Forgiveness Means

"At the time, I didn't know what forgiveness meant. I wouldn't really know what forgiveness meant for another year, until my pastor happened to spell it out in a sermon. He said that when you forgive, you bear the burden somebody has given you without holding them accountable." ~  Donald Miller

Deeper...

"The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it." ~ Henri J. M. Nouwen

Called to Cry and Die

"To call a local church into the mission of Jesus is to call its members into two behaviors. First we cry. Then we die. We let our hearts be broken with the things that break the heart of God. Then we die to the comfortable patterns of life that insulate us emotionally and geographically from those for whom Christ died." ~ Ben Campbell Johnson and Glenn McDonald (Imagining a Church in the Spirit)

Stuck in the Past

"Sometimes we are so stuck in a past that we cannot change, or so afraid of a future over which we have limited control, that we don’t really appreciate the present—the very moment before us. We worry about what happened or what will happen, and we forget about what is happening. We squander the one thing we have for certain—now." ~ Sandy Eisenberg Sasso

Rushing On...?

“One’s action ought to come out of an achieved stillness: not to be mere rushing on.” ~ D.H. Lawrence

Jesus' Resurrection Is the Beginning

"Jesus' resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.: ~   N. T. Wright

A Waiting Person

"A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us." ~ Henri J. M. Nouwen

Mutual Empathy

“Mutual empathy is the great unsung human gift.” ~ Jean Baker Miller

If God Is For You...

"Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing!" ~ John Wesley

Compassion Costs

"Compassion costs. It is easy enough to argue, criticize and condemn, but redemption is costly, and comfort draws from the deep. Brains can argue, but It takes heart to comfort." ~ Samuel Chadwick

Duty of the Moment

"The duty of the moment is what you should be doing at any given time, in whatever place God has put you. You may not have Christ in a homeless person at your door, but you may have a little child. If you have a child, your duty of the moment may be to change a dirty diaper. So you do it. But you don’t just change that diaper, you change it to the best of your ability, with great love for both God and that child…. There are all kinds of good things you can do, but whatever they are, you have to realize that there is always the duty of the moment to be done. And it must be done, because the duty of the moment is the duty of God." ~ Catherine Doherty

God's Call

"God’s call, vocation, is twofold. God calls us saying, ‘Come, follow me.’ We arrive and then we must follow. We find but must go on seeking. God’s call is a never-ending call, to the unknown, to adventure, to follow him in the night, in solitude. It is a call incessantly to go further, and further. For it is not static but dynamic (as creation also is dynamic) and reaching him means going on and on. God’s call is like the call to become an explorer; it is an invitation to adventure." ~ Ernesto Cardenal

Disturbers of the Peace

"Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators”…. Things are different now. The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are." ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Theology of Progress

"The theology of progress forces us to act before we are ready. We speak before we know what to say. We respond before we feel the truth of what we know. In the process, we inadvertently create suffering, heaping imprecision upon inaccuracy, until we are all buried under a mountain of misperception. But Sabbath says, Be still. Stop. There is no rush to get to the end, because we are never finished. Take time to rest, and eat, and drink, and be refreshed. And in the gentle rhythm of that refreshment, listen to the sound the heart makes as it speaks the quiet truth of what is needed." ~ Wayne Muller

Relationship

"The soul’s primary function is relationship, and the relationship between the ego and the inner world is the most important relationship of all, for if this is broken, relationships with other people and God are impossible. Without the living connection to ourselves that the soul makes possible, we are like a ship without a rudder, or like an uprooted tree." ~ John Sanford

Trust the Creator

"All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Response...

“It is not my ability, but my response to God's ability, that counts.” ~ Corrie ten Boom

Pray Daily

“But we need to pray daily for humility and honesty to see these sinful attitudes for that they really are, and then for grace and discipline to root them out of our minds and replace them with thoughts pleasing to God.” ~ Jerry Bridges

Meaningless...Unless...

"The gospel is absurd and the life of Jesus is meaningless unless we believe that He lived, died, and rose again with but one purpose in mind: to make brand-new creation. Not to make people with better morals but to create a community of prophets and professional lovers, men and women who would surrender to the mystery of the fire of the Spirit that burns within, who would live in ever greater fidelity to the omnipresent Word of God, who would enter into the center of it all, the very heart and mystery of Christ, into the center of the flame that consumes, purifies, and sets everything aglow with peace, joy, boldness, and extravagant, furious love. This, my friend, is what it really means to be a Christian." ~  Brennan Manning

End the Silence...

