Stepping stone
These days young people don’t take much of an interest in religion, but more of my younger parishioners started to relate more actively to the temple after they saw me out there practicing [golf]. Priestly robes get in the way; they make me hard to approach. But when I visit a parishioner’s home—to conduct a memorial service, for example—I don’t jump into a difficult discourse on Buddhism. Instead, I might notice a set of clubs in the hallway and make some comment. Before long, we’re comparing handicaps, and from there I can talk about the state of mind you need in order to do anything in life well.
—Buddhist priest Shido
Takeda in Northwest, on why his 16th-century temple now has a putting green
The sheer excitement of knowing God
To stand embraced by the shadows of a friendly tree with the wind tugging at your coattail and the heavens hailing your heart, to gaze and glory and to give oneself again to God, what more could a man ask? Oh, the fullness, pleasure, sheer excitement of knowing God on earth. I care not if I never raise my voice again for Him, if only I may love Him, please Him.
—Jim Elliot in
The Journals of Jim Elliot
Looks are deceiving
Our modern church is filled with many people who look pure, sound pure, and are inwardly sick of themselves, their weaknesses, their frustration, and the lack of reality around them in the church. Our non-Christian friends feel either “that bunch of nice untroubled people would never understand my problems”; or the more perceptive pagans who know us socially or professionally feel that we Christians are either grossly protected and ignorant about the human situation or are out-and-out hypocrites who will not confess the sins and weakness our pagan friends know intuitively to be universal.
—Keith Miller in
The Taste of New Wine
Health hazard
Petty people are ugly people. They are people who have lost their vision. They are people who have turned their eyes away from what matters and focused, instead, on what doesn’t matter. The result is that the rest of us are immobilized by their obsession with the insignificant. It is time to rid the church of pettiness. It is time the church refused to be victimized by petty people. It is time the church stopped ignoring pettiness. It is time the church quit pretending that pettiness doesn’t matter.… Pettiness has become a serious disease in the Church of Jesus Christ—a disease which continues to result in terminal cases of discord, disruption, and destruction. Petty people are dangerous people because they appear to be only a nuisance instead of what they really are—a health hazard.
—Mike Yaconelli in
The Wittenburg Door
(Dec. 1984/Jan. 1985)
Anorexic Christians
Christians must remember that prayer is like the mortar that holds the bricks together, or the quiet pauses in a symphony. Without the mortar everything falls apart; without the quiet between the notes, no music. And without daily private prayer, Christians face spiritual anorexia.
—Mitch Finley in
U.S. Catholic (Feb. 1987)
No second causes
It is no use pretending we are broken before God if we are not broken in our attitude to those around us. God nearly always tests us through other people. There are no second causes for the Christian. God’s will is made known in His providences, and His providences are so often others with their many demands on us.
—Roy Hession in
The Calvary Road
Knowing God—loving God
Let us give our thoughts completely to knowing God. The more one knows him, the more one wants to know him, and since love is measured commonly by knowledge, then, the deeper and more extensive knowledge shall be, so love will be the greater, and, if love is great, we shall love him equally in suffering and consolation.
—Brother Lawrence in
The Practice of the Presence of God
No Cross To Bear?
A number of religious groups have climbed on the yuppie bandwagon. They tell us, “If you want anything bad enough, you just claim it and God will give it to you. He’s a good God, and He’s certainly a prosperous God. He owns the cattle on every hill. He’ll sell some and make it possible for you to enjoy whatever you really want in life.” Sounds so appealing, so right. But when we examine it closely we find that it is light-years removed from everything Jesus taught and modeled. The kingdom He represented and urged His followers to embrace was a kingdom altogether different from the me-ism world of today.
—Charles R. Swindoll in Living Above the Level of Mediocrity
