Two Quotes to Reflect On Today
I ran across two wonderful quotes in my reading this afternoon. The first was this:
"For many years, I believed it was foolish and faithless to acknowledge all that is wrong with my life. I believed I was a new creation, and admitting anything less was not acceptable. I missed seeing a lot that was wrong with my community, my family, and myself because I thought the Christian thing to do was to emphasize the positive, glory be to God. But Jesus came for the sick, not the healthy–by which he surely meant that he came for those who know they are sick, and not those who, being sick, nonetheless claim they are healthy. Since I took up the habit of lamenting, my life has not improved, at least not directly. But life improvement isn’t the goal. The goal is faithfulness and servanthood–becoming like the image of God in Christ. I’ve come to believe meeting that goal involves severe honesty, self-awareness, and nakedness. There is power in honesty, because it removes any hint of deception, and puts us before our God as we really are," – Patton Dodd, Beliefnet.
And then there is one written by Hope at A Song Not Scored For Breathing:
"The comedy of grace is that it so often comes to us as loss, sorrow, and foul-smelling waste; if it came as gain, gladness, and sweetly scented flowers, we would not be grateful. We would, as we are wont to do, take personal credit for the unwarranted gifts of God. It is easy to be attracted to the idea of grace – which one dictionary defines as ‘divine love and protection bestowed freely on people’ – but much harder to recognize this grace when it comes as pain and unwelcome change. In the depths of our confusion and anger, we ask: "How can this be God’s love? Where is God in this disaster?" For grace to be grace, it must give us things we didn’t know we needed and take us to places where we didn’t want to go. As we stumble through the crazily altered landscape of our lives, we find that God is enjoying our attention as never before. And maybe that’s the point. It is a divine comedy." ~ Kathleen Norris in Acedia & Me
Just something to think about.
Technorati Tags: honesty,self-awareness,grace,Kathleen Norris,Kathleen Norris quote. Acedia and Me