"Speaking to each other involves risk. It’s often difficult to extend ourselves, to let down our guard, especially with those we fear or avoid…. Strangely, what we say is not that important. We have ended the silence that keeps us apart." ~ Margaret Wheatley

Prayer for Others

"Lord Jesus, help us to be kind and tender-hearted to one another, forgiving one another, as God, for your sake, has forgiven us. As the first martyr prayed to you for his murderers, O Lord, so we fall before you and pray; forgive all who hate and maltreat us and let not one of them perish because of us, but may all be saved by your grace, O God, the all-bountiful." ~ Eastern Orthodox Prayer

Forgiveness

"Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Great Faith

"Great faith, like great strength in general, is revealed by the ease of its workings. Most of what we think we see as the struggle of faith is really the struggle to act as if we had faith when in fact we do not." ~ Dallas Willard

Purity of Heart

"It is impossible to live pure lives until we have pure hearts. Many people today are trying to put the cart before the horse. They are teaching purity of motives, desires, and actions to old, deceitful hearts! No wonder we have ended up such moral failures, in spite of our vaunted knowledge and psychological approaches." ~ Billy Graham

Powerlessness...

"I'm fairly convinced that the Kingdom of God is for the broken-hearted. You write of 'powerlessness.' Join the club, we are not in control. God is. " ~ Fred Rogers

His Strength

"Trying to do the Lord's work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you. " ~ Corrie ten Boom

Perplexity & Distress

"Set free, O Lord, the souls of your servants from all restlessness and anxiety. Give us that peace and power which flow from you. Keep us in all perplexity and distress, that upheld by your strength and stayed on the rock of your faithfulness we may abide in you now and evermore." ~ Francis Paget

Meaning of My Life

"Only when we see ourselves in our true human context, as members of a race which is intended to be one organism and “one body,” will we begin to understand the positive importance not only of the successes but of the failures and accidents in our lives. My successes are not my own. The way to them was prepared by others. The fruit of my labors is not my own: for I am preparing the way for the achievements of another…. Therefore the meaning of my life is not to be looked for merely in the sum total of my achievements. It is seen only in the complete integration of my achievements and failures with the achievements and failures of my own generation, and society, and time. It is seen, above all, in my own integration in Christ." ~ Thomas Merton

Life Is a Mess

"Life is a mess. And theology must be lived out in the midst of that mess." ~ Charles Colson

Bound Together

“God’s life and our lives are bound together, as a vine with branches, as a body with members. So corporate are we that no one can give a cup of cold water to the least person in the world without giving it to God.” ~ Rufus Jones

Standard of Behavior

"We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us. We have fulfilled the danger of this by making our personal pride and greed the standard of our behavior toward the world—to the incalculable disadvantage of the world and every living thing in it." ~ Wendell Berry

Less Suffering in Others

“No, it is not easy to grasp that the only way to suffer less is to love more, especially in politics. At the risk of seeming weaker. Yes, at the risk of seeming weaker I shall not build an atomic bomb, I shall not give my enemy a whack in the eye to show that I am stronger, I shall not make war, I shall not squash my tomatoes and apples with a tractor to keep the price up, I shall not destroy forests to build factories, I shall not poison the sea. If love is the rule of my politics and the thrust of my action, yes, I really shall suffer less and I shall cause less suffering in others.” ~ Carlo Carretto

Opportunity to Do Good

Have I been zealous to do, and active in doing, good? That is, have I embraced every probable opportunity of doing good, and preventing, removing, or lessening evil? Have I pursued it with my might? Have I thought anything too dear to part with, to serve my neighbor? ~ John Wesley

Love Even If It is Faultily

"I find that it is better to love badly and faultily than not to try to love at all. God does not have to have perfect instruments, and the Holy One can use our feeble and faltering attempts at love and transform them. My task is to keep on trying to love, to be faithful in my continuing attempt, not necessarily to be successful." ~ Morton Kelsey

God at Work in Our Lives

"Sanctification is God at work in our lives: shaping our characters, tutoring our minds, strengthening our wills, and enabling us to satisfy His demands and fulfill our potential as His children." ~ James Earl Massey