#si

Most of the church landscape in my lifetime has been heavily invested in trying to do something for Jerry or Sherri or some other icon of unchurchness. The problem is that they have been only about themselves from the moment they could wail for their mothers, and the decision to give them at church what they can find in any self-help book appears now as a choice to abandon the One in whose honor the church gathers. What they need is to be set free from themselves with finality and to be lost in the awesome wonder of the manifest presence of God. It was never God’s desire that He would sit on the sideline and watch us frantically devise impressive ways to reach people or simply hold the line on orthodoxy as though faithfulness can exist in a vacuum apart from fruitfulness. God is the Matter of first importance! Can you say that about your current weekly encounter with church? ↗

— James MacDonald

#encounter #focus #god #task #vision

The world," he resumed after a short pause, "has no faith in any man's conversion; it never forgets what he was, it never believes him anything better, it is an inexorable and stupid judge. ↗

— Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

#faith

And now they were weary and frightened because they had gone against a system they did not understand and it had beaten them. They knew that the team and the wagon were worth much more. They knew the buyer man would get much more, but they didn't know how to do it. Merchandising was a secret to them. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#ethics #faith #morality #spirituality #business

I've never killed a man, but I've read many an obituary with a great deal of satisfaction. ↗

— Clarence Darrow

#death #humor #death

The Missouri is, perhaps, different in appearance and character from all other rivers in the world; there is a terror in its manner which is sensibly felt, the moment we enter its muddy waters from the Mississippi. ↗

— George Catlin

#character #different #enter #felt #manner

I look for a sign. Where to go next. you never know when you'll get one. Even the most faithless among us are waiting to be proven wrong. ↗

— Jillian Lauren

#signs #faith

Faith is the choice of the nobler hypothesis.' Not the noblest, one never knows what that is. But the nobler, the best one can see when the choice is made. ↗

— Robert K. Greenleaf

#faith #hypothesis #faith

It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears. ↗

— Marcus Porcius Cato

#belly #citizens #ears #fellow #fellow citizens

I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favour of doing it. ↗

— Henry James

#simplicity #life

In these days of faith-cures, and hypnotism, and telepathy, and subliminalities – why, the simple old world grows very confusing. But rarely, very rarely novel. ↗

— Walter de La Mare

#novelty #progress #faith