’ ‘An old lady,’ said Lord Grey with forbearance, ‘in curling papers and a palatial absence of teeth?’ ‘My aunt Lizzie!’ said Andrew Kerr. ‘She has just,’ said Lord Grey austerely, ‘seriously injured one of my men.’ ‘How?’ The old savage looked interested. ‘From an upper window. The castle was burning, and he was climbing a ladder to offer the lady her freedom. She cracked his head with a chamberpot,’ said Lord Grey distastefully, ‘and retired crying that she would have no need of a jurden in Heaven, as the good Lord had no doubt thought of more convenient methods after the seventh day, when He had had a good rest.
Dorothy Dunnett (The Disorderly Knights (The Lymond Chronicles, #3))
One of the signs of the lovers of God is the love for the knowledge relating to the shape of heavenly bodies, and the knowledge of the chain of causes descending from the exalted God, the method of dissecting the human body and its internal organs and his faculties and devices. Unless these kinds of knowledge, which are the scales and ladders extending from the servant to the Lord, are uncovered to him, how can he reach God's knowledge? And if this knowledge is not gained, how can love be achieved or even imagined?
Mulla Sadra (Breaking the Idols of Ignorance: Admonition of the Soi Disant Sufi)
I feel as if it were not for me to record, even though this manuscript is intended for no eyes but mine, how hard I worked at that tremendous short-hand, and all improvement appertaining to it, in my sense of responsibility to Dora and her aunts. I will only add, to what I have already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me, and which I know to be the strong part of my character, if it have any strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my success. I have been very fortunate in worldly matters; many men have worked much harder, and not succeeded half so well; but I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time, no matter how quickly its successor should come upon its heels, which I then formed. Heaven knows I write this, in no spirit of self-laudation. The man who reviews his own life, as I do mine, in going on here, from page to page, had need to have been a good man indeed, if he would be spared the sharp consciousness of many talents neglected, many opportunities wasted, many erratic and perverted feelings constantly at war within his breast, and defeating him. I do not hold one natural gift, I dare say, that I have not abused. My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest. I have never believed it possible that any natural or improved ability can claim immunity from the companionship of the steady, plain, hard-working qualities, and hope to gain its end. There is no such thing as such fulfilment on this earth. Some happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity, may form the two sides of the ladder on which some men mount, but the rounds of that ladder must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear; and there is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere earnestness. Never to put one hand to anything, on which I could throw my whole self; and never to affect depreciation of my work, whatever it was; I find, now, to have been my golden rules.
Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)
A SAVIOR IS BORN Psalm 8:9 (ESV) O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!   REFLECTION On this night, shepherds were doing what they always did, keeping an eye on Bethlehem’s sheep through the night. But everything was about to change, as heaven opened and the angel of the Lord appeared to them and declared that Jesus had been born nearby. What irony. The sheep these shepherds were raising would be sacrificed just a few miles down the road on Jerusalem’s altar. Yet the shepherds themselves could not enter the temple to worship even if they wanted to. Because of their profession, they were ceremonially unclean. They were outcasts in the very worship that their hands made possible. Yet, God chose the shepherds to receive the greatest news ever heard. God came to them because He knew the shepherds couldn’t make it to church. What does that say about the Gospel? What does it say about you? This magnificent night says that grace meets you where you are, and saves you while you cannot do a thing to save yourself. Tonight, celebrate that Christ has come. Not to a mansion, but a manger. Not to the high and mighty, but to the guys on the lowest rung of the spiritual ladder. And celebrate that God’s grace finds you wherever you are this Christmas and shows you the way upwards to the arms of Almighty God. MEDITATION FOR CHRISTMAS EVE
Louie Giglio (Waiting Here for You: An Advent Journey of Hope)
We are swapping band-aid education for brand new education, sealing the cracks – all the holes in the broken-down fences of Australian education policy for Indigenous peoples. Yes, they continued the better education, we know what is best rhetoric in their on-going war with the sceptic observer whom they continually accused was pass em this and not pass em that – always out to destroy Aboriginal people like a record still stuck in the same grove. Anyway. Whatever. Agree or not. This was the hammer, even in officially recognised Aboriginal Government, pulping confidence. The hammer that knocked away the small gains through any slip of vigilance. The faulty hammer that created weak ladders to heaven.
Alexis Wright (The Swan Book)
Dazzlement and enchantment are Bester’s methods. His stories never stand still a moment; they’re forever tilting into motion, veering, doubling back, firing off rockets to distract you. The repetition of the key phrase in “Fondly Fahrenheit,” the endless reappearances of Mr. Aquila in “The Star-comber” are offered mockingly: try to grab at them for stability, and you find they mean something new each time. Bester’s science is all wrong, his characters are not characters but funny hats; but you never notice: he fires off a smoke-bomb, climbs a ladder, leaps from a trapeze, plays three bars of “God Save the King,” swallows a sword and dives into three inches of water. Good heavens, what more do you want?
Alfred Bester (Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester)
The first time that Raoul saw Christine at the Opera, he was charmed by the girl's beauty and by the sweet images of the past which it evoked, but was rather surprised at the negative side of her art. He returned to listen to her. He followed her in the wings. He waited for her behind a Jacob's ladder. He tried to attract her attention. More than once, he walked after her to the door of her box, but she did not see him. She seemed, for that matter, to see nobody. She was all indifference. Raoul suffered, for she was very beautiful and he was shy and dared not to confess his love, even to himself. And then came the lightning-flash of the gala performance: the heavens torn asunder and an angel's voice heard upon earth for the delight of mankind and the utter capture of his heart.
Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
Shame and suffering, as St. Bernard says, are the two ladder-uprights which are set up to heaven, and between those two uprights are the rungs of all virtues fixed, by which one climbs to the joy of heaven… In these two things, in which is all penance, rejoice and be glad, for in return for these, twofold blisses are prepared: in return for shame honour; in return for suffering, delight and rest without end.
Philip Zaleski (The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams)
I also realized it wasn’t so much that people read the same Word of God differently, but that many weren’t reading it at all—not the scripture itself—at least not in a manner that allowed them to fit every piece of it into one cohesive picture of the truth. Instead, people were reading materials their religions published for study. Often these were selective—preserving some threads of the truth while excluding others—so that the total picture was so incomplete it became a distortion.
Avraham Gileadi (Isaiah Decoded: Ascending the Ladder to Heaven)
Dinner proceeded as if no raid were occurring. After the meal, Biddle told Churchill that he would like to see for himself “the strides which London had made in air-raid precautions.” At which point Churchill invited him and Harriman to accompany him to the roof. The raid was still in progress. Along the way, they put on steel helmets and collected John Colville and Eric Seal, so that they, too, as Colville put it, could “watch the fun.” Getting to the roof took effort. “A fantastic climb it was,” Seal said in a letter to his wife, “up ladders, a long circular stairway, & a tiny manhole right at the top of a tower.” Nearby, anti-aircraft guns blasted away. The night sky filled with spears of light as searchlight crews hunted the bombers above. Now and then aircraft appeared silhouetted against the moon and the starlit sky. Engines roared high overhead in a continuous thrum. Churchill and his helmeted entourage stayed on the roof for two hours. “All the while,” Biddle wrote, in a letter to President Roosevelt, “he received reports at various intervals from the different sections of the city hit by the bombs. It was intensely interesting.” Biddle was impressed by Churchill’s evident courage and energy. In the midst of it all, as guns fired and bombs erupted in the distance, Churchill quoted Tennyson—part of an 1842 monologue called Locksley Hall, in which the poet wrote, with prescience: Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue.
Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
This then is the ultimate truth--that in our inmost nature we are anchored in God, inseparable from God, and that the discovery of this heavenly nature is life's loftiest purpose. Even now, already, today, we are as divine as we ever shall be. The long evolutionary ladder which by prophets and teachers, gurus and guides we are bidden to climb toilsomely and slowly and painfully need not be climbed at all if only we heed this truth continually, if we refuse to let it go, if we make it ours in all parts of our being--in thought, feeling, faith, and action.
