You accuse me of eating with sinners. You are absolutely right. That is precisely what I do. But as a matter of fact I not only sit down and eat with sinners, I rush down the road, shower them with kisses and drag them in that I might eat with them. It is much worse than you imagined!
- Kenneth Bailey, Jacob & The Prodigal
K. Bailey Paraphrasing Jesus Responding to the Pharisees
September 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Explain or Change?
September 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Many teachers of the world have tried to explain everything – they have changed little or nothing. Jesus explained little and changed everything.
- E. Stanley Jones
Love Can Make It Beautiful
August 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Duty does not have to be dull. Love can make it beautiful and fill it with life.
- Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton On Being Transformed Into Love
August 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment
My only desire is to give myself completely to the action of this infinite love Who is God, Who demands to transform me into Himself secretly, darkly, in simplicity, in a way that has no drama about it and is infinitely beyond everything spectacular and astonishing, so is its significance and its power.
- Thomas Merton
God Teaches Goodness By Grace
August 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment
One of the hardest things to swallow is that God even teaches goodness and truth by confronting us with evil and falsity. But the way He teaches us is not by the evil or the lie, but by the grace He gives us at the same time to react against it and to turn from His hidden truth.
- Thomas Merton
The Next Christians’ Focus Has Changed
August 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Their focus has moved from self to others; from problems to solutions; from failure to redemption; from brokenness to restoration. They recognize the broken, weak, fallen, and corrupt but can’t leave them in that condition–they are moved to change things. The next Christians are offering a new way forward–a way to act, live, and bring others along with them into the new reality of how things ought to be.
- Gabe Lyons
Solitude: To Disappear Into God
August 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment
“Meanwhile, for myself, I have only one desire and that is the desire for solitude-to disappear into God, to be submerged in His peace, to be lost in the secret of His Face.”
- Thomas Merton
Oh To Do Things For Love, and Love Alone
August 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Not to demand that what I do should immediately show some result that I can appreciate; not to want to esteem anything that I do, or do anything because it will make me think I am something; but to only do things for love, and love alone. This is real obscurity, because the values loved by God’s infinite love (the love that is so perfect that it is its own object) are absolutely incomprehensible to me.
- Thomas Merton
“If We Would Only Keep Our Hands Off The Cup”
August 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment
We are drunkards and maniacs, we snatch the cup in our wild and feeble and helpless and shaking hands, and the cup falls down and the drink spills and we die of thirst. If we would only keep our hands off the cup, God would give us to drink from it, Himself holding the cup, which we are too sick and weak to take without spilling.
- Thomas Merton
Only Love Can Drive Out Hate
August 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.
- Martin Luther King Jr
