Filed under: quotes
My soul’s house is cramped. Expand it, so that you may enter in. It is in ruins. Restore it. It must offend your eyes. I confess and know it, but who will cleanse it? To whom shall I cry but to you? Clear me from hidden faults, O Lord.
- St. Augustine
Hungering for God: Selected Writings of Augustine
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So many people feel so overwhelmed and disempowered by the stresses of modern life that they convince themselves they can’t make a difference. So they don’t even try. They bury their talents in the ground and let their spirits wither on the vine of life. I hope they will bestir themselves at least to say every day as an anonymous old man did: “I don’t have the answers, life is not easy, but my heart is in the right place.”
- Marian Wright Edelman
Guide My Feet
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agape sacrifice is reduced to colored glass, vapid penance, and the tedium of ritual. Your footprints yet mark the crest of billowing seas but your joy fades upon the tablets of ordained prophets. Visit us again, Savior. Your children, burdened with disbelief, blinded by a patina of wisdom, carom down this vale of fear. We cry for you although we have lost your name.~Maya Angelou
Todays excerpt from My Utmost For His Highest… this really spoke to me today!
Being saved and seeing Jesus are not the same thing. Many people who have never seen Jesus have received and share in God’s grace. But once you have seen Him, you can never be the same. Other things will not have the appeal they did before.
You should always recognize the difference between what you see Jesus to be and what He has done for you. If you see only what He has done for you, your God is not big enough. But if you have had a vision, seeing Jesus as He really is, experiences can come and go, yet you will endure “as seeing Him who is invisible” ( Hebrews 11:27 ). The man who was blind from birth did not know who Jesus was until Christ appeared and revealed Himself to him (see John 9 ). Jesus appears to those for whom He has done something, but we cannot order or predict when He will come. He may appear suddenly, at any turn. Then you can exclaim, “Now I see Him!” (see John 9:25 ).
Jesus must appear to you and to your friend individually; no one can see Jesus with your eyes. And division takes place when one has seen Him and the other has not. You cannot bring your friend to the point of seeing; God must do it. Have you seen Jesus? If so, you will want others to see Him too. “And they went and told it to the rest, but they did not believe them either” ( Mark 16:13 ). When you see Him, you must tell, even if they don’t believe.
O could I tell, you surely would believe it!
O could I only say what I have seen!
How should I tell or how can you receive it,
How, till He bringeth you where I have been?
“Part of the hope of the time that we’re living in is that- yah, kings and presidents aren’t going to lead us to peace, but it’s the church, it’s the people of God that are set apart from the nations to be something different, to live something differently, to live in a way that fascinates the world.”
- Shane Claiborne