Paul Brunton (Advanced Contemplation: The Peace Within You (The Notebooks of Paul Brunton, #15))
Where do [writers] get [their] ideas? And the answer is that no one knows where they come from and nobody should know. They evolve in the air, they float down from some mysterious heaven and we reach and grab one, to grasp in our imagination, and to make it our own. One writer might overhear a conversation in a cafe and a whole novel will be built from that moment. Another might see an article in a newspaper and a plot will suggest itself immediately. Another might hear about an unpleasant incident that happened to a friend of a friend in a supermarket . . . .
John Boyne (A Ladder to the Sky)
But let’s begin at the beginning. Do you remember Jacob’s “ladder” reaching from earth to heaven, on which angels ministered up and down? Jacob called it the “gate of heaven,” with God visible at the top. (Genesis 28:12, 17.) Around that idea, Isaiah builds a theology—a way we define humanity’s relationship to God. In other words, What is God’s role towards us, and ours towards him? Isaiah’s theology embraces all people born on the earth, no matter how good or evil they turn out to be. In the process, Isaiah describes different ways of living that people choose for themselves, some drawing them nearer to God, others distancing them from him. Each way has a place on the ladder to heaven. Where we find ourselves in this divine scheme depends on us, on what law we live—a higher or lesser law. When we discern the different levels represented on the ladder, we can learn a great deal about ourselves by asking, How does my life fit with this picture? Probably most of us would like to know more about where we stand with God. We have questions such as, How did I get where I am, and where am I going? Or more to the point, Where do I want to go? In addressing such questions, Isaiah eliminates the need for a lot of speculation about ourselves. He shows us the ladder to heaven, and we answer our own questions. Most importantly, Isaiah teaches us how to get through heaven’s “gate.
Avraham Gileadi (Isaiah Decoded: Ascending the Ladder to Heaven)
For as soon as Christ says: 'This is my body,' his body is present through the Word and the power of the Holy Spirit. If the Word is not there, it is mere bread; but as soon as the words are added they bring with them that of which they speak. Moreover, we believe that Christ, according to his human nature, is put over all creatures [Eph. 1:22] and fills all things, as Paul says in Eph. 4[:10]. Not only according to his divine nature, but also according to his human nature, he is a lord of all things, has all things in his hand, and is present everywhere. If I am to follow the fanatics who say that this is not fitting, then I must deny Christ. We read of Stephen in Acts 7[:56] that he said: 'I see the heavens opened, and Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father.' How does he see Christ? He need not raise his eyes on high. Christ is around us and in us in all places. Those people understand nothing of this. They also say that he sits at the right hand of God, but what it means that Christ ascends to heaven and sits there, they do not know. It is not the same as when you climb up a ladder into the house. It means rather that he is above all creatures and in all and beyond all creatures. That he was taken up bodily, however, occurred as a sign of this. Therefore he now has all things before his eyes, more than I have you before my eyes, and he is closer to us than any creature is to another.
Martin Luther
Esoteric tradition teaches us that until we find the Grail, and it should be clearly understood that it is not a physical object in this time-space continuum, Lucifer must play out his role as the sacrificial king. He is doomed to incarnate in a ‘cloak of flesh’ as an avatar for the human race and pay the ultimate price as a scapegoat on their behalf. This is the ultimate sacrifice for being the light-bearer who brought down from Heaven the illumination of Gnostic wisdom and the primal fire of creativity. Lucifer eternally dies and is reborn to save humanity of itself. As the human race progresses spiritually so he can slowly ascend the Ladder of Lights back to the realm of the Gods beyond the Pole Star. He is the Lord of the Morning Star and the Lux Mundi (Light of the World) whose rebirth from darkness we celebrate every year at the winter solstice.
Michael Howard (The Pillars of Tubal-Cain)
My dwelling was small, and I could hardly entertain an echo in it; but it seemed larger for being a single apartment and remote from neighbors. All the attractions of a house were concentrated in one room; it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; and whatever satisfaction parent or child, master or servant, derive from living in a house, I enjoyed it all. Cato says, the master of a family (patremfamilias) must have in his rustic villa "cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritatem expectare, et rei, et virtuti, et gloriae erit," that is, "an oil and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hard times; it will be for his advantage, and virtue, and glory." I had in my cellar a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts of peas with the weevil in them, and on my shelf a little rice, a jug of molasses, and of rye and Indian meal a peck each. I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and without gingerbread work, which shall still consist of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven over one's head—useful to keep off rain and snow, where the king and queen posts stand out to receive your homage, when you have done reverence to the prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty on stepping over the sill; a cavernous house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole to see the roof; where some may live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some on settles, some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose; a house which you have got into when you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; where the weary traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping; where you can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg, that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, storehouse, and garret; where you can see so necessary a thing, as a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner, and the oven that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments; where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trap-door, when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you without stamping. A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there—in solitary confinement. Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. There is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you. I am aware that I have been on many a man's premises, and might have been legally ordered off, but I am not aware that I have been in many men's houses. I might visit in my old clothes a king and queen who lived simply in such a house as I have described, if I were going their way; but backing out of a modern palace will be all that I shall desire to learn, if ever I am caught in one.
Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
(from Lady of the Lake) The western waves of ebbing day Rolled o’er the glen their level way; Each purple peak, each flinty spire, Was bathed in floods of living fire. But not a setting beam could glow Within the dark ravines below, Where twined the path in shadow hid, Round many a rocky pyramid, Shooting abruptly from the dell Its thunder-splintered pinnacle; Round many an insulated mass, The native bulwarks of the pass, Huge as the tower which builders vain Presumptuous piled on Shinar’s plain. The rocky summits, split and rent, Formed turret, dome, or battlement, Or seemed fantastically set With cupola or minaret, Wild crests as pagod ever decked, Or mosque of Eastern architect. Nor were these earth-born castles bare, Nor lacked they many a banner fair; For, from their shivered brows displayed, Far o’er the unfathomable glade, All twinkling with the dewdrop sheen, The brier-rose fell in streamers green, And creeping shrubs, of thousand dyes, Waved in the west-wind’s summer sighs. Boon nature scattered, free and wild, Each plant or flower, the mountain’s child. Here eglantine embalmed the air, Hawthorn and hazel mingled there; The primrose pale, and violet flower, Found in each cliff a narrow bower; Fox-glove and night-shade, side by side, Emblems of punishment and pride, Grouped their dark hues with every stain The weather-beaten crags retain. With boughs that quaked at every breath, Gray birch and aspen wept beneath; Aloft, the ash and warrior oak Cast anchor in the rifted rock; And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung His shattered trunk, and frequent flung, Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high, His boughs athwart the narrowed sky. Highest of all, where white peaks glanced, Where glist’ning streamers waved and danced, The wanderer’s eye could barely view The summer heaven’s delicious blue; So wondrous wild, the whole might seem The scenery of a fairy dream. Onward, amid the copse ’gan peep A narrow inlet, still and deep, Affording scarce such breadth of brim As served the wild duck’s brood to swim. Lost for a space, through thickets veering, But broader when again appearing, Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face Could on the dark-blue mirror trace; And farther as the hunter strayed, Still broader sweep its channels made. The shaggy mounds no longer stood, Emerging from entangled wood, But, wave-encircled, seemed to float, Like castle girdled with its moat; Yet broader floods extending still Divide them from their parent hill, Till each, retiring, claims to be An islet in an inland sea. And now, to issue from the glen, No pathway meets the wanderer’s ken, Unless he climb, with footing nice A far projecting precipice. The broom’s tough roots his ladder made, The hazel saplings lent their aid; And thus an airy point he won, Where, gleaming with the setting sun, One burnished sheet of living gold, Loch Katrine lay beneath him rolled, In all her length far winding lay, With promontory, creek, and bay, And islands that, empurpled bright, Floated amid the livelier light, And mountains, that like giants stand, To sentinel enchanted land. High on the south, huge Benvenue Down to the lake in masses threw Crags, knolls, and mountains, confusedly hurled, The fragments of an earlier world; A wildering forest feathered o’er His ruined sides and summit hoar, While on the north, through middle air, Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare.
