Reflections

People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.
~ D.A. Carson, 1946- , New Testament Scholar/Theologian

James 3:10-18

It is not that I’m so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.
~ Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, Theoretical Physicist

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
~ Carl Jung, 1875-1961, Swiss Psychiatrist

Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.
~ Martin Luther King Jr., A Knock at Midnight

The greatest temptation of our time is impatience, in its full original meaning: refusal to wait, undergo, suffer. We seem unwilling to pay the price of living with our fellows in creative and profound relationships.
~ Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, 1888-1973, The Christian Future

The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.
~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

We were created with this relational likeness and we long for relational connection because God exists in a relationship of love.
~ Richard Plass and James Cofield, co-authors of The Relational Soul

If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
~ T. S. Eliot

Reflections


When we can see the image of God where we don’t want to see the image of God, then we see with eyes not our own. ~ Richard Rohr

Consider in silence whatever any one says: speech both conceals and reveals the inner soul of man. ~ Cato the Younger, 95-46 BC, Roman Senator

The tongue [can] become the instrument of Satan himself. This is by no means to be thought of as something confined to what we would recognize as improper or questionable uses of the tongue. One day Peter took the Lord aside to give him the best advice he was capable of and to do so with the most loving and concerned intentions. But the Lord Jesus replied, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God …’ James’ warning, then, is timely. ~ J. Alec Motyer, 1924-2016, Pastor, Theologian

We are not to reflect on the wickedness of men but to look to the image of God in them, an image which, covering and obliterating their faults, an image which, by its beauty and dignity, should allure us to love and embrace them.
~ John Calvin, 1509-1564. Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 Vols

The best time for you to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust. ~ Josh Billings, 1818-1885, American Humorist

Like the God in whose image people are made, people are irreducible. There’s always more to a person – more stories, more life, more complexities – than we know. The human person, when viewed properly, is unfathomable, incalculable, and dear. Perversion always says otherwise.
~ David Dark, 1969- , The Sacredness of Questioning Everything

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
~ Inigo Montoya (on Vizzini’s use of the word “inconceivable”)