OUR UNIQUE PATH TO HOLINESS

'I cannot become holy by copying another's path. Like the novice in the desert, I must watch the elders and learn the shape and rhythm of being Christian from those who have walked further and worked harder; but then I have to take my own steps, and create a life that has never beeen lived before. At the Day of Juidgment, as we are often reminded, the question will not be why we failed to be someone else; I shall not be asked why I wasn't Martin Luther King or Mother Teresa, but why I wasn't Rowan Williams. The journey is always one that leads into more not less uniqueness; all to do once agan with the call to be persons, not individuals.'

Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes, p.95.

GOD'S POWER MADE PERFECT IN WEAKNESS

'Where on earth does the glory of God dwell in power? It is in people that are needy and at their end - people that have given up on believing that they can be the hero of their story or that their dreams of a designer life will deliver. So God abides - his power to strengthen sits over, rests upon, and meets with people in the lowly place of acknowledged weakness and need.'

Ste Casey, I prayed and nothing changed: What God is up to in the silence, p.114.

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE TODAY

'We are waiting until Easter becomes for this world a general event.'

Karl Barth in Wesley Hill, The Lord's Prayer: A Guide to Praying Our Father, p.37.

A WAITING PEOPLE?

'One good answer to the question "What sort of church are you? Who are you?" is to say, "We are a community of men and women who are waiting for Jesus to return". Not waiting passively, as if we just wait and never do anything; no, that would be nonsense! But waiting actively - working at our daily work, loving God, loving people, giving our lives for Jesus and his gospel, and all the time praying, "Your Kingdom come, Lord Jesus!" As we do so, we will never be satisfied by what this world offers, never too disappointed when we do not experience healing or reconciliation or happiness in this life, always keeping our hopes set on that great future day.'

Christopher Ash, Repeat the Sounding Joy: A daily Advent devotional on Luke 1-2, p.345. 

THE DANGERS OF NOT RECKONING WITH SUFFERING

'A Christian is a person who decides to face and live through suffering. If we do not make that decision, we are endangered on every side. A man or woman of faith who fails to acknowledge and deal with suffering becomes, at last, either a cynic or a melancholic or a suicide.' 

Eugene H Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, p.131.

THE BEST POETRY IS HONEST POETRY

'There is no literature in all the world that is more true to life and more honest than Psalms, for here we have warts-and-all religion. Every skeptical thought, every disappointing venture, every pain, every despair that we can face is lived through and integrated into a personal, saving relationship with God - a relationship that also has in it acts of praise, blessing, peace, security, trust, and love. 

Good poetry survives not when it is pretty or beautiful or nice but when it is true: accurate and honest. The psalms are great poetry and have lasted not because they appeal to our fantasies and our wishes but because they are confirmed in the intensities of honest and hazardous living.' 

Eugene H Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, p.69. 

THE PRACTICALITY OF THE PSALMS

'A psalm is not a lecture; it is a song. In a psalm we have the observable evidence of what happens when a person of faith goes about the business of believing and loving and following God. We don't have a rule book defining the action, we have a snapshot of players playing the game.' 

Eugene H Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, p.55.

THE SORROW OF NOT YET SEEING JESUS

'"Truly, truly, I say to you, ...you will be sorrowful," Jesus said. Well, ...we're sorrowful about lots of things, you and I, God knows. It goes with the territory, sorrow. We carry it about with us the way a snail carries it shell; it is one of the homes we live in - sorrow about our country and about our pillaged earth, sorrow that youth grows old and beauty fades. Sorrow about death - about all the undone things the dead leave behind them as we will leave undone things behind us too when our time comes, like a pair of old shoes broken in to to take us on some blessed journey we never got around to taking, maybe the most crucial journey of our lives. But as Christians we inherit this special refinement of sorrow that Jesus speaks of, this sorrow for connoisseurs - which is the sorrow of not seeing plainly the One we need most to see.' 

Frederick Buechner, 'A Little While' in A Room Called Remember, p.99. 

LIVING THE BIBLE

'I trust the Word of the Bible, and I want that Word to become, more and more, flesh in me. Maybe the question is not so much to read the Bible often but to let the Bible read me and reveal me to myself.'

Henri JM Nouwen, Love, Henri, p.220.

THE PROBLEM WITH BEING A SERVANT OF GOD

'We all want to be of service, but it is very hard to be a servant when we realize that that implies that we cannot determine the nature of our service ourselves.'

Henri JM Nouwen, Love, Henri: Letters on the Spiritual Life, p.33.