Walter Scott
April 20 MORNING “That through death He might destroy him that had the power of death.” — Hebrews 2:14 O child of God, death hath lost its sting, because the devil’s power over it is destroyed. Then cease to fear dying. Ask grace from God the Holy Ghost, that by an intimate knowledge and a firm belief of thy Redeemer’s death, thou mayst be strengthened for that dread hour. Living near the cross of Calvary thou mayst think of death with pleasure, and welcome it when it comes with intense delight. It is sweet to die in the Lord: it is a covenant-blessing to sleep in Jesus. Death is no longer banishment, it is a return from exile, a going home to the many mansions where the loved ones already dwell. The distance between glorified spirits in heaven and militant saints on earth seems great; but it is not so. We are not far from home — a moment will bring us there. The sail is spread; the soul is launched upon the deep. How long will be its voyage? How many wearying winds must beat upon the sail ere it shall be reefed in the port of peace? How long shall that soul be tossed upon the waves before it comes to that sea which knows no storm? Listen to the answer, “Absent from the body, present with the Lord.” Yon ship has just departed, but it is already at its haven. It did but spread its sail and it was there. Like that ship of old, upon the Lake of Galilee, a storm had tossed it, but Jesus said, “Peace, be still,” and immediately it came to land. Think not that a long period intervenes between the instant of death and the eternity of glory. When the eyes close on earth they open in heaven. The horses of fire are not an instant on the road. Then, O child of God, what is there for thee to fear in death, seeing that through the death of thy Lord its curse and sting are destroyed? and now it is but a Jacob’s ladder whose foot is in the dark grave, but its top reaches to glory everlasting.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Morning and Evening—Classic KJV Edition: A Devotional Classic for Daily Encouragement)
Isn't that a beautiful tale, grandfather," said Heidi, as the latter continued to sit without speaking, for she had expected him to express pleasure and astonishment. "You are right, Heidi; it is a beautiful tale," he replied, but he looked so grave as he said it that Heidi grew silent herself and sat looking quietly at her pictures. Presently she pushed her book gently in front of him and said, "See how happy he is there," and she pointed with her finger to the figure of the returned prodigal, who was standing by his father clad in fresh raiment as one of his own sons again. A few hours later, as Heidi lay fast asleep in her bed, the grandfather went up the ladder and put his lamp down near her bed so that the light fell on the sleeping child. Her hands were still folded as if she had fallen asleep saying her prayers, an expression of peace and trust lay on the little face, and something in it seemed to appeal to the grandfather, for he stood a long time gazing down at her without speaking. At last he too folded his hands, and with bowed head said in a low voice, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee and am not worthy to be called thy son." And two large tears rolled down the old man's cheeks. Early the next morning he stood in front of his hut and gazed quietly around him. The fresh bright morning sun lay on mountain and valley. The sound of a few early bells rang up from the valley, and the birds were singing their morning song in the fir trees. He stepped back into the hut and called up, "Come along, Heidi! the sun is up! Put on your best frock, for we are going to church together!" Heidi was not long getting ready; it was such an unusual summons from her grandfather that she must make haste. She put on her smart Frankfurt dress and soon went down, but when she saw her grandfather she stood still, gazing at him in astonishment. "Why, grandfather!" she exclaimed, "I never saw you look like that before! and the coat with the silver buttons! Oh, you do look nice in your Sunday coat!" The old man smiled and replied, "And you too; now come along!" He took Heidi's hand in his and together they walked down the mountain side. The bells were ringing in every direction now, sounding louder and fuller as they neared the valley, and Heidi listened to them with delight. "Hark at them, grandfather! it's like a great festival!" The congregation had already assembled and the singing had begun when Heidi and her grandfather entered the church at Dorfli and sat down at the back. But before the hymn was over every one was nudging his neighbor and whispering, "Do you see? Alm-Uncle is in church!" Soon everybody in the church knew of Alm-Uncle's presence, and the women kept on turning round to look and quite lost their place in the singing. But everybody became more attentive when the sermon began, for the preacher spoke with such warmth and thankfulness that those present felt the effect of his words, as if some great joy had come to them all.
Johanna Spyri (Heidi)
(Summer of 2010) Chiaz Natherth- It was just going to be a typical summer day. I am at the local watering hole with my bud Melvin Shezor; we were just there to gaze at the girl gaze, sitting on lawn chairs. I had warm lemonade in my right hand at the time. I am looking around at all the bodies that are bobbing in the water; they all just seem to blend. The lifeguard is blowing her whistle while screaming at the little kids that are running around. Some stunning bodies are smacking the cold blue water with great speed, from the high dive. But- there is no more perfect figure there than hers. Everyone else seems to fade away out of my vision, along with all the ear-shattering noises. Bryan Adams ‘Heaven’ is playing in the background, and it seemed to be pronounced to my senses. When I am looking at her, it is like she is moving in slow motion, swimming across the pool. She climbed up the ladder and out of the pool. Her body dripping with water… what a moment, there is even water dripping down her chest. She looks amazing in that petite pink bikini. I was thinking to myself, that is a very cute looking camel-toe you got showing there Nevaeh! I never knew that she had a heart-shaped belly button piercing, when did that happen? Also, I could tell that her swimsuit was made by her, just like most of the sun-dresses she wears in the summertime too. Because it was not like any others I have ever seen around, it is cute, somewhat skimpy, and tailored to her perfect body. The fabric was not meant to get wet, it was somewhat see-through, yet she did not know, though it looks very good what can I say. She is walking towards me while running her fingers through her long brown hair. ‘I was thinking this is too good to be for real.’ She walked by and said ‘hi!’ and I was at loss for words. She was already gone, but I still babbled something like ‘Ahh-he-oll-o.’ At that point, into the changing room, she went, and I just sat there trying to fathom what had just happened. Melvin Shezor- ‘Chiaz! Ah, Chiaz! Hello, earth to Chiaz, snap out of its dude.’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘She is so fine! I would not mind having her on my arm.’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Yah, the man she is not bad. But- isn’t she into girls though. So, do you like Nevaeh?’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘I do not think that she is, and well… Yes, did you see her in that swimsuit? She is adorable in every way.’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Really is that so? Go talk to her!’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘No way!’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Why not, you pussy!’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘If Alissa finds out that I like her, or even looked at her I am going to die.’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Ha, it sucks to be you man.’ Chiaz Natherth- ‘Hey, I will see you later, I got to go.’ (Text messages are going off… like crazy) Melvin Shezor- ‘Pu-ss-y!’ (Shouting as Chiaz Natherth is walking out the exit gate.) (Chiaz- He just waved it off, with the finger that is not supposed to be used in public, and does not think any more about it from that point on.) Chiaz Naztherth- Summer is over! Yet she is with him… he is so unconfident in himself that he has to follow me around. He gives me vain advice on what to do, and how to do it, yet I would have to say I need to stand up for myself more than what I do, yet I do not because of her. He attempts to belittle me, with his words of temperament to her. These results lead to her having breakdowns, where she is feeling miserable because she is stuck in the middle. She does not know what to do! She doesn't know how to feel! She does not want to hurt anyone's feelings, yet she is the one that is left to choke on her tears. Yes, I will save you long before you drowned!
