Tuesday, September 21, 2010

". . . within the silences of the souls of men an eternal drama is ever being enacted, in these days as well as in others.  And on the outcome of this inner drama rests, ultimately, the outer pageant of history.  It is the drama of the Hound of Heaven baying relentlessly upon the track of man.  It is the drama of the lost sheep wandering in the wilderness, restless and lonely, feebly searching, while over the hills comes the wiser Shepherd.  For His is a shepherd's heart, and He is restless until He holds His sheep in His arms." ---Thomas Kelly in A Testament of Devotion


 

"At the point of our deepest betrayal, when we had run our farthest from him and gotten so lost we could never find our way home, God came and died to rescue us.  You have never been loved like this.  He has come to save you in every way a person can be saved.  That is God's heart toward you." ---John Eldredge in Epic

"The irony is that while God doesn't need us but still wants us, we desperately need God but don't really want Him most of the time.  He treasures us and anticipates our departure from this earth to be with Him—and we wonder, indifferently, how much we have to do for Him to get by.” ---Francis Chan in Crazy Love

"We need to view it [time] as a resource.  It's always there, but like any other resource, it can be put to good use or it can be wasted.  But there's one big difference  between this resource and others: we can't save it, store it up, stockpile it, or hoard it.  We can't turn it on or off, and we can't replace it.  We're forced to spend it minute by minute.  and once we spend it, we can't retrieve it.  That's why the way we spend our time is the way we measure the quality of our lives.  Time is life. ---Hal Urban in Life's Greatest Lessons: 20 Things That Matter

"It must be admitted that we are now a great distance—not only in practice but even in theory—from the fellowship of universal witness.  Millions are merely back-seat Christians, willing to be observers of a performance which the professionals put on, ready to criticize or to applaud, but not willing even to consider the possibility of real participation.  Here is the fundamental weakness of the contemporary Church.  Millions claim to have some sort of connection with the Church, but it is not a connection of involvement.  The result is bound to be superficiality.  Whatever the nature of the situation, only the involved ever really know anything thoroughly.” ---Elton Trueblood in The Company of the Committed, 1961