To Be the Pen
My heart overflows with a pleasing theme; I address my verses to the King; my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe.
PSALM 45:1
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To Be the Pen
Just as a man uses the tongue as a tool with which he produces and forms words, so God uses our words, whether Gospels or prophetic books, as tools with which He Himself writes living words in our hearts. When one has put another's word and the sense of the words into the heart, this is not yet writing, but only the stylus poised over the tablet, which is then reduced to living letters, when God gives the increase and grants it to be efficacious and wise. This is something He can do very swiftly. Therefore, as he who waters and plants is nothing, but God who gives the increase (1 Corinthians 3:7), so he who has the stylus or is the stylus or puts it to the tablet is nothing, but He who writes, namely, the writer writing swiftly, the Holy Spirit. Therefore, O prophet, it is for you to utter and be the pen.
From First Lectures on the Psalms, on Psalm 45 (Luther's Works 10:212)
June 10
PSALM 45:1
+
To Be the Pen
Just as a man uses the tongue as a tool with which he produces and forms words, so God uses our words, whether Gospels or prophetic books, as tools with which He Himself writes living words in our hearts. When one has put another's word and the sense of the words into the heart, this is not yet writing, but only the stylus poised over the tablet, which is then reduced to living letters, when God gives the increase and grants it to be efficacious and wise. This is something He can do very swiftly. Therefore, as he who waters and plants is nothing, but God who gives the increase (1 Corinthians 3:7), so he who has the stylus or is the stylus or puts it to the tablet is nothing, but He who writes, namely, the writer writing swiftly, the Holy Spirit. Therefore, O prophet, it is for you to utter and be the pen.
From First Lectures on the Psalms, on Psalm 45 (Luther's Works 10:212)
June 10
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