Quote collection
497 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"What once seemed such a curse has become a blessing. All the agony that threatened to destroy my life now seems like the fertile ground for greater trust, stronger hope, and deeper love."
"In 1984, Jean Vanier invited me me to visit L'Arche community in Trosly, France. He didn't say "We need a priest" or "We could use you." He said, "Maybe our community can offer you a home." I visited several times, then resigned from Harvard and went to live with the community for a year. I loved it! I didn't have much to do. I wasn't pastor or anything. I was just a friend of the Community."
"It is hard to bear with people who stand still along the way, lose heart, and seek their happiness in little pleasures which they cling to...You feel sad about all that self-indulgence and self-satisfaction, for you know with an indestructible certainty that something greater is coming."
"That's prayer to let God's Word speak deep within you and tell you, "You are my beloved. You don't have to take an eye for an eye. No, no you're too rich for that.""
"Someday I would love to write about Vincent van Gogh - his paintings and letters continue to inspire me very much. But it remains hard to find the time and inner rest to write."
"I had a deep experience of God's love for me."
"One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there."
"How do you pray? Take the gospel of each day and spend ten minutes with it. Read it, and read it again. Walk into the world with the gospel in your heart."
"God doesn't give us just enough. God gives us more than enough: more bread and fish than we can eat, more love than we dared to ask for."
"When we no longer pray, no longer listen to the voice of love that speaks to us in the moment, our lives become absurd lives in which we are thrown back and forth between the past and the future. If we could just be, for a few minutes each day, fully where we are, we would indeed discover that we are not alone and that the One who is with us wants only one thing: to give us love"
"The beginning and the end of all Christian leadership is to give your life for others."
"When we learn to move through suffering, rather than avoid it, then we greet it differently. We become willing to let it teach us. We even begin to see how God can use it for some larger end."
"Prayer is not a pious decoration of life but the breath of human existence."
"L'Arche is not a service institution or a group home. It is a community that exists to reveal God's love. Our people are given to the world to tell others about peace and forgiveness and celebration, to make them aware that in the midst of their brokenness, there is joy; in the midst of their wounded nature, there is healing."
"Too many of us are lonely ministers practicing a lonely ministry."
"Forgiveness indeed heals memories"
"The mystery of the spiritual life is that Jesus desires to meet us in the seclusion of our own heart, to make his love known to us there, to free us from our fears, and to make our own deepest self known to us Each time you let the love of God penetrate deeper into your heart it leads to a love of ourselves that enables us to give whole-hearted love to our fellow human beings. In the seclusion of our hearts we learn to know the hidden presence of God; and with that spiritual knowledge we can lead a loving life."
"The great call for the Church is to not just be concerned about right or wrong behavior, which is moral life, but about communion with God, which is mystical life."
"The Question is not how much are you going to accomplish? Or can you show some results? But are you in love with Jesus? In our world of brokeness and despair, there is an enormous need for men and women who know the heart of God; a heart that forgives, cares, reaches out and wants to heal."
"I am deeply convince that the necessity of prayer, and to pray unceasingly, is not as much based on our desire for God as on God's desire for us. It is God's passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer."