Childlike

Faith, God, Growth, Prayer 0

God is for all of us and for all of our most complex transactions. Dependency upon God is not childish. It is childlike — and we all know how quickly children can grow and transform. When we make ourselves childlike in relation to God, we open ourselves to similar growth and transformation. It is a paradox, but in striving to become as little children, we also become more fully adult. We open ourselves up to the root word response in the word responsible.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 141

Joyful People

God, Joy 0

Why are we naturally drawn to joyful people? One reason, I believe, is that joy is a sign of God’s presence, which is naturally attractive to us. God’s joy speaks to the joy that dwells sometimes hidden in our hearts. “Deep calls to deep,” as Psalm 42 says. Or, as St. Augustine wrote, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O Lord.” Augustine, a fourth-century North African theologian, understood something fundamental about human beings: we naturally desire God, the source of all joy. We are drawn to joy because we are drawn to God.

— James Martin, Between Heaven and Mirth, p. 29

The Bible From Life’s Autumn

God, Growth 0

The Bible looks different once you’ve survived the autumn. It’s no longer a repository for theological abstractions that can be organized into a tidy fortress called a “Christian worldview” or “orthodoxy.” It’s no longer a wallet full of credit cards that you can slap on the table to pay every bill. It’s no longer a weapon by which you vanquish those who don’t have the good fortune of sharing your approved opinions. No, for an autumn-humbled seeker, the Bible is the living legacy of people who have lived in the real world, a diary of complexities and perplexities survived and reflected upon. It’s the family album that carries the memories of ancestors who managed to keep their faith, hope, and love alive in a world that shocked them, rocked them, and mocked them. When you’re in springtime, you love the Bible for the affirmation of the goodness of life that it offers. When you’re in summertime, you love the Bible for the motivation to stay in the fray that it offers. But in autumn, you love the Bible more than ever, now for the honesty it offers — honesty about the death of naivete, the falling of all green leaves.

— Brian MacLaren, Naked Spirituality, p. 171

The Father’s Unfairness

Forgiveness, God 0

The father redefines fairness. It’s not that his father hasn’t been fair with him; it’s that his father never set out to be fair in the first place. Grace and generosity aren’t fair; that’s their very essence. The father sees the younger brother’s return as one more occasion to practice unfairness. The younger son doesn’t deserve a party — that’s the point of the party. That’s how things work in the father’s world. Profound unfairness.

— Rob Bell, Love Wins, p. 168

Breaking Through the Ceiling

Core Value, Creativity, God, Growth, Life 0

What if that which we dream of being is actually God’s will for us? What if we are the ones who hold back, setting an arbitrary limit on what God’s power in our life will be? What if we are the ones who decide “this is too good to be true”? What if we turn back God’s gifts over and over and over again? It is possible that this is the case.

Most of us do not believe that the sky is the limit. Instead, we have a ceiling that we set, which is the height we think of as God’s will for us. Do we consult God when we set this ceiling? No, we ordinarily do not. We set it with the help of parents and friends, well-meaning spouses and therapists. We try to set our ceiling at a “reasonable” height. We do not want to get our hopes up and have them dashed. We fear being too big for our britches, and so we define as grandiose many plans that may be well within our grasp with the help of God.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 138-139

Widening the Scope

Faith, Forgiveness, God, Redemption, Universalism 0

People come to Jesus in all sorts of ways.

Sometimes people bump into Jesus,
they trip on the mystery,
they stumble past the word,
they drink from the rock,
without knowing what or who it was.
This happened in the Exodus,
and it happens today.
The last thing we should do is discourage or disregard an honest, authentic encounter with the living Christ. He is the rock, and there is water for the thirsty there, wherever there is.

We are not threatened by this,
surprised by this,
or offended by this.

Sometimes people use his name;
other times they don’t.

Some people have so much baggage with regard to the name “Jesus” that when they encounter the mystery present in all of creation — grace, peace, love, acceptance, healing, forgiveness — the last thing they are inclined to name it is “Jesus.”…

What we see Jesus doing again and again — in the midst of constant reminders about the seriousness of following him, living like him, and trusting him — is widening the scope and expanse of his saving work….

Whatever categories have been created, whatever biases are hanging like a mist in the air, whatever labels and assumptions have gone unchecked and untested, he continually defies, destroys, and disregards.

— Rob Bell, Love Wins, p. 158-160

Hearing from God

Faith, God, Guidance 0

Nevertheless, those of us who value a transcendent dimension to life hesitate to believe that God is silent. Many of us, on some level, in ways we can’t fully articulate or prove, have experienced God’s presence (or what we believe to be God’s presence) and in that experience have found direction, joy, and meaning for our lives. It also seems apparent that even those people who believe God has revealed the divine will in a manner different from that to which we are accustomed have also experienced that same direction, joy, and meaning, despite our claims of enjoying a unique revelation of God.

This lack of consensus suggests that the one thing we are most dogmatic about (divine revelation) should be the one thing about which we are least dogmatic.

Because we are most inflexible about that which cannot be empirically proven, we become defensive and unyielding, believing God is best served by dogged insistence rather than thoughtful seeking. There is a curious tendency I have seen repeated time and again: the more adamant we are about God, the less likely we are to embody the traits we believe God values — love, compassion, peace, wisdom, and patience. All of these virtues are forsaken in our efforts to refute the spiritual perspectives of another.

— Philip Gulley, The Evolution of Faith, p. 17-18

Adrift in Uncertainty

Faith, God 0

There is another choice: To admit that the best of any religious tradition depends on the choices its adherents make on how to live despite what their holy books “say,” not because of them. “But where would that leave me?” my former self would have asked. “I’d be adrift in an ocean of uncertainty.” Yes, and perhaps that’s the only honest place to be. Another name for uncertainty is humility. No one ever blew up a mosque, church, or abortion clinic after yelling, “I could be wrong.”

— Frank Schaeffer, Sex, Mom, and God, p. 73