Reflect, Resonate, Reevaluate, Respond

Dangers bring fears, and fears more dangers bring.
~ Richard Baxter, 1615-1691, English Puritan leader

You can have no influence over those for whom you have underlying contempt.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Psalm 123 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The absence of tumult, more than its presence, is an enemy of the soul. God meets you in your weakness, not in your strength. He comforts those who mourn, not those who live above desperation. He reveals Himself more often in darkness than in the happy moments of life.
~ Dan B. Allender, The Cry of the Soul: How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Questions about God

The everlasting covenant which God has made with Jesus, and through Jesus with all His beloved people, individually, is a strong ground of consolation amidst the tremblings of human hope, the fluctuations of creature things, and the instability of all that earth calls good.
~ Octavius Winslow, 1808-1878, Non-conformist Minister

The line between good and evil does not lie between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ between the West and the rest, between Left and Right, between rich and poor. That fateful line runs down the middle of each of us, every human society, every individual. This is not to say that all humans, and all societies, are equally good or bad; far from it. Merely that we are all infected and that all easy attempts to see the problem in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’ are fatally flawed.
~ N. T. Wright, professor of Early Christianity at the University of St. Andrews

God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.
~ Augustine, 354-430, Theologian, Philosopher

Reflect, Resonate, Reevaluate, Respond

One of the afflictions of pastoral work has been to listen, with a straight face, to all the reasons people give for not going to church.
~ Peterson, Eugene H., A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

Psalm 122

Only the person who is completely safe can understand that judgment is good news.
~ Fleming Rutledge, 1937- , Why Did Jesus Choose The Cross?, Episcopal Priest

Only our concept of time makes it possible for us to speak of the Day of Judgment by that name; in reality it is a constant court in perpetual session.
~ Franz Kafka, 1883-1924, Writer

Christians are not mere wayfarers en route to the next life, but rather pioneers of God’s kingdom in advance, a sign of what will follow. By living out lives of grace in a spoiled environment, we point forward to a time of restoration.
~ Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace Study Guide, Zondervan

The kingdom is not an exclusive, well-trimmed suburb with snobbish rules about who can live there. No, it is for a far larger, homelier, less self-conscious caste of people who understand they are sinners because they have experienced the yaw and pitch of moral struggle.
~ Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

We structure our churches and maintain them so as to shield us from God and to protect us from genuine religious experience… The adult members of churches today rarely raise serious religious questions for fear of revealing their doubts or being thought of as strange. There is an implicit conspiracy of silence on religious matters in the churches. This conspiracy covers up the fact that the churches do not change lives or influence conduct to any appreciable degree.
~ Clyde Reid, 1967- , Pastoral Counselor, writer, The God Evaders

Knowledge, not improved and well employed, will only increase our condemnation at the last day.
~ J. C. Ryle, 1816-1900, Anglican Bishop