All Quotes By Tag: Jesus

“And now brothers, I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without him is the real death, that to die with him the only life?”

“As obvious as it is, then, Jesus is bigger than any one religion. He didn’t come to start a new religion, and he continually disrupted whatever conventions or systems or establishments that existed in his day. He will always transcend whatever cages and labels are created to contain him, especially the one called ‘Christianity’.”

“He loved the darkness and the mystery of the Catholic service–the tall priest strutting like a carrion crow and pronouncing magic in a dead language, the immediate magic of the Eucharist bringing the dead back to life so that the faithful could devour Him and become of Him, the smell of incense and the mystical chanting.”

“Don’t envy results, seek to know the process. Don’t want a man’s glory till you hear his story. Sometimes what you see is not even the destination, it’s just the current location but the result of a long journey. God sometimes would bring you to a point where it is much more than the gift…He captures your heart. My friend, not everything in the kingdom is a gift, somethings are rewards.”

“Life did come with a manual.”

“If not from eternal separation from God, what exactly are we saving people from?”

“If I had the authority to pick and choose who gets to know Christ as Savior, that would make me God. Thank the one true God that I am not.”

“Let your faith be in the Lord Jesus and not in your strength, to fight against ungodliness and injustice in the society.”

“It hardly matters how the body of Jesus came to be missing because in the last analysis what convinced the people that he had risen from the dead was not the absence of his corpse but his living presence. And so it has been ever since.”

“Dad?” Jesus asked.”Yes son?” God replied.”Why does man have so many religions?” Jesus asked.”It’s because they all have different beliefs,” God said.”Why?” Jesus asked.”It’s because they have a free mind. It’s up to them to choose what they wish to believe in,” God said.”But, what if they forget about you?” Jesus asked his dad.God replied, “Even though they may forget about me, they will always remember me. Would you ever forget me?” God asked.”Never!” said Jesus, “How could I ever forget my father?””Exactly! And so it is for them,” God added.”

“There at the cross, we see all pain and darkness conquered in such a way that it is defeated forever. Not by disregarding it. Not by denying it. But by giving value even to our tears. By loving everything about us, including our very worst hurts.”

“How do you wipe away pain? You don’t. You put in tenderness, compassion and joy. You cling to hope and then you offer everything to God. And you wait, with faith you see all things anew – light shines out from darkness, happiness grows through every pain, and all things become indeed so very beautiful in His time.”

“Of course, Mary Magdalene would have very little tolerance for the Christian platitudes and vapid optimism that seem to swirl around these kinds of tragic events. Those platitudes are tempting, but they’re nothing but luxuries for people who’ve never had demons (or at least have never admitted to them). But equally, she would reject nihilism, or the idea that there is no real meaning in life or death – ideas present in so much of postmodernity. Those ideas, too, are luxuries, but they are for those who have never been freed from demons.”

“My former bishop Allan Bjorberg once said that the greatest spiritual practice isn’t yoga or praying the hours or living in intentional poverty, although these are all beautiful in their own way. The greatest spiritual practice is just showing up. And Mary Magdalene is the patron saint of just showing up. Showing up, to me, means being present to what is real, what is actually happening. Mary Magdalene didn’t necessarily know what to say or what to do or even what to think when she encountered the risen Jesus. But none of that was nearly as important as the fact that she was present and attentive to him.”

“The Kingdom of God is a tricky concept, and I was always taught it referred to our heavenly reward for being good, which, now that I actually read the Bible for myself, makes very little sense. Others say that the Kingdom of God is another way of talking about the church, and still others say that it’s the dream God has for the wholeness of the world, a dream being made true little by little among us right here, right now. My answer? All of the above.”