Reflections

Until a Christian struggles with the issue of freedom, he or she will remain frightened, obsessive, and bound.
~ Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom

Whenever a new Christian comes into the church, I wince a bit, because I’m afraid that they will get the “religion disease,” that the “church virus” will kill off the joy and freedom Jesus purchased on the cross to give them.
~ Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom

If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong [or sin boldly], but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. … Do you think such an exalted Lamb paid merely a small price with a meager sacrifice for our sins? Pray hard for you are quite a sinner.
~ Martin Luther, Pastor-Theologian

There really is something neurotic about Christians who spend most of their time trying desperately to please a God who is already very pleased. They don’t have any freedom, and they sometimes take away the freedom of others.
~ Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom

Ted Bundy, the serial killer, after his arrest, could not fathom the fuss. What was the big deal? David Von Drehle quotes an exasperated Bundy in Among the Lowest of the Dead: “I mean, there are so many people.”

One R. Houwink, of Amsterdam, uncovered this unnerving fact: The human population of earth, arranged tidily, would just fit into Lake Windermere, in England’s Lake District.

How are we doing in numbers, we who have been alive for this most recent installment of human life? How many people have lived and died? “The dead outnumber the living, in a ratio that could be as high as 20 to 1”

On April 30, 1991 – on that one day – 138,000 people drowned in Bangladesh. At dinner I mentioned it to my daughter, who was then seven years old, that is was hard to imagine 138,000 people drowning. “No, it’s easy,” she said. “Lots and lots of dots, in blue water.” ~ Annie Dillard, The Wreck of Time


[No words should shake us up more, to the very core of our being than these: “I am a child of God”]


I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. ~ Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek


If they had a soci al gospel in the days of the prodigal son, somebody would have given him a bed and a sandwich and he never would have gone home.
~ Vance Havner, 1901-1986, Revivalist Preacher