“But Christ has been here before us. He teaches us the way into and through the transition of death. As we face our inevitable end, with the prospect of pain and fear we cannot, as humans, avoid, let us look to him.”
“So, as a follower of Jesus I am doomed to be, again and again, that little seed that falls into the ground and dies. As I open myself to the stranger, to all the oppressed, and to the ways humans are changing the planet, my self-understanding will need to be reformed again and again.”
“For God so loved the world. . .
God does indeed love the world.
The world is God’s, entirely.”
“To a Pharisee who observed to perfection the purity laws, the idea of a bloody, naked Messiah, powerless and on display before everyone in his helplessness as he died, must have been beyond abhorrent. It must have been incomprehensible. But Paul had been protesting way too much. In his soul he had always been a Jesus-follower.”
“Personally, I have no interest in becoming the matriarch of nations. But I’m hard pressed to know what my deepest yearning would truly be. If God were to make a covenant with me and were to change my name — what do I want most in all the world?”
“Perhaps Perseverance will help me to lay aside some of the things that cause me grief so that I stretch into God’s presence. The Creator God’s love for me, for the particular human being that I am, is one of the most profound paradoxes I know. It is impossible to wrap my mind around it — even more impossible than wrapping my head around Mars.”
“In all these situations, awe is often a component of the experience. Our hearts are opened up, our minds are silenced, and we perceive a reality beyond the ordinary.”
“Where are you getting your “marching orders” from these days? Are you serving the needs of the small self, or are you working for God? It’s usually not an either-or issue so much as a complicated mish-mash.”
“Projecting evil onto others and then hoping that what we have imagined about them is an unclean spirit that can be somehow cast out of them is a way of pulling back and away from our neighbors. They become not quite human to us when we do this.”
“People need our voices and our understanding. And I really do believe that when they hear the call of Love they will respond. Their souls will leap for joy as they recognize our words. They may be frightened and angry as well — the call of Christ brings a profound reorientation — but they will recognize, and, hopefully, be changed.”