#church

If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them – peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#churchill #friend #library #life #read

Christian community is like the Christian's sanctification. It is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature. The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more surely and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases. ↗

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#faith

I've always wondered how much can you do for your fellow man if your hands are constantly stuck together in Prayers for them? ↗

— Stanley Victor Paskavich

#life #prayers #religion #life

It's so much more than a child's story. - Matt Chandler on LIFE Today. ↗

— Matt Chandler

#bible-stories #christian #christianity #god #jesus

The wealthy, Jesus says, can only get into heaven through the eye of a needle; the same applies to churches wealthy in numbers and programs. ↗

— Mark Galli

#heaven #money #money

The Lord doesn't want anybody in His house who has to be dragged there. ↗

— Frank D. Gilroy

#god #religion #religion

Rigel, Betelgeuse, and Orion. There was no finer church, no finer choir, than the stars speaking in silence to the many consumptives silently condemned, a legion upon the dark rooftops. The wind came down from the north like a runner in lacrosse, violent and hard, to batter every living thing. They were there, each one alone in conversation with the stars, mining ephemeral love from cold and distant light. ↗

— Mark Helprin

#nature-as-church #numinous #our-place-in-the-universe #revelation #spirituality

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries. ↗

— James Madison

#organized-religion #politics #religion #separation-of-church-and-state #religion

The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. He took his woes to God. 'They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner.' 'What are you complaining about?' said God. 'They won't let Me in either. ↗

— Brennan Manning

#god #organized-religion #sin #religion

They knew that to put God in the constitution was to put man out. They knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping or in the keeping of her God the sacred rights of man. They intended that all should have the right to worship or not to worship that our laws should make no distinction on account of creed. They intended to found and frame a government for man and for man alone. They wished to preserve the individuality of all to prevent the few from governing the many and the many from persecuting and destroying the few. ↗

— Robert G. Ingersoll

#politics #religion #separation-of-church-and-state #religion