The Tender One

God, Grace 0

At one time or another, we all had a version of God that was rigid. But the depth of our own experience tells us that our idea of God wants to be fluid and evolving. As we grow, we learn to steer clear of the wrong God. We “break the jar” and it radically challenges our way of seeing reality. Consequently, a change in our conception of God can transform the character of our culture…. The Tender One has no need to judge, because this God understands.

If our God makes us feel unworthy and in debt, wrong God. If God frightens us, wrong God. If God is endlessly disappointed in us, wrong God. A man I knew, after being fired from his job, said, “It’s a good thing I believe in God, who says, ‘Vengeance will be mine.'” Uh-oh. Wrong God.

— Gregory Boyle, The Whole Language, p.4

Photo: Bluebell Trail, Bull Run Regional Park, Virginia, April 4, 2022

He First Loved Us.

Faith, God, Love 0

We can be gracious because we are grateful. We can love because we have been loved.

On the days when I believe, I know all this to be true. On the days when you believe, I hope you’ll know this to be true too. I hope you’ll feel deep within your heart and with every cell of your being that you are held and embraced by the God who made you, the God who redeemed you, and the God who accompanies you through every end and onward to every beginning.

Even on the days when I’m not sure I can believe it wholeheartedly, this is still the story I’m willing to be wrong about.

— Rachel Held Evans, Wholehearted Faith, p. 180-181

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, March 21, 2022

Cosmic Hope

God, Hope, Jesus 0

Christ Crucified is all the hidden, private, tragic pain of history made public and given over to God. Christ Resurrected is all suffering received, loved, and transformed by an all-caring God. How else could we have any kind of cosmic hope? How else would we not die of sadness for what humanity has done to itself and what we have done to one another?

The cross is the standing statement of what we do to one another and to ourselves. The resurrection is the standing statement of what God does to us in return.

— Richard Rohr, Yes, And…, p. 76

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, March 12, 2022

Already Yours

Core Value, God, Love 0

It can be difficult for those of us living in a culture that prizes earning power above nearly everything else to understand that in the economy of grace, the currency of deserved and undeserved is irrelevant. It is absolutely true that you can’t earn God’s love. But it’s not because you are a helpless wretch whose sin makes it impossible for God to even look at you or because you have done something so grievously wrong that your soul has been permanently stained, as if by spiritual Sharpie. The truth is, you can’t earn God’s love because you already have it. You can’t be any more loved than you are because God’s love has already been freely and abundantly given. You can’t do anything to achieve a greater portion of God’s love because God’s love for you is already unconditional and it is already infinite.

— Rachel Held Evans, Wholehearted Faith, p. 180

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, March 6, 2015

Enticed Through Love

God, Grace, Love 1

God always entices you through love.

You were probably taught that God would love you if and when you changed. In fact, God loves you so that you can change. What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change, is the experience of love and acceptance itself. This is the engine of change. If the mystics say that one way, they say it a thousand ways. But, because most common religion has not been at the mystical level, you’ve been given an inferior message — that God loves you when you change (moralism). It puts it all back on you, which is the opposite of being saved. Moralism leads you back to navel-gazing and you can never succeed at that level. You are never holy enough, pure enough, refined enough, or loving enough. Whereas, when you fall into God’s mercy, when you fall into God’s great generosity, you find, seemingly from nowhere, this capacity to change. No one is more surprised than you are. You know it is a total gift.

— Richard Rohr, Yes, And. . ., page 18

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 4, 2022

Futile Disputation

Community, God 0

It is futile to enter into disputation with any worshipper of the letter, seeing that for the purposes of argument the letter is so much more manageable than the spirit, which while it lies in the letter unperceived, has no force. The letter-worshipper is incapable of seeing that no utterance of God could possibly mean what he makes out of it.

— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 101, quoting from Donal Grant

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, November 1, 2021

Truly Good News

God, Love 0

The truly good news is that God is not a distant God, a God to be feared and avoided, a God of revenge, but a God who is moved by our pains and participates in the fullness of the human struggle.

— Henri J. M. Nouwen, You Are Beloved, p. 105

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, April 2, 2021

Love Out of Proportion

God, Love 0

Trust me on this: We are loved out of all sense of proportion. Yikes and hallelujah. Love reveals the beauty of sketchy people like us to ourselves. Love holds up the sacred mirror. Love builds rickety greenhouses for our wilder seeds to grow. Love can be reckless (Jesus is good at this), or meek as my dog, or carry a briefcase. Love is the old man in the park teaching little kids to play the violin: much time spent tuning, the children hearing their way into the key he is playing. My parents heard the key as success, security, moving expeditiously, and living as expected. But love lumbers like an elephant, it naps on top of your chest like a cat. It gooses you, snickers, smooths your hair. Love is being with a person wherever they are, however they are acting. Ugh. (A lot of things seem to come more easily to God.)

— Anne Lamott, Dusk Night Dawn, p. 190

Photo: Above Gundersweiler, Germany, April 22, 2000

God With Us

Compassion, God, Jesus, Love 0

Again and again you see how Jesus opts for what is small, hidden, and poor, and accordingly declines to wield influence. His many miracles always serve to express his profound compassion with suffering humanity; never are they attempts to call attention to himself. As a rule, he even forbids those he has cured to talk to others about it. And as Jesus’ life continues to unfold, he becomes increasingly aware that he has been called to fulfill his vocation in suffering and death. In all of this, it becomes plain to us that God has willed to show his love for the world by descending more and more deeply into human frailty.

— Henri J. M. Nouwen, You Are Beloved, p. 93

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, March 26, 2021

Not If, But When

God, Jesus, Redemption, Universalism 0

As I have often said, salvation is not a question of if, but when. Once you see with God’s eyes, you will see all things and enjoy all things in proper and full perspective. Some put this off till the moment of death or even afterward (“purgatory” was our strange word for this). Salvation, for me, is simply to have the “mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16), which Paul describes as “making the world, life and death, the present and the future — all your servants — because you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God” (1 Corinthians 3:23).

Everything finally belongs, and you are a part of it.

This knowing and this enjoying are a good description for salvation.

— Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ, p. 225

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, March 22, 2020