Marcel Ray Duriez (Nevaeh The Miracle)
But sleep tha pondereth and is not to be and there oh may my weary spirit dwell apart forms heaven's eternity and yet how far from hell. other friends have flown before on the morrow he will leave me as my hopes have flown before the bird said nevermore. leave my loneliness unbroken. how dark a woe yet how sublimes a hope. And the fever called living is conquered at last. I stand amid the roar of a surf tormented shore and i hold within my hand grains of the golden sand how few yet how they creep through my fingers to the deep while i weep while i weep o god can i not grasp them with a tighter clasp o god can i not save one from the pitiless wave is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream. Hell rising form a thousand thrones shall do it reverence. It was the dead who groaned within lest the dead who is forsaken may not be happy now. even for thy woes i love thee even for thy woes thy beauty and thy woes think of all that is airy and fairy like and all that is hideous and unwieldy. hast thou not dragged Diana from her car. I care not though it perishes with a thought i then did cherish. For on its wing was dark alley and as it fluttered fell an essence powerful to destroy a soul that knew it well. (Talking about death) the intense reply of hers to our intelligence. Then all motion of whatever nature creates most writers poets in especial prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy an ecstatic intuition and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought at the true purposes seized only at the last moment at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view at the fully matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable at the cautions selection and rejections at the painful erasures and interpolations in a word at the wheels and pinions the tackle for scene shifting the steep ladders and demon traps the cock[s feathers a the red pain and the black patches which in ninety nine cases out of the hundred constitute the properties of the literary _histiro. Wit the Arabians there is a medium between heaven and hell where men suffer no punishment but yet do not attain that tranquil and even happiness which they supposed to be characteristic of heavenly enjoyment. If i could dwell where israfel hath dwelt and he where i he might not sing so wildly well mortal melody, while a bolder note than this might swell form my lyre within the sky. And i am drunk with love of the dead who is my bride. And so being young and dipt in folly , I feel in love with melancholy. I could not love except where death was mingling his with beauty's breath or hymen, Time, and destiny were stalking between her and me. Yet that terror was not friegt but a tremulous delight a feeling not the jeweled mine could teach or bribe me to define nor love although the love were thine. Whose solitary soul could make an Eden of that dim lake. that my young life were a lasting dream my spirit not awakening till the beam of an eternity should bring the morrow. An idle longing night and day to dream my very life away. As others saw i could not bring my passions from a comman spring from the sam source i have not taken my sorrow and all i loved i loved alone La solitude est une belle chose; mais il faut quelqu'un pour vous dire que la solitude estune belle chose impulse upon the ether the source of all motion is thought and the source of all thought. Be of heart and fear nothing your allotted days of stupor have expired and tomorrow i will myself induct you into the full joys and wonders of your novel existence. unknown now known of the speculative future merged in the august and certain present.
Edgar Allan Poe (The Complete Works Of Edgar Allen Poe: Miscellany)
The Law of God was never a ladder for unsaved people to climb up to heaven. It was always a pattern of life for God’s people who had been saved from judgment by the blood of the Lamb.
Colin S. Smith (Unlocking the Bible Story: Old Testament 2 (Unlocking the Bible, #2))
Wishing to appear humble is the worst form of pride.
Vassilios Papavassiliou (Thirty Steps to Heaven: The Ladder of Divine Ascent for All Walks of Life)
people who lived in the mountains knew that all the truly great things had already been accomplished. They did not need to imagine ladders that would lead to heaven, or things of massive size that would astound the heart, because they had them in such profusion that it was difficult to get from town to town, and because of them the sun itself often was denied a chance to shine, or forced to break in gold through opaque ridges of ice and snow whiter than physics would allow.
Mark Helprin (A Soldier of the Great War)
We qualify for heaven when we enter God’s presence. Some people attain that state in this life; while still living on the earth they see God. Others fail to do so even after death.
Avraham Gileadi (Isaiah Decoded: Ascending the Ladder to Heaven)
When Jesus said “The truth will make you free,” he implied that the more truth is in us, the more we are our own agents. By living the truth—by living the laws of God that are grounded in the truth—we become increasingly independent. The opposite is also true: the more we live a lie, the more we are bound by lies and become less free. Because God is the source of truth, he is also the source of freedom—not the freedom to do what we want, but to live the truth, which makes us free. We thus become acquainted with the “power of truth.
Avraham Gileadi (Isaiah Decoded: Ascending the Ladder to Heaven)
There was no friend nigh to speak a comforting word to Jacob, no one to tell him he had in his sincere repentance done what he could. But God’s eye was upon His servant. He sent His angels to reveal to him a ladder of brightness reaching from the earth to the highest heavens, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon this glorious ladder, which showed Jacob the connection and intercourse constantly going on between the two worlds.
Ellen Gould White (Rebellion and Redemption E. G. White Notes 1Q 2016)
There is something so tough about grace, though, that some people refuse to accept it. Other world religions or worldviews make ladders we need to climb to get to heaven, when the real Christian faith can only be lived by army crawling to get it. We have to get low. We have to humble ourselves. And I promise joy is on the other side.
Jefferson Bethke (Jesus > Religion: Why He Is So Much Better Than Trying Harder, Doing More, and Being Good Enough)
God Will Save Me A terrible storm came into a town and local officials sent out an emergency warning that the riverbanks would soon overflow and flood the nearby homes. They ordered everyone in the town to evacuate immediately. A faithful Christian man heard the warning and decided to stay, saying to himself, “I will trust God and if I am in danger, then God will send a divine miracle to save me.” The neighbors came by his house and said to him, “We’re leaving and there is room for you in our car, please come with us!” But the man declined. “I have faith that God will save me.” As the man stood on his porch watching the water rise up the steps, a man in a canoe paddled by and called to him, “Hurry and come into my canoe, the waters are rising quickly!” But the man again said, “No thanks, God will save me.” The floodwaters rose higher pouring water into his living room and the man had to retreat to the second floor. A police motorboat came by and saw him at the window. “We will come up and rescue you!” they shouted. But the man refused, waving them off saying, “Use your time to save someone else! I have faith that God will save me!” The flood waters rose higher and higher and the man had to climb up to his rooftop. A helicopter spotted him and dropped a rope ladder. A rescue officer came down the ladder and pleaded with the man, "Grab my hand and I will pull you up!" But the man STILL refused, folding his arms tightly to his body. “No thank you! God will save me!” Shortly after, the house broke up and the floodwaters swept the man away and he drowned. When in Heaven, the man stood before God and asked, “I put all of my faith in You. Why didn’t You come and save me?” And God said, “Son, I sent you a warning. I sent you a car. I sent you a canoe. I sent you a motorboat. I sent you a helicopter. What more were you looking for?
Anonymous
The proper experience in life [890] is to have a dream of Christ as the heavenly ladder which has been set up on earth and which brings us into heaven. Do not try to overcome sin, nor to conquer your weakness. When you touch this ladder, you will be in heaven, heaven will be yours, and there will be much traffic between earth and heaven and between heaven and earth. You will have whatever you need, and every negative thing will be under your feet. This is the experience of Christ as the heavenly ladder.
Witness Lee (Life-Study of Genesis (Life-Study of the Bible))
had gone to heaven. Enoch was “translated” and Elijah was “taken up.” One could “ascend” a ladder (Jesus had told Nathanael that he would see angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man, and Jacob beheld a ladder in his midnight dream at Bethel) or one could “ascend” to Jerusalem, moving to a higher elevation from sea level. The term could be used figuratively to refer to the elevation of a king to his royal office. But no one ever had “ascended to heaven” in the sense in which Jesus was speaking. The ascension of Jesus was the supreme political event of world history. He ascended
R.C. Sproul (Who Is Jesus? (Crucial Questions, #1))
The Hopi tribe of Native Americans teaches that if we advance as far as we possibly can in this life, then we will not have to wade through three more worlds after this one to get to where we are going. In Isaiah’s context of a ladder to heaven, that means if we ascend from our starting point—Jacob/Israel—to the level of seraphim (three levels), we will arrive at the highest goal God has set for us on the earth, the third level of blessedness (see Figure 137). As noted, the kabbalist model of the Tree of Life similarly proposes that God created us four levels below his own. By ascending three levels, therefore, we reach the level next to God’s. On the two highest, God manifests himself to us directly.
