^{The gospel to me is simply irresistible.
~ Blaise Pascal}

Reflect, Resonate, Reevaluate, Respond

Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message. To see all that is offered us at the windows of the soul, and to reach out and receive what is offered, this is the art of living.
~ Malcolm Muggeridge, 1903-1990, British journalist, satirist

~~~~~~~~ Matthew 13:10-17 ~~~~~~~~

A good problem is something you don’t know how to solve. That’s what makes it a good puzzle and a good opportunity.
~ Paul Lockhart, 1961-, author of A Mathematician’s Lament

Speaking to people does not have the same personal intensity as listening to them. The question I put to myself is … “How many people have you listened to in Christ this week?”
~ Eugene Peterson, 1932-2018, American minister, author

The wise can change their minds, the stubborn, never.
~ Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804, German philosopher, enlightenment thinker

The needed change within us is God’s work, not ours. The demand is for an inside job, and only God can work from the inside. We cannot attain or earn this righteousness of the kingdom of God: it is a grace that is given.
~ Richard J. Foster, 1942- , author, theologian in the Quaker tradition

The kingdom is present not in grandiose accomplishments, but in showing practical love in humble ways, day after day, and in refusing to allow our failures and disappointments to hide God’s love from us. God invites us to share the divine emptiness. The divine emptiness might also be described as total vulnerability: the willingness to be hurt over and over again without loving less but more. That means never giving up on anyone, not even on ourselves. Of such is the kingdom of God.
~ Thomas Keating, 1923-2018, author, Meditations on the Parables of Jesus

^{The gospel to me is simply irresistible.
~ Blaise Pascal}

Reflect, Resonate, Reevaluate, Respond

I sometimes think that the very essence of the whole Christian position and the secret of a successful spiritual life is just to realize two things: I must have complete, absolute confidence in God and no confidence in myself.
~ D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones from Reflections: A Treasury of Daily Readings

The transformation from water to wine is of course meant by John to signify the effect that Jesus can have, can still have today, on people’s lives. He came, as he says later, that we might have life in all its fullness. You might want to pray through this story with your own failures and disappointments in mind – remembering that transformation only came when someone took Mary’s words seriously: Do whatever he tells you.
~ N. T. Wright, from John for Everyone: Part 1

Until you have given up your “self” to Him you will not have a real self.
~ C. S. Lewis, British writer and professor

If Christ is not all to you He is nothing to you. He will never go into partnership as a part Saviour of men. If He be something He must be everything, and if He be not everything He is nothing to you.
~ Charles Spurgeon, English Baptist minister

The journey has to feel like night because it leads to the unknown. If Christianity meant mere maintenance, then bewilderment or darkness would spell disaster. But . . . darkness is a condition of the Christian life.
~ Iain Matthew, from The Impact of God: Soundings from St. John of the Cross

To journey for the sake of saving our own lives is little by little to cease to live in any sense that really matters, even to ourselves, because it is only by journeying for the world’s sake – even when the world bores and sickens and scares you half to death – that little by little we start to come alive.
~ Frederick Buechner, pastor, author and theologian