^{To value one another is our greatest safety, and
to indulge in fear and contempt is our gravest error.
~ Marilynne Robinson}

Reflect, Resonate, Reevaluate, Respond

Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.
~ Frederick Buechner, 1926-2022, from Beyond Words

No shortcomings of other people cause us to be more intolerant than those which are caricatures of our own.
~ Franz Grillparzer, 1791-1872, Austrian writer & dramatist

Matthew 5:21-24

The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves.
~ Charles Cayton Colton

Stop for one whole day every week, and you will remember what it means to be created in the image of God, who rested on the seventh day not from weariness but from complete freedom. The clear promise is that those who rest like God find themselves free like God, no longer slaves to the thousand compulsions that send others rushing toward their graves.
~ Barbara Brown Taylor, 1951- , Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith

Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self.
~ David Foster Wallace, from This Is Water

Authentic faith leads us to treat others with unconditional seriousness and to a loving reverence for the mystery of the human personality. Authentic Christianity should lead to maturity … It should fashion whole men and women living lives of love and communion. False, manhandled religion produces the opposite effect. … it draws us away from reality and God.
~ Brennan Manning, 1934-2013. Speaker

_{Blessed are they who have no
locks on their door.
~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky}

Reflect, Resonate, Reevaluate, Respond

Being salt and light demands two things: we practice purity in the midst of a fallen world and yet we live in proximity to this fallen world. If you don’t hold up both truths in tension, you invariably becomes useless and separated from the world God loves.
~ David Kinnaman, 1973- , president of Barna group, author, from unchristian

We should not ask, “What is wrong with the world?” for that diagnosis has already been given. Rather, we should ask, “What has happened to the salt and light?”
~ John Stott, 1921-2011, Anglican priest & theologian

Matthew 5:9-13

The men and women who are truly filled with the light are those who have gazed deeply into the darkness of their own imperfect existence.
~ Brennan Manning, from The Ragamuffin Gospel

I make it my rule, to lay hold of light and embrace it, wherever I see it, though held forth by a child or an enemy.
~ Jonathan Edwards, 1703-1758, theologian, philosopher

Yet even of [the souls as have the catholic faith and seem to have good works in the church of God], it is said, ‘Five are wise, and five are foolish.’
~ Augustine of Hippo, from The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture

If you were accused of being a Christian would there be enough evidence to convict you?
~ Anonymous

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
~ Bruce Lee, 1940-1973, martial artist, actor, filmmaker