Avraham Gileadi (Isaiah Decoded: Ascending the Ladder to Heaven)
Understanding this narrow definition of Zion helps us see who belongs to it. “Zion” is both a people and a place: those of God’s people who repent and the place to which they return—a place of refuge in God’s Day of Judgment (see Figure 32). The verb “repent” in Hebrew (šwb) is the same as the verb “return” (šwb). This implies that those who return from exile are the same as those who repent. And its opposite: those who don’t repent do not return but are destroyed with the nations. In short, Zion is a select group within God’s people; but it is also a new, more glorious version of the Promised Land. God blesses the people Zion and their land because they accept a higher level of commitment.
Avraham Gileadi (Isaiah Decoded: Ascending the Ladder to Heaven)
The Birth of a Poet The formal study of literature and poetry is a ladder you must throw away after you've climbed to the top. Once you've reached the lofty heights, stand firm and dauntless on the shoulders of giants. Inspire and climb a new ladder by creating your own poetry and literature. With your words, boldly lean your ladder on the roaring cumulonimbus clouds and ascend to heaven's gates through the peal and crack of thunder. Behold! A poet is born.
Beryl Dov
The Sufi Way is to follow the model provided by the Prophet‘s representatives on earth, the saints, who are the shaykhs or the spiritual masters. Once having entered the Way, the disciple begins to undergo a process of inward transformation. If he is among those destined to reach spiritual perfection, he will climb the ascending rungs of a ladder stretching to heaven and beyond; the alchemy of the Way will transmute the base copper of his substance into pure and noble gold. The Truth or „attainment to God“ is not a simple, one-step process. It can be said that this third dimension of Sufi teaching deals with all the inner experiences undergone by the traveler on his journey. It concerns all the „virtues“ (akhlaq) the Sufi must acquire, in keeping with the Prophet‘s saying, „Assume the virtues of God!“ If acquiring virtues means „attaining to God,“ this is because they do not belong to man. The discipline of the Way coupled with God‘s grace and guidance results in a process of purification whereby the veil of human nature is gradually removed from the mirror of the primordial human substance, made in the image of God, or, in the Prophet‘s words, „upon the Form of the All-Merciful.“ Any perfection achieved by man is God‘s perfection reflected within him. (p. 11-12)
William C. Chittick (The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi)
may say to thee as Constantine did to Acetius the Novatian, ‘Set then up thy ladder, and go to heaven by thyself, for never any went this way thither;’ and dost thou think to be the only man that shall appear in heaven purchaser of his own happiness?
William Gurnall (The Christian in Complete Armour - The Ultimate Book on Spiritual Warfare)
some believed they could determine who God is simply by means of using their reasoning powers alone. The Bible could be set aside for good; reason was enough. As time passed, it became evident that the Enlightenment experiment had failed. War, for example, exposed the fact that humanity is not morally neutral but corrupt. The ill use of reason demonstrated that humanity was desperately in need of special revelation after all. Autonomous reason was not so autonomous, as it turned out. In fact, it was idolatrous, attempting to remove God from his throne and replace the Creator’s authority with the creature’s intellect instead. The follies of the Enlightenment should forever remind us that attempting to scale the ladder of heaven to pull God down is the height of human hubris. It is the tower of Babel all over again. A much better approach couples the quest for knowledge with humility, a humility that looks to God’s revelation of himself for understanding. It is the approach of faith seeking understanding.
Matthew Barrett (None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God)
Grab my hand, I’ll lift you out,” but the man waves to him and says, “God will save me.” Finally, a helicopter hovers overhead and a crewman throws down a rope ladder. The drowning man ignores the offer, saying, “Don’t worry, God will save me.” Moments later he crashes over the waterfall and perishes on the rocks below. Later, at the Gates of Heaven, he says to God, “Hey, didn’t you see me down there? Why didn’t you save me?” And God replies, “I tried three times, but you turned me away.
Michael Robotham (Good Girl, Bad Girl (Cyrus Haven, #1))
Mom and Dad tried to use their own ladder and rope, but after two hours, they finally decided to call 911, and the Briaroaks Fire Department answered the call.” “It wasn’t two hours,” I said. “What kinda parents would wait two hours to call 911?
Christy Wilson Beam (Miracles from Heaven: A Little Girl, Her Journey to Heaven, and Her Amazing Story of Healing)
We are not climbing Jacob’s ladder to some heavenly perfection, but stumbling downhill towards Ragnarok.
Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom Series #1-6 (The Last Kingdom))
All this is rather tragic. For what the individual conscience feels when it lifts itself above the world of nature and the system of collective relationships in which the human spirit remains under the power of nature, is not a luxury but a necessity of the soul. Yet there is beauty in our tragedy. We are, at least, rid of some of our illusions. We can no longer buy the highest satisfactions of the individual life at the expense of social injustice. We cannot build our individual ladders to heaven and leave the total human enterprise unredeemed of its excesses and corruptions.
Reinhold Niebuhr (Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (Arkosh Politics))
Our worldly desires are mortified when we remember that death is at the door. At the same time, we seek all the more urgently to do good. When people know they have only so long to live, they begin to get their affairs in order:
Vassilios Papavassiliou (Thirty Steps to Heaven: The Ladder of Divine Ascent for All Walks of Life)
The howl, Doc, not the silence of the lambs, the howl stays with me, I hear it, I scream, I raise my arms to the sky, I try, Doc, I try to defend myself, to protect my soul. Auntie Badeea used to say that jackals have howled at the innocent moon for aeons because they mourn the fact that they are not eternal, that when Death with his pale eyes comes for them they will be no more, unlike us who climb up Jacob's ladder to Heaven in God's embrace or fall to Satan's fiery Hell. I don't think so, Doc, I disagree. Jackals howl because we don't. The howl has been traveling for thousands of years, from the beginning of time, when Adam and Eve tasted the fruit and Satan triumphed and his son, Death, was born, when loss became our intimate, across deserts and seas the howl moves, loaded with dust and grime and brine, searching for souls to remind them to grieve, but we pay little attention, always avoiding, always moving forward, our souls filled with termite holes that the howl passes through, only whistling. Lost we are, so the jackals and coyotes, the wolves red and gray, howl for us, howl at the baby-faced moon.
Rabih Alameddine (The Angel of History)
Just because,” Yehohshua returned to the original subject, “I informed you that I had seen you eating a fig underneath the tree you believe that I am the Son of God and the King of Israel?” Nathaniel affirmed Yehohshua’s question. Yehohshua smiled, “You will see things greater than these for most truly I say to all of you: you will see heaven open up and you will see God’s angels ascending and descending to the Son of Man.” “The ‘Son of Man’?” Nathaniel repeated. “What does that term mean?” “It means that I am here to help all people achieve satisfaction with their lives by giving myself to their needs.” “As Ya‘akov did when he left Beersheba to find a wife for himself in the city of Haran,” Yochanan whispered to Kefa. “What are you saying to me?” asked Nathaniel. “At the height of that ladder stands Yehuway. He pronounced to Ya‘akov that all the land that he saw belongs to him and to his descendants. Yehuway promised Ya‘akov that his children would become as numerous as the sands of the sea and that they would become special, set aside from the rest of the world so that He could present to them something extraordinary! He said He would never leave his children until He had completely accomplished what He had spoken.” “I recall it,” Kefa barely smiled. “Later Ya‘akov dug a well on that exact spot. I drank from it.” “It was the first recorded land purchase that any Israelite had ever made,” Nathaniel remembered his religious studies. “Owning land is a good thing,” Kefa again spoke in his monotone voice. Then trying to show wisdom, he injected, “But the seas – who can purchase them?
