“I am convinced that God cares far less about any particular position I hold than about the way I engage the people around me. Indeed, Jesus criticized the Pharisees for adopting a right and wrong (dualistic) approach to religion.”
“Indeed, we all suffer somehow or somewhere in life, and if not direct suffering for ourselves, love of others causes us to suffer, as we watch those we care about suffer so terribly. Suffering is elemental to the broken world, and we cling to the hope that one day, as Scripture promises, every tear will be wiped clean away.”
“We’re not talking mere drizzle, here, as in worry yourself not, for the winds will shift and the sun will soon shine. His words capture the despondency of a long and slow depression – clinical or otherwise – real suffering.”
“Running in the rain may not sound like your idea of fun, but a southern summer rain is warm and lonely in that lovely sort of way. I ran, and the drizzle fell to silence, like snow in winter, the graceful hush stilling both ocean and soul. I ran, and thought only of beauty and love and God, of friends and grace and kindness, of the past and present and future.”
“Imagine that, a God who wants to please you, who wants you to be happy. Not happy as in giddy, but happy as in fulfilled, or connection.”
“Lamentation is about the journey and not the destination. There is no point to Job other than the fact that he felt safe enough with God and his friends to express feelings no person should ever find themselves in the position of needing to express.”
“I find myself in a holding pattern, one I suspect to be of God’s making, and I would like to talk to God about it. God must know more than s/he is letting on.”
“Early death is senseless, or at least not part of the plan. We were lovingly created to live, not to die. Early death is an extension of the curse (whatever that may mean to you). The shroud across humanity.”
“You enter a dark tomb expecting death, only to find the tomb illuminated with truth. Truth, as in a state of seeing. Or the posture of the soul. Pilate resisted truth, as expressed in his flippantly exclaimed rhetorical question, What is truth? Jesus had already answered the question, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.”‘
“John’s portrayal of Jesus washing feet is that of an artist, almost surreal with imagery more than depiction. John included this whisper of a story in substitution of the Maundy Thursday institution of the Holy Eucharist found in the other Gospels.”