Reflections

Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words.
~ Roy T. Bennett

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Jack Taylor put it this way: “an idol is something you have to check with before you say yes to God”.
~ Kris Vallotton, Heavy Rain: Renew the Church, Transform the World

The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver’s watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting.
~ Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
~ Anne Lamott, 1954-, Author

Whatever controls us is our lord. The person who seeks power is controlled by power. The person who seeks acceptance is controlled by acceptance. We do not control ourselves. We are controlled by the lord of our lives.
~ Rebecca Pippert, Out of the Saltshaker and Into the World

Your pain could be God prying open your life and heart to remove a gift of His that you’ve been holding on to more dearly than Him.
~ Tullian Tchividjian

When people say, “I know God forgives me, but I can’t forgive myself,” they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important than God’s.
~ Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods

This Sunday’s readings: Acts 19:23-41

Reflections

Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words.
~ Roy T. Bennett

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In the choir of life, it’s easy to fake the words—but someday each of us will have to sing solo before God.
~ Michael P. Green, 1947-

“Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead,” The Misfit continued, “and He shouldn’t have done it. He’s thrown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left, the best way you can, by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. … No pleasure but meanness,” he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.
~ Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Reading ought to be an act of homage to the God of all truth. We open our hearts to words that reflect the reality he has created or the greater reality which he is. Christ, the incarnate Word, is the Book of Life in whom we read God.
~ Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front–
~ G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), The Man Who Was Thursday

This Sunday’s readings: Acts 17:16-34