Walter Joseph Schenck Jr. (Shiloh, Unveiled: A Thoroughly Detailed Novel on the Life, Times, Events, and People Interacting with Jesus Christ)
is it i, who have dragged the latter of linger from the shadows the smell of death from the pits; the footprints where no one steps the pitiful thoughts of nostalgia, hate? the love for another, hate for myself, of human feeling? is it i? falling from the skies was the son of God, or his enemy? constantly torn between sun and shade, the good and not weighing scales of justice, the path to good grace living a lie for a heaven only dreamed; the preacher man's belly sweet wine and sour, deceit before the holy bible, of the preacher man's tongue testaments of old and new, what to follow for truth, what is new to old laws laws of the land, of the people, laws broken, held against ourselves is it i? to think of Christ Jesus, or His Father in Heaven, or the holy spirit solemn: my thoughts running wild, the second coming of who we love who we do not; who we believe in; who we want to follow; or not is it i? who is afraid, or the voices in my head? of Jacob's ladder? buried in myself; afraid of the light, afraid of change. is it i? in low, bottomless pits,holds the crucifix in high esteem; soar lips preaching testaments in disbelief? of what we have become, what we are, what we live to not see is it i? who have dragged myself to this? or this bottomless thoughts?
Nii Yeboah Norton Nortey
Put it another way: the saint is the one who does the terribly difficult thing of climbing the ladder of spiritual ascent, a ladder that is coated with the venerable gold of the religious tradition. All will praise him if he makes it to the top. The knight of faith, the real sinner, is climbing, too, only he is climbing up a Babel tower of his own building. He is seeking unauthorized access to heaven. He wants to know, like Faust, like Prometheus (who are his only gods) what secrets they are that Jehovah so jealously guards. In plain terms, he wants to know the truth that orthodoxy is afraid to know, for which it can make no room on its narrow shelf of holy and well-worn relics. The saint takes a spiritual journey along the path prescribed and well-beaten with holy footprints. He uses the conventional doctrines and symbols to their best advantage. But the sinner, the real sinner, dares to question and even to reject those forms and names and paths. If he can leap high and far enough, he will even get, for a moment, beyond all our sheltering religious systems, all our inherited philosophies and worldviews, and he will reach the Void of outer space: the bare Suchness which no doctrine can contain and which mandates no doctrine. The Nihil, the Nothing. It is an airless heaven he has reached for a moment, but one where the stars shine all the brighter for it. He will return to earth, to walk among the familiar landmarks and familiar faces, but no longer familiar to himself. The Eden of simplicity and convention and assumption is forever barred for him, though all his contemporaries still sport blissfully within. They may see him as trapped in Hell, like Milton’s Satan, but he would rather rule it than be a docile slave in heaven.
Robert M. Price (Merely Christianity: A Systemic Critique of Theology)
The Christians tell us we move inexorably towards better times, towards their god’s kingdom on earth, but my gods only promise the chaos of the world’s ending, and a man only has to look around him to see that everything is crumbling, decaying, proof that the chaos is coming. We are not climbing Jacob’s ladder to some heavenly perfection, but stumbling downhill towards Ragnarok.
Bernard Cornwell (Death of Kings (The Last Kingdom, #6))
It is the proper function of the theologian to go back and forth, like the angels on Jacob's ladder, between heaven and earth and to weave continually new connections between them.
Hans Boersma (Nouvelle Théologie and Sacramental Ontology: A Return to Mystery)
Our effectiveness at the bottom of the ladder depends on our communication with the top. Popularity is not necessarily influence. ‘Woe upon you,’ said Our Lord, ‘when all men speak well of you.’ Greatest is our compassion for others and our ability to elevate them when we have come down from heaven. The bottom of the ladder is best discovered from the top.
Fulton J. Sheen (The Priest Is Not His Own)
On another note,” began Tao, roasting marshmallows, “is your father an art thief, Mila? Because you’re a total masterpiece.” Chuckling along with the others, Trick said, “I was wondering if your father was an alien, because there’s nothing like you on Earth.” Another round of chuckles. “I was thinking of calling God and telling him I found his missing angel,” said Marcus. “Seriously, Mila, is that a ladder in your pants or a stairway to heaven?” Dominic glared at his laughing pack mates. “I knew you’d all be assholes.” Marcus shrugged a shoulder. “We’re just getting some payback.
Suzanne Wright (Untamed Delights (The Phoenix Pack, #8))
Sixth of Ten Elegies for Fire and Oxycodone The Greek myth goes like this you probably know it but I had to look it up Prometheus steals fire from Zeus and the other gods gives it to humans heaven's prowess now mortal Zeus sticks it to Prometheus cause he knows knowledge knows how sharp its edge can be chains him to a rock an eagle eating his liver all day the liver regenerates every morning the eagle keeps eating keeps eating keeps eating with the patent for Oxycontin set to run out in 2013 Purdue Pharma reformulates it gets a new patent lobbies the old drug illegal no one steals from the gods no one dulls the blade of knowledge - That summer my first desk job insurance intakes at a doctor's office the relief of air conditioning pharma reps catering our lunches released from the fear of dropping a ladder on a foreman of threading my thumbnail with another drill bit the good doc scheduled in five minute increments I retyped patient addresses all hill towns sixty miles off the waiting room so full and grumpy I wondered about the etymology of patient but never what makes a person drive hours through the mountains wait hours for a flicker with the doc I was not paid to wonder I quit before I ever typed your name
Robert Wood Lynn (Mothman Apologia)
But when someone pays close to twelve dollars for a small bottle of green juice, nutrition, connection, and taste are not the only draws. We are buying more than novelty or even status. We are bartering for purity, wholeness, and immortality. We are climbing a ladder to the heavens. Diet has become the justifying story of our lives.
David Zahl (Seculosity: How Career, Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics, and Romance Became Our New Religion and What to Do about It)
his alliance with the Christian right Doth frighten me e’en as if Lucifer Climb’d up from hell to conquer heaven with A wooden ladder form’d of crucifixes.
Ian Doescher (MacTrump)
In the Athenian school of Syrianus and Proclus, the Homeric image of the Golden Chain (seire chruseie, Iliad VIII.18), stretching from Heaven to Earth, was used to describe both the unbroken vertical connection with the first principles (noetic sources of the demiurgic descent, as well as paradigms of the revealed wisdom), and the horizontal, or historical, succession of the qualified masters and interpreters—a succession which was not always based exclusively on direct physical relations. In fact, the Golden Chain is the same as the Hermaic Chain. This chain was both the chain of theophany, manifestation, or descent (demiourgike seira), and the ladder of ascent. This imagery of the Golden Chain was inseparable from the metaphysics of light and solar symbolism.
Algis Uždavinys (The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy (Treasures of the World's Religions))
As more local Houses of Worship are built, an exponential number of Bahá’í choirs will likely form, aligning with Shoghi Effendi’s encouragement for choirs to sing in the Houses of Worship. Singing in a House of Worship is an unforgettable experience that unites singers around one common goal, causes hearts to beat as one and lifts the spirits of both singers and audience up the rungs of a spiritual ladder towards the heavens.
Lorraine Hétu Manifold (The Divine Melody: Song of the Mystic Dove)
However, to arrive at a place of contemplation requires that one practice ways of reading that also align well with the senses of a text. You cannot simply become a contemplative without doing some work. A twelfth-century Carthusian monk named Guigo II (his name literally means “Guy #2”) imagines contemplation as the top run of a ladder with three preceding rungs: lectio, the reading of the Word; then meditatio, the interpretation of the meaning; and oratio, prayer. By these three steps we ascend toward contemplation. Guigo’s ladder is drawn from Jacob’s vision in Genesis 28:10-17. Jacob dreams about a ladder established one earth, with the top reaching to heaven. “And behold,” the text demands, “the angels of God ascending and descending.” Notice that the angels move up and down the ladder, for readers do not climb the rungs of Guigo’s ladder to contemplation and remain up there. Rather, the movement toward contemplation—while we remain on earth—requires continuous ascent and descent. We read, meditate, pray, contemplate, and start over again. The practices of reading that Guigo outlines correspond with the four senses of Scripture and help us understand how to move toward contemplative reading. (pp. 104-105)
Jessica Hooten Wilson (Reading for the Love of God)
The first half of your detention will be spent digging an eight foot deep hole in the meadow.” Darius stalked off with the other guys and I moved forward to collect my shovel. Orion scooped it up, holding it out for me. Before I took it he caught my hand, brushing his thumb across my palm and sending a shiver through me. He repeated the process on the other hand then pressed his index finger to his lips. “That'll stop your skin chaffing,” he whispered. I stared at him in complete surprise as he passed me the shovel and moved aside. “Thank you,” I said, confused as I stepped past him, making my way through the high grass and colourful array of meadow flowers as I walked toward the Heirs. The four of them had formed a circle and were already getting to work digging the hole. ... “Vega!” Orion beckoned me and I was grateful to put the shovel down. I was a little dizzy as I walked up to his high metal chair where he was sitting a few feet above my head. He now had a large umbrella set up over it and a flask of coffee in his hand which he'd apparently brought with him. His Atlas was propped on his knee and he looked like he was thoroughly enjoying his morning as he gazed down at my mud stained skin with a bright smile. Thanks to his magic, at least I didn't have any blisters on my hands. “Water.” Orion waved his hand and water gathered in the air before me, circling into a glistening sphere. Orion tossed me a cup and I caught it at the last second. The water dropped straight into it with a splash and I guzzled it down greedily, “That's favouritism, sir!” Caleb called. “You're right, how rude of me!” Orion shouted back, lifting a hand and a torrential waterfall poured down on all of the heirs. Max crowed like a cockerel, pounding his chest, seemingly spurred on by the downpour. The others didn't seem quite as happy as the water continued to fall down on them. A laugh rushed from my throat and Orion threw me a wink. “So I'm having a little trouble, Miss Vega.” “With what, sir?” “Telling you apart from your sister,” he said in a low voice that I imagined only I could hear through the torrential storm he was still casting over the Heirs. “And you never did answer my question. Blue or green?” A smile twisted up my lips and I shrugged, deciding to leave him in continued suspense over that question, walking back to join the group. “I want an answer by sundown,” he called after me and my grin grew even wider. ... “Shut the fuck up!” Orion shouted. “I'm trying to concentrate here.” “Watching porn again, sir?” Seth shot at him with a smirk. “Yeah, your mom's really improved since the last edition,” he answered without missing a beat and Seth's face dropped into a scowl as a laugh tore from my throat. “Do you know who is always watching porn?” Max chipped in. “You?” the three other guys answered in unison. They all burst out laughing and I fought the urge to join in. “Hilarious,” Max said dryly. “I meant Washer. He snuck off in class the other day to rub one out.” “Useless. Well up you go then,” he said and I moved toward the ladder, taking hold of the first rung. Orion stepped up close behind me and his fingers brushed my waist, barely perceptible but I felt it everywhere. It scored a line of goosebumps across my back and a heavenly shiver fluttered up my spine. Heated air pushed under my clothes, drying them out almost instantly. “Thank you,” I whispered for the second time today. What’s gotten into him? He took hold of the ladder either side of my hands. “Up,” he breathed against my cheek and hot wax seemed to pour down each of my legs, making it almost impossible to move. But somehow, I managed it.
Caroline Peckham (Ruthless Fae (Zodiac Academy, #2))
The room is a hundred shades of white. The enormous desk is the color of sand dollar beer foam with a plush cotton eggshell chair behind it. To its side, a tall shaving cream topped Swiss coffee lamp with a mozzarella sour cream lampshade. Official certificates the color of chalky whitecaps in limestone glacier frames hang on the frosted beluga whale wall. The wall is covered with rice powder cloud bookcases, full of books the color of moonstone jasmine, opal daffodil, quartz daisy, and polar bear hibiscus. The books are being tended by a man with his back to me, dressed in a milky, baking soda suit in seagull bone shoes, riding a rolling ladder the color of marshmallow tofu glue.
GLEN NESBITT (BREAK OUT OF HEAVEN: An Exam in Life)
Benedick’s domaine was a heaven, bigger than Mallory’s, full of stark black-limbed trees, twig-rimmed in ice. They came on a high ledge overlooking a valley of sorts, the whole thing dark with true night and frozen cold.
Elizabeth Bear (Dust (Jacob's Ladder, #1))
PROSTITUTION – AN ACT OF SEX (A POEM) BY E.T.H…AINA Hey young girl, Why do you want sex often and often? Oh! Dogs ate your placenta! And now your clitoris is always itchy. Hey little bro, why is your penis always nodding Like a read headed agama lizard? And you always want to insert it somewhere. Lemme open your eyes to some things. Girlie, to you, prostitution is just a practice Of engaging in sexual relations for payment or benefits. Hear this, prostitution is sexual harassment, Sexual exploitation, often worse. You become in your mind what your client does or says. It is internally damaging and disgraceful as he uses you to learn various sex patterns What he can’t do with the girl he truly loves. From Backstairs Boogy to Deep Impact, from the Head Game to Arc de Triomp And from Ladder Loving to the Pinwheel, from Electric Slide to Passion Propeller He uses you like a public convenience – a toilet After all, he pays for your ungodly service. After being used as a sex-slave, You’ll still suffer spiritually – what a pity. Girl, remember when the act of sex takes place, There is a spiritual union. Brotherly, hear this, he that has sex with a prostitute Becomes one body with her. He leaves a part of his DNA in her. Something a condom can’t protect you against. Back to you, young girl. You think sex is just pleasurable You moan – f**k me hard, give it to me, Baby Oh, I’m enjoying it. Oh, I’ve almost reached orgasm Then you cum and he cums – loba’tan! You think it’s over, right? You may not know – but he might be using you to enhance his wealth And your insufficient glory is depleting. Bro, you have done it, ten rounds. Champion! But what has gone out of you If only you have a spiritual eye – then you will be sober. Your sperm has been saved inside a black and red ritual calabash She will use it to boost her fame. Bro, it is finished! Wait, you think it is over, right? What if you contract diseases – chlamydia, HIV and AIDS If things fall apart, you tend to suffer on earth And fire will burn you in heaven. Na me talk ham – so, think ham oooo Copyright @2019 E.T.H…AINA All right reserved: no part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any forms or by any means, electronically, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the poet -E.T.H…AINA (hercules_temitope@yahoo.com)/+2348184171204
E.T.H...AIN
When the Covenanter Walter Smith climbed the ladder to the scaffold and death, he turned to say goodbye to his relations and friends. Then he said: "Farewell all created enjoyments, pleasures and delights; farewell, sinning and suffering; farewell praying and believing, and welcome heaven and singing. Welcome, Joy in the Holy Ghost; welcome, Father, Son and Holy Ghost; into thy hands I commend my spirit!
Derek W.H. Thomas (How the Gospel Brings Us All the Way Home)
God himself had stretched his ladder from the heavens to the earth, so that his angels could ascend and descend amongst the lonely and brokenhearted. In that forsaken place, God had promised Jacob, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go. I tapped the ground next to my head. “Set the foot of your ladder right here, my Lord. Be with me and keep me.
