love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will be
wrung and possibly broken. If you want to be sure of keeping your heart
intact- you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it
carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all
entanglements. Lock it up safely in the casket of your selfishness. And
in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will not change, it
will not be broken. It will become unbreakable, impenetrable. The only
place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from dangers of
love is hell.”
“Creation left to
itself is incomplete, and humans are called to be co-creators with God,
bringing forth the potentialities the Creator has hidden. Creation is
full of secrets waiting to be discovered, riddles which human
intelligence is expected to unlock. The world did not spring from the
hand of God as wealthy as man might make it.”
Donald Miller gets his own section, because I love his books and basically everything he says is phenomenal:
I never liked
jazz music because jazz music doesn’t resolve. But I was outside the
Baghdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the
saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his
eyes.
After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody
love something before you can love
it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. I used to not
like God because God didn’t resolve. But that was before any of this
happened.”
real issue I had with the Christian community was that love was
conditional. You were loved, but if you had questions, questions about
whether the Bible was true or America was a good country or whether
last week’s sermon was good, you were not so loved. You were loved in
word, but there was, without question, a social commodity that was
being withheld from you until you shaped up.”
sharing my faith with people began by throwing out Christianity and
embracing Christian spirituality, a nonpolitical mysterious system that
can be experienced but not explained. Christianity, unlike Christian spirituality, was not a term that excited me. I couldn’t share something I wasn’t experiencing. And I wasn’t experiencing Christianity.”
“We
get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the
elements, the setting, and the climax and the resolution. It would be a
crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it? It might be time for you to go.
It might be time to change, to shine out.
I want to repeat one word for you: Leave.
Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn’t it?
So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don’t worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.”
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