All Quotes By Tag: Church

“I stepped inside a church once, when it was raining really hard and I couldn’t get my umbrella open. It smelled like old people, and every little noise I made echoed really loudly. I remember everyone in the pews turning to stare at me funny, but that could have been because I interrupted their service. You know, by jumping up and down and screaming that God was burning me.”

“I believe in God because I believe in what I feel. And when I’m in church or praying, I feel loved. I feel safe. I feel like someone knows me.”

“I believe in love. I believe in the love Lucy shows me, the kind I’ll try hard to give back to her in full. I believe in things I can’t put into words, but things I know to be true. I believe in us. I believe in this. Amen.”

“Don’t try to tame the wild God”

“The church must suffer for speaking the truth, for pointing out sin, for uprooting sin. No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and therefore a society with so many sores twitches when someone has the courage to touch it and say: “You have to treat that. You have to get rid of that. Believe in Christ. Be converted.”

“The organist was almost at the end of the anthem’s long introduction, and as the crescendo increases the cathedral began to glitter before my eyes until I felt as if every stone in the building was vibrating in anticipation of the sweeping sword of sound from the Choir.The note exploded in our midst, and at that moment I knew our creator had touched not only me but all of us, just as Harriet had touched that sculpture with a loving hand long ago, and in that touch I sensed the indestructible fidelity, the indescribable devotion and the inexhaustible energy of the creator as he shaped his creation, bringing life out of dead matter, wresting form continually from chaos. Nothing was ever lost, Harriet had said, and nothing was ever wasted because always, when the work was finally completed, every article of the created process, seen or unseen, kept or discarded, broken or mended – EVERYTHING was justified, glorified and redeemed.”

“I don’t like to hear cut and dried sermons. No—when I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.”

“An entire nation shook under the power of one man’s [MLK’s] dream! Now if one dream can do that for our nation, imagine what a dream can do for the Church.”

“No Temple made by mortal human hands can ever compare to the Temple made by the gods themselves. That building of wood and stone that houses us and that many believe conceals the great Secret Temple from prying eyes, somewhere in its heart of hearts, is but a decoy for the masses who need this simple concrete limited thing in their lives. The real Temple is the whole world, and there is nothing as divinely blessed as a blooming growing garden.”

“The whole world is a theatre for the display of the divine goodness, wisdom, justice, and power, but the Church is the orchestra, as it were—the most conspicuous part of it; and the nearer the approaches are that God makes to us, the more intimate and condescending the communication of his benefits, the more attentively are we called to consider them.”

“Dysfunction comes when we intertwine the church and God and view them as one.”

“People are not being reached in the context of the body of Christ–they’re like newborn babies being left on a doorstep somewhere to feed and care for themselves.”

“God doesn’t act like the Church. No, instead, the Church must act like God.”

“The Lord doesn’t want anybody in His house who has to be dragged there.”

“If the universe does consist of a battle between the devil and God, the final analysis should conclude that religion would have been the devil’s most brilliant move and science, God’s.”