Quotes Tagged "easter"

The gifts of the Master are these: freedom, life, hope, new direction, transformation, and intimacy with God. If the cross was the end of the story, we would have no hope. But the cross isn't the end. Jesus didn't escape from death; he conquered it and opened the way to heaven for all who will dare to believe. The truth of this moment, if we let it sweep over us, is stunning. It means Jesus really is who he claimed to be, we are really as lost as he said we are, and he really is the only way for us to intimately and spiritually connect with God again.

God is not interested in your art but, your heart.

The organist was almost at the end of the anthem’s long introduction, and as the crescendo increases the cathedral began to glitter before my eyes until I felt as if every stone in the building was vibrating in anticipation of the sweeping sword of sound from the Choir. The note exploded in our midst, and at that moment I knew our creator had touched not only me but all of us, just as Harriet had touched that sculpture with a loving hand long ago, and in that touch I sensed the indestructible fidelity, the indescribable devotion and the inexhaustible energy of the creator as he shaped his creation, bringing life out of dead matter, wresting form continually from chaos. Nothing was ever lost, Harriet had said, and nothing was ever wasted because always, when the work was finally completed, every article of the created process, seen or unseen, kept or discarded, broken or mended – EVERYTHING was justified, glorified and redeemed.

Jesus died a criminal’s death surrounded by a handful of followers who refused to do anything other than a chase a God who, through His death at that very moment, was chasing them.

The size of an ending will never offset the inevitability of a beginning.

Despite how dark it might be, what is tonight but the precursor to tomorrow?

Maybe every now and then I need something ‘unbelievable’ to happen to help make that which is ‘believable’ a place where I start, but not a place where I stop.

If I’m only looking at an ending, I’ll assume that an ending is all that there is. And without a doubt, that kind of assumption is the beginning of the end.

Jesus was born into an existence that I cannot fathom, and He died a death of the very same sort. And therefore, what insanity causes me to presume His inability to understand the difficulties of my existence when His wildly eclipsed mine, and why do I doubt His adequacy to engage the death within me when He died a death for me?

The greatest sacrifice is to unreservedly give the whole of oneself to another, knowing full well that such a gift must be wholly rejected, blithely tossed aside and trampled underfoot as some worthless filth because (much like ourselves) the depravity of the recipient is such that they can only be saved through the death of the giver. And I don’t know of any human who would do that, but I know a God Who did.

If I can’t find something worthwhile in my own reflection, how am I ever going to see anything worthwhile in the face of another? Maybe I can solve all of this by seeing the face of Jesus in everyone, starting with myself.

If I understand death as a temporary loss that is irrevocably swallowed up by the eternal existence within which it occurs, I suddenly realize that it is the death of something that enriches the life of everything.

Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.

And now brothers, I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without him is the real death, that to die with him the only life?

Has my life been cheated by the shortness of the time afforded me, or is it possible that the greater part of my life has been saved for a time where there is no time?

Easter Contemplations It does not concern me If this life is all I have. I do not need a resurrection Or reincarnation Or to live with the gods. It is enough to live With you here In the days of your presence. When my breathes Are complete, Lay me by your side In the dust. As in life, so in death. Let us become one With each other again.

Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.

It is at Easter that Jesus is most human, and like all humans, he fails and is failed. His is not an all-powerful God, it is an all-vulnerable God.

I'd love to go to Easter Island, Hawaii, Iceland and Antarctica.

We were old sinners - but when we came to Christ we are not sinners anymore.