Here is the truly Christian life, here is faith really working by love, when a man applies himself with joy and love to the works of that freest servitude in which he serves others voluntarily and for nought, himself abundantly satisfied in the fulness and riches of his own faith.

Because love grows by works of love, and man becomes better;

By accident of fortune a man may rule the world for a time, but by virtue of love he may rule the world forever

Faith always comes to the surface and always produces action. It cannot be contained. Thoughts and intents that are held within and not acted upon are not faith, no matter what we like to say. ("My faith is personal" is a favorite. But that is a self-contradicting statement. Faith is always acted out, never kept bottled up within.)

If it is true that the dual command of love is the common ground of the two faiths, the consequences are momentous. We no longer have to say, "The deeper your faith, the more you will be at odds with others!" To the contrary, we must say, "The deeper your faith, the more you will live in harmony with others!" A deep faith no longer leads to clashes; it fosters peaceful coexistence.

God doesn't look at how much we do, but with how much love we do it.

I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will not ask, "How many good things have you done in your life?" Rather he will ask, "How much love did you put into what you did?"

May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in.

The Simple Path Silence is Prayer Prayer is Faith Faith is Love Love is Service The Fruit of Service is Peace

First, Paul is anxious that everyone who professes Christian faith should allow the gospel to transform the whole of their lives, so that the outward signs of the faith express a living reality that comes from the deepest parts of the personality. Second, he is also anxious that each Christian, and especially every teacher of the faith, should know how to build up the community in mutual love and support, rather than, by the wrong sort of teaching or behaviour, tearing it apart.

And if anyone tries to say that the good news is not about all these things—about freeing slaves, about helping the poor, about reconciling warring factions, ethnic groupings, and whole nations, about looking after the blessed world we live on and in—but instead is only about coming to faith in the present and going to heaven in the future, then we must reply that something has gone very, very wrong in their thinking.

Ours is an active faith. It is made alive and appealing only when our nouns turn into verbs.