At my age days dissolve like salt in water; the day's gone and I don't even know what I've done with the hours.
Jesus reserved his hardest words for the hidden sins of hypocrisy, pride, greed and legalism.
The rubber hits the road when we try to show grace to a person most unlike us, even someone morally offensive.
We in the church have humility and contrition to offer the world, not a formula for success. Almost alone in our success-oriented society, we admit that we have failed, are failing, and always will fail.
Eugene Peterson points out that "the root meaning in Hebrew of salvation is to be broad, to become spacious, to enlarge. It carries the sense of deliverance from an existence that has become compressed, confined and cramped. " God wants to set free, to make it possible for us to live open and loving lives with God and our neighbors. "I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free," wrote the psalmist.
We tend to think, 'Life should be fair because God is fair. ' But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life- by expecting constant good health for example- then I set myself up for crashing disappointment.
The world says you gain your life by getting more and more and more and more, but Jesus says, 'No, that leads to death. You get it back by giving it away and when you give it away you get it back. '
Familiarity with any great thing removes our awe of it.
It is good for a man to invite his ghosts into his warm interior, out of the wild night, into the firelight, out of the howling dark.
From the metaphysical point of view there is nothing that can touch the formless except the art of music which in itself is formless.
Chicago Cubs fans are ninety percent scar tissue.