Home > Work > Grace Notes: Daily Readings with a Fellow Pilgrim
1 " Novelist Reynolds Price said there is one sentence all humankind craves to hear: “The Maker of all things loves and wants me. "
― Philip Yancey , Grace Notes: Daily Readings with a Fellow Pilgrim
2 " Some things just have to be believed to be seen. "
3 " We do well to remember that the Bible has far more to say about how to live during the journey than about the ultimate destination. "
4 " A philosophy may explain difficult things, but has no power to change them. The gospel, the story of Jesus' life, promises change. "
5 " Church is a place where I can say, unashamedly, "I don't need to sin. I need another sinner. "
6 " I have marveled at, and sometimes openly questioned, the self-restraint God has shown throughout history, allowing the Genghis Khans and the Hitlers and the Stalins to have their way. But nothing - nothing - compares to the self-restraint shown that dark Friday in Jerusalem. "
7 " Sometimes God seemed as close as his wife or children. Sometimes he had no sense of God's presence, no faith to lean on. "God is wild, you know," he wrote. "We're not in charge. "
8 " and said, almost without thinking, “Well, of course, Philip, God was already present in the prison. I just had to make him visible.” I have often thought of that line from Joanna, which would make a fine mission statement for all of us seeking to know and follow God. God is already present, in the most unexpected places. We just need to make God visible. "
9 " Because of Jesus we need never question God's desire for intimacy. Does God really want close contact with us? Jesus gave up Heaven for it. "
10 " positioned myself. I once described the people I tend to hear from as “borderlanders,” those caught in a no-person’s-land between faith and disbelief. Some approach the church cautiously, attracted to Jesus but turned off by his followers. Some have fled the church due to bad experiences, yet still yearn for the consolation they felt there. I’ve spent time in the borderlands myself and want to honor those wandering on the edges, the misfits. "
11 " If it’s not setting you free and enlarging life, then it’s not Jesus’ message. If it doesn’t sound like good news, it’s not the gospel. "
12 " Suffering can never ultimately be meaningless, because God has shared it. "
13 " As Dorothy Day put it, “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least. "
14 " prayer incorporates the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of God’s grace. "
15 " In a letter to his brother, C. S. Lewis mentioned that he prayed every night for the people he was most tempted to hate, with Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini heading the list. In another letter he wrote that as he prayed for them, he meditated on how his own cruelty might have blossomed into something like theirs. He remembered that Christ died for them as much as for him, and that he himself was not “so different from these ghastly creatures. "
16 " When I pray, coincidences happen,” said Archbishop William Temple; “when I don’t, they don’t. "
17 " The Israelites give ample proof that signs may only addict us to signs, not to God. "
18 " The key is this: the main benefit of giving is in its effect on the giver. Yes, people in Africa and India need my financial help, as the fund-raising appeals urgently remind me. But in truth my need to give is every bit as desperate as their need to receive. "
19 " If God’s kingdom had a “No Oddballs Allowed” sign posted, none of us could get in. "
20 " God is present in the hungry, the homeless, the sick, and the imprisoned, as Jesus claimed in Matthew 25, and we serve God when we serve them. "