Faith steals upon you like dew: some days you wake and it is there. And like dew, it gets burned off in the rising sun of anxieties, ambitions, distractions. — Christian Wiman
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Walter Brueggemann
It happens often among us that praise is either escapist fantasy, or it is a bland affirmation of the status quo. In fact, doxology is a daring political, polemical act that serves to dismiss certain loyalties and to embrace and legitimate other loyalties, and other shapes of reality. — Walter Brueggemann
Miroslav Volf
[T]he economy of undeserved grace has primacy over the economy of moral deserts. — Miroslav Volf
Thomas Kelly
Paradoxically, this total Instruction [God’s Spirit moving in our lives] proceeds in two opposing directions at once. We are torn loose from earthly attachments and ambitions. And we are quickened to a divine but painful concern for the world. He plucks the world out of our hearts, loosening the chains of attachment. And he hurls the world into our hearts, where we and He together carry it in infinitely tender love.
Elizabeth O’Connor
At the center of our pain, we glimpse a fairer world and hear a call. When we are able to keep company with our own fears and sorrows, we are shown the way to go, our parched lives are watered, and the earth becomes a greener place. Hope begins to grow, and we are summoned to the work that will give us a feeling of wellness and make possible that which we envision.
St. Ambrose
It was in common and for all, rich and poor, that the earth was created. Why then, O rich, do you take to yourselves the monopoly of owning land? . . . It is not with your wealth that you give alms to the poor, but with a fraction of their own which you give back; for you are usurping for yourself something meant for the common good of all. — St. Ambrose
Walter Brueggemann
It happens often among us that praise is either escapist fantasy, or it is a bland affirmation of the status quo. In fact, doxology is a daring political, polemical act that serves to dismiss certain loyalties and to embrace and legitimate other loyalties, and other shapes of reality.
Miroslav Volf
[T]he economy of undeserved grace has primacy over the economy of moral deserts. — Miroslav Volf
Charles Mathewes
[T]he difference between being at peace and being complacent is one of the most basic lessons saints can teach us. — Charles Mathewes
David O. Woodyard
The cross is about more than Jesus; the depth of meaning in the cross is that we have a wounded God. God did not take a pass on Golgotha. . . . When the sacraments are defined by the God on the cross, they constitute resistance to empire and the assurance of God prevailing. . . . It is the cross that keeps the Eucharist from being a pacifier for the future and a peace-engendering moment. — David O. Woodyard