Richard Sibbes on Being Well-Ordered

From the Puritan Richard Sibbes:

Having a well-ordered, uniform life, not consisting of fits and starts, shows a well-ordered heart; as in a clock, when the hammer strikes well, and the hand of the dial points well, it is a sign that the wheel are rightly set.

No related posts.

November 17, 2009 | Filed Under Productivity | 7 Comments 

Comments

7 Responses to “Richard Sibbes on Being Well-Ordered”

  1. Jason Hart on November 17th, 2009 2:34 pm

    Thanks Matt, that was great. Do you have a reference by any chance?

  2. Paul on November 17th, 2009 5:44 pm

    Chris Brauns has an interesting alternative angle.
    See his Don’t get too stressed out if there are messes around your church. . ..

    See esp. Prov 14:4: “Where there is no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come from the Lord.”

    Productivity has its price.

  3. Mason on November 17th, 2009 5:51 pm

    The following site links the quote to “The Bruised Reed” (pg 99 – not sure the edition):

    http://www.fireandknowledge.org/archives/2004/06/09/quotes-from-the-bruised-reed/

    It will one day be discovered that Sibbes was the first GTDer. Any day now a long-lost stack of his papers will be discovered with a post-it on top which says “@catechism”. :-)

  4. Matt on November 17th, 2009 7:17 pm

    Thanks for giving the reference, Mason.

    I might do a post sometime tackling both the angle Chris Braun’s post raises and the angle of “orderliness.” I think there is something important in both perspectives, and that they come together in an interesting way. It is true that “too controlled is out of control” (although I don’t think Sibbes is advocating for over-control here).

  5. Paul Adams on November 17th, 2009 8:49 pm

    I once heard the expression “chaordic” (chaos + order) suggesting that what appears to be out of order is really order unrealized. Much of my professional life has been to try and “connect the dots” and find unassuming relationships lurking behind the “mess” or those not readily apparent in the ordered systems of business.

  6. Joe Gilman on November 18th, 2009 9:44 am

    It oftentimes seems like the terms ‘well-ordered’ & ‘uniform’ are actually oxymorons with life. We must be careful to remember that God is a God of order, BUT he is also the God of spontaneity. We may suppose that our heart is ‘well-ordered’ but He has a tendency to shanghai us in a split second,revealing otherwise… and this doesn’t necessarily mean we are on the wrong path.

  7. Gary Horn on November 18th, 2009 10:00 am

    “The Bruised Reed” is an outstanding book for the soul that’s been battered by the world, the flesh and the devil…which is all of us.

Leave a Reply