Quotes from Brennan Manning

The religion of cheerfulness, as Father Brown reminds us, is a cruel religion, and maybe the best way not to go mad is not to mind too much if you do go mad."2

Failure to recognize the value of mere being with God, as the beloved, without doing anything, is to gouge the heart out of Christianity."10

The furious love of God knows no shadow of alteration or change. It is reliable. And always tender.

It is through such failure and weeping that the Abba of Jesus conforms us to the image of His Son. Yet if our faith is not alive and dynamically operative, suffering is absurd, pointless.

The tendency in legalistic religion is to mistrust God, to mistrust others, and consequently, to mistrust ourselves.

For the pharisee the emphasis is always on personal effort and achievement. The gospel of grace emphasizes the primacy of God's love. The pharisee savors impeccable conduct; the child delights in the relentless tenderness of God.

Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you." —Ephesians 4:31-32

That in the end, my sin will never outweigh God's love. That the Prodigal can never outrun the Father. That I am not measured by the good I do but by the grace I accept. That being lost is a prerequisite to being found. That living a life of faith is not lived in the light, it is discovered in the dark. That not being a saint here on earth will not necessarily keep you from being in that number when the march begins.

Each moment of our existence, we are either growing into more or retreating into less.

The number of people who have fled the church because it is too patient or compassionate is negligible; the number who have fled because they find it too unforgiving is tragic.

Life can be taken out of others in rivulets and drops, in the small daily failures of inattention, that bitterest fruit of self-absorption, as surely as by terrible strokes to their hearts.

The only cure for suffering is to face it head on, grasp it round the neck and use it.