THE WISDOM OF EXPERIENCE

'...because my mother in particular took a lively part in church affairs, I never from my earliest age assumed that churchgoers were becessarily morally superior to other people, since experience showed me they were not.' 

PD James, Time to be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography, p.87. 

CHRISTIANS & COCKROACHES

'....Christians are like cockroaches. We can survive anything by the grace of God.' 

Mark Dever, God and Politics: Jesus' Vision for Society, State and Government, p.29. 

THE HOLY SPIRIT

'The Holy Spirit has been called, "the Lord, the giver of life," and drawing their power from that source, saints are essentially life-givers. To be with them is to become more alive.'

Frederick Buechner in Rebecca Konydyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices, p.57.

A CHRISTIAN

'...a hallelujah from head to foot...'
Augustine of Hippo in Os Guiness, God in the Dark, p.48.  

CHRISTIANS

'The good news breaks into a world where the news has been so bad for so long that when it is good nobody hears it much except for a few. And who are the few that hear it? They are the ones who labor and are heavy-laden like everybody else but who, unlike everyone else, know that they labor and are heavy-laden. They are the last people you might expect to hear it, themselves the bad jokes and stooges and scarecrows of the world, the tax collectors and whores and misfits. They are the poor people, the broken people, the ones who in terms of the world's wisdom are children and madmen and fools. They have cut themselves shaving. Rich or poor, successes or failures as the world counts it, they are the ones who are willing to believe in miracles because they know it will take a miracle to fill the empty place inside them where grace and peace belong with grace and peace.'

Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth, p.70.

CHRISTIANS

'We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Here again we come up against what I have called the "intolerable compliment." Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life - the work he loves, though in a different fashion as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child - he will take endless trouble - and would, doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentinent. One can imagine a sentinent picture, after being rubbed and scraped and recommenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumbnail sketch whose making were over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for uis a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wising not for more love but for less.'

CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain, p.28.

SIN & CHRISTIANS

'If we are not saying no in ways that bring us to our knees to seek God's enabling power, then it's likely that we are not standing against the sinful system of the world as we ought.'

Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, p.357.

CHRISTIANS

'Somehow or other, and with the best of intentions, we have shown the world the typical Christian in the likeness of a crashing and rather ill-natured bore - and this in the Name of One who assuredly never bored a soul in those thirty-three years during which He passed through the world like a flame.'

Dorothy L Sayers, 'The Dogma is the Drama' in Creed or Chaos? p.24.

FENCES

'Of all the people in the world, perhaps we religious folk are the most fond of fences. They make us feel secure, they define for us what is and what is not acceptable, they motivate and protect us, and they help us keep score for ourselves and on others. However, sheep are not best tended with fences but by a relationship with a good shepherd. One of the marks of Christian maturity is the ability to find freedom in Christ and live a life of love.'

Tom Hovestol, Extreme Righteousness: Seeing ourselves in the pharisees, p.155.

BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO MOURN

'Who then are the mourners? The mourners are those who have caught a glimpse of God's new day, who ache with all their being for that day's coming, and who break out into tears when confronted with its absence. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm of peace there is no one blind and who ache whenever they see someone unseeing. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one hungry and who ache whenever they see someone starving. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one falsely accused and who ache whenever they see someone imprisoned unjustly. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one who fails to see God and who ache whenever they see someone unbelieving. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one who suffers oppression and who ache whenever they see someone beat down. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one without dignity and who ache whenever they see someone treated with indignity. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm of peace there is neither death nor tears and who ache whenever they see someone crying tears over death. The mourners are aching visionaries.'

Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, p.85.

CHRISTIANS

'...aching visionaries...'
Nicholas Wolterstorff in Edward T. Welch, Depression: A Stubborn Darkness, p.250.