Could there be any doubt that the Jews would seek to harm the Son of God again, knowing that his body was now readily accessible in the form of defenseless crackers?
Open your eyes that you might see that all things are possible through you (with God's help)
Our identity rests in God's relentless tenderness for us revealed in Jesus Christ.
One must love God first, and only then can one love one's closest of kin and neighbors. We must not be idols to one another, for such is not the will of God.
Christianity was not meant to be a weapon or an argument or a show of force or a political tool. Or an act of aggression or coercion. It was never meant to be a cause or a prop for a cause. Or something to pacify and make thousands go to bed happy and unthinking. It was meant to be a challenge, yes, but that challenge to a second life was meant to be laced with kindness. If someone forces you to choose between God is holy and God is love choose God is love because holiness without love translates into tyranny.
Why do some persons 'find' God in a way that others do not? Why does God manifest His Presence to some and let multitudes of others struggle along in the half-light of imperfect Christian experience? Of course the will of God is the same for all. He has no favorites within His household. All He has ever done for any of His children He will do for all of His children. The difference lies not with God but with us.
Sometimes doubting is not a lack of faith, but an expression of it. Sometimes to doubt is to merely insist that God be taken seriously not frivolously, to insist that our faith is placed in and upheld by something other than seeming conjuring tricks.
We tend to be taken aback by the thought that God could be angry. how can a deity who is perfect and loving ever be angry?...We take pride in our tolerance of the excesses of others. So what is God's problem?... But love detests what destroys the beloved. Real love stands against the deception, the lie, the sin that destroys. Nearly a century ago the theologian E.H. Glifford wrote: 'Human love here offers a true analogy: the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.'... Anger isn't the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference... How can a good God forgive bad people without compromising himself? Does he just play fast and loose with the facts? 'Oh, never mind...boys will be boys'. Try telling that to a survivor of the Cambodian 'killing fields' or to someone who lost an entire family in the Holocaust. No. To be truly good one has to be outraged by evil and implacably hostile to injustice.
If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.
To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are.
Two or three angels Came near to the earth. They saw a fat church. Little black streams of people Came and went in continually. And the angels were puzzled To know why the people went thus, And why they stayed so long within.
Something of God... flows into us from the blue of the sky, the taste of honey, the delicious embrace of water whether cold or hot, and even from sleep itself.
Don’t worry when you meet opposition for obeying God. Worry when you don’t have opposition, because you’re probably not obeying God.
God's ways are higher than our ways not because he is less compassionate than we are but because he is more compassionate than we can ever imagine.
We don't know the Devil's side of the story, because God wrote all the books.
Protestants believe that the sacraments are like ladders that God gave to us by which we can climb up to Him. Catholics believe that they are like ladders that God gave to Himself by which He climbs down to us.
To love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and our neighbor as ourself.
The paradox in Christian truth is invariably due to the fact that it is the truth that exists for God. The standard of measure and the end is superhuman; and there is only one relationship possible: faith.
Sooner or later I will be faced with the fact that the world is helpless to meet my needs. And at that point, I will be left with two conclusions; that life is cruel or God is real.
What a comfort to know that God is a poet.