#christianity

The essential point of view of Christianity is sin. ↗

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

#essential #point #point of view #sin #view

No Christian can be a pessimist, for Christianity is a system of radical optimism. ↗

— William Ralph Inge

#christianity #optimism #pessimist #radical #system

Strength was the virtue of paganism; obedience is the virtue of Christianity. ↗

— David Hare

#obedience #paganism #strength #virtue

Peter's destiny lay along a different path from John's. And your calling is unlike anyone else's. But the call remains the same: "Follow Me! ↗

— Charles R. Swindoll

#jesus-christ #leadership #peter #purpose #leadership

Debarred from public worship, David was heartsick. Ease he did not seek, honour he did not covet, but the enjoyment of communion with God was an urgent need of his soul; he viewed it not merely as the sweetest of all luxuries, but as an absolute necessity, like water to a stag. Like the parched traveler in the wilderness, whose skin bottle is empty, and who finds the wells dry, he must drink or die – he must have his God or faint. His soul, his very self, his deepest life, was insatiable for a sense of the divine presence. . . . Give him his God and he is as content as the poor deer which at length slakes its thirst and is perfectly happy; but deny him his Lord, and his heart heaves, his bosom palpitates, his whole frame is convulsed, like one who gasps for breath, or pants with long running. Dear friend, dost thou know what this is, by personally having felt the same? It is a sweet bitterness. The next best thing to living in the light of the Lord’s love is to be unhappy till we have it, and to pant hourly after it – hourly, did I say? Thirst is a perpetual appetite, and not to be forgotten, and even thus continually is the heart’s longing after God. When it is as natural for us to long for God as for an animal to thirst, it is well with our souls, however painful our feelings ↗

— Charles H. Spurgeon

#life

Prayer is the center of the Christian life. It is the only necessary thing. It is living with God in the here and now. ↗

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

#prayer #life

If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#eternal-life #fire #god #joy #peace

Our life consists not in the pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy spiritual growth. Our entire earthly existence is but a transitional stage in the movement toward something higher, and we must not stumble and fall, nor must we linger fruitlessly on one rung of the ladder. Material laws alone do not explain our life or give it direction. The laws of physics and physiology will never reveal the indisputable manner in which the Creator constantly, day in and day out, participates in the life of each of us, unfailingly granting us the energy of existence; when this assistance leaves us, we die. And in the life of our entire planet, the Divine Spirit surely moves with no less force: this we must grasp in our dark and terrible hour. ↗

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

#materialism #spirituality #life

The rich fop Francis of Assisi was bored all his life―until he fell in love with Christ and gave all his stuff away and became the troubadour of Lady Poverty. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#catholicism #christ #christianity #francis-of-assisi #jesus-shock

Sarah Palin appears to have no testable core conviction except the belief (which none of her defenders denies that she holds, or at least has held and not yet repudiated) that the end of days and the Second Coming will occur in her lifetime. This completes the already strong case for allowing her to pass the rest of her natural life span as a private citizen. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#christianity #end-time #fundamentalism #politics #sarah-palin