Tessa Afshar (The Hidden Prince)
The vultures came in shifts, sentinels to the requiem. The topmost ridges were first to welcome the daylight. A falcon swooped through the valley, scattering its benediction. I was mesmerized by the sentry duty of the carrion birds. They watched to see that all was well on earth: that death took its allotted share of animals and in return left provisions. Below, on the steep slopes that chamfered the gorge, the yaks grazed. Lying in the long grasses, cold, calm and watchful, Léo studied every crag through his binoculars. I was less conscientious. Patience has its limits, and I had come to the end of mine when we reached the canyon. I was busy assigning each animal a rung on the social ladder of the kingdom. The snow leopard was the regent; her status reinforced by her invisibility. She reigned, and therefore had no need to show herself. The prowling wolves were knavish princes; the yaks, richer burghers, warmly attired; the lynxes were musketeers; the foxes country squires; the blue sheep and the wild donkeys were the general populace. The raptors represented the priests, hieratic masters of the heavens and of death. These clerics in plumed livery were not against the idea that things might bode ill for us.
Sylvain Tesson (The Art of Patience: Seeking the Snow Leopard in Tibet)
Getting It Right" Your ankles make me want to party, want to sit and beg and roll over under a pair of riding boots with your ankles hidden inside, sweating beneath the black tooled leather; they make me wish it was my birthday so I could blow out their candles, have them hung over my shoulders like two bags full of money. Your ankles are two monster-truck engines but smaller and lighter and sexier than a saucer with warm milk licking the outside edge; they make me want to sing, make me want to take them home and feed them pasta, I want to punish them for being bad and then hold them all night long and say I’m sorry, sugar, darling, it will never happen again, not in a million years. Your thighs make me quiet. Make me want to be hurled into the air like a cannonball and pulled down again like someone being pulled into a van. Your thighs are two boats burned out of redwood trees. I want to go sailing. Your thighs, the long breath of them under the blue denim of your high-end jeans, could starve me to death, could make me cry and cry. Your ass is a shopping mall at Christmas, a holy place, a hill I fell in love with once when I was falling in love with hills. Your ass is a string quartet, the northern lights tucked tightly into bed between a high-count-of-cotton sheets. Your back is the back of a river full of fish; I have my tackle and tackle box. You only have to say the word. Your back, a letter I have been writing for fifteen years, a smooth stone, a moan someone makes when his hair is pulled, your back like a warm tongue at rest, a tongue with a tab of acid on top; your spine is an alphabet, a ladder of celestial proportions. I am navigating the North and South of it. Your armpits are beehives, they make me want to spin wool, want to pour a glass of whiskey, your armpits dripping their honey, their heat, their inexhaustible love-making dark. I am bright yellow for them. I am always thinking about them, resting at your side or high in the air when I’m pulling off your shirt. Your arms of blue and ice with the blood running to make them believe in God. Your shoulders make me want to raise an arm and burn down the Capitol. They sing to each other underneath your turquoise slope-neck blouse. Each is a separate bowl of rice steaming and covered in soy sauce. Your neck is a skyscraper of erotic adult videos, a swan and a ballet and a throaty elevator made of light. Your neck is a scrim of wet silk that guides the dead into the hours of Heaven. It makes me want to die, your mouth, which is the mouth of everything worth saying. It’s abalone and coral reef. Your mouth, which opens like the legs of astronauts who disconnect their safety lines and ride their stars into the billion and one voting districts of the Milky Way. Darling, you’re my President; I want to get this right! Matthew Dickman, The New Yorker: Poems | August 29, 2011 Issue
Matthew Dickman
Lavender, at one snuff party, said she dreamed of growing flowers that soared to the sky, titan delphiniums, for if her mother was "up there," in the place called heaven, those tall blue blooming spires might form a ladder, allowing her mother to step down for a visit to earth.
Jeanette Lynes (The Apothecary's Garden)
If you want to overcome death itself, whose armor is sleep, dream, and dullness, you must climb from one step of awakening to the next. Imagine: the lowest step of this heavenly ladder is called "genius." What name shall we then give to the highest ones? They remain unknown to the multitudes and are considered to be legend
Gustav Meyrink
28:10And Jacob went out from Beer- sheba, and went toward Haran. 28:11And he lighted upon the place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took one of the stones of the place, and put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep. 28:12And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. 28:13And, behold, the LORD stood beside him, and said: ‘I am the LORD, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac. The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed.
Max Margolis (JPS Tanakh (student edition))
A monastery is heaven on earth. Let us therefore set our hearts on being like heavenly bodies ministering to the Lord. At times those who dwell in this heaven have hearts of stone. But at other times, through remorse they achieve solace, in such a manner that they keep away from arrogance or pride and they take away the weight of their toils with tears.
John Climacus (The Ladder of Divine Ascent)
What people do, and what they desire in their hearts, determines what level of the ladder they are on. Do they trust in God or the arm of flesh? Do they love God or the lusts of Babylon? Do they observe God’s law and word or the commandments of men? Do they release others from oppression or oppress others?
Avraham Gileadi (Isaiah Decoded: Ascending the Ladder to Heaven)
Is that where you’re going to sleep?” Muddy indicated Chancho’s saddle. “Sure. Good a spot as any to be blessed with my presence. Maybe I’ll even use a rock as a pillow and have visions of angels climbing back and forth on a ladder from heaven.” “Catholics are crazy.” Nena lowered the tailgate to the chuck wagon. “Besides, don’t angels have wings? Why would they need a ladder?” Chancho scratched his chin. “You know, that’s a good question. I’ll have to ask Jacob when I see him.
David Mark Brown (Fistful of Reefer)
While my approach has been academic, the truths I present here for the layperson, which are distilled from analyzing the writings of Isaiah, are far from academic—I consider them life giving. I invite you, the reader, to put them to the test, to see if they are not enlightening, empowering, and freeing to your spirit for that flight to heaven which God has invited every one of us to make.
Avraham Gileadi (Isaiah Decoded: Ascending the Ladder to Heaven)
Jehovah will smite Egypt, and by smiting heal: they will turn back to Jehovah, and he will respond to their pleas and heal them.” (Isaiah 19:22.)
Avraham Gileadi (Isaiah Decoded: Ascending the Ladder to Heaven)
I felt the superb iron of Barth’s paragraphs, his magnificent seamless integrity and energy in this realm of prose—the specifically Christian—usually conspicuous for intellectual limpness and dishonesty. “Man is a riddle and nothing else, and his universe, be it ever so vividly seen and felt, is a question.… The solution of the riddle, the answer to the question, the satisfaction of our need is the absolutely new event.… There is no way which leads to this event”: here I thought I had it, in “The Task of the Ministry,” but no, the passage, though ringing, did not have quite the ring impressed, three decades earlier, upon my agitated inner ear. Farther into the essay, I stumbled on a sentence, starred in the margin, that seemed to give Dale Kohler’s line of argument some justification: “In relation to the kingdom of God any pedagogy may be good and any may be bad; a stool may be high enough and the longest ladder too short to take the kingdom of heaven by force.” By force, of course: that was his blasphemy, as I had called it. The boy would treat God as an object, Who had no voice in His own revelation.
John Updike (Roger's Version: A Novel)
quiet. night. silence moving about while our minds weave in and out, dreaming our ways into tastes of something we cannot express. you come to us in dreams. of wheat stalks, of angels and ladders to heaven, of fat and thin cows, and blankets filled with forbidden foods descending while voices tell us to take and eat, to take the child and flee, to take heart. come to the windows of our dreams again now where night opens the portals and we resist no more your movings in our soul.
Len Freeman (Ashes and the Phoenix: Meditations for the Season of Lent)
Where to begin? I don’t even know how to ask. Too many tongues are mixed in my mouth. But at the crossing of these winds, very diligent, I immerse myself in the laws of heavenly grammar: I am learning the declensions and ascensions of silence. ... If it has been ordained that I pull out of here, I’ll try to descend rung by rung, I hold onto each one, carefully – but there is no end to the ladder, and already no time. All I can still do is fall into the world
Dan Pagis (Variable Directions: Selected Poetry)
The downloading or manifestation process in our soul, the truth consciousness, is the beginning of our Soul-realization process. Prayers, sincere devotion, dedication, willpower, curiosity, and intuition are the steps of the ladder toward the Soul-realization process.
Vishal Chipkar (Enter Heaven)