Quotes about Meaning

I see 'Hansel and Gretel' as a breakthrough book for me, and one of the reasons is because I started to apply meaning to the hidden details.

There is no why. We are. Life is beyond reason.

The thing that's important for me is to remember what's the most important thing.

No fame, no fortune, no world titles - they all mean absolutely nothing compared to knowing Jesus. Because winning world titles ain't going to get me into heaven.

As you entrust your concerns to Me, I receive them into My care and keeping. This lightens your load and helps you gain traction so you can move forward in dependence on Me. I don't guarantee you a trouble-free journey, but I do promise to make your life meaningful. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you. Treasure My teaching in your heart, for it is not your plans but My counsel that will stand.

The first forty years of our life give the text, the next thirty furnish the commentary upon it, which enables us rightly to understand the true meaning and connection of the text with its moral and its beauties.

We need to shed our unearthly and nonsocial and idealistic and romantic and uber-spiritual visions of kingdom and get back to what Jesus meant. By kingdom, Jesus means: God's Dream Society on earth, spreading out from the land of Israel to encompass the whole world.

We must not forget that it is not a thing that lends significance to a moment; it is the moment that lends significance to things. —ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL

The longer you look at the idea that we read the Bible to find new meanings, the sillier it becomes. We read and return to the Bible not (just) to find something new but to hear something old, not to discover something fresh but to be reminded of something ancient.

we need to learn to tell the story that makes sense of Jesus. Not a story that we ask Jesus to fit into.

What we are looking for in reading the Bible is the ability to turn the two-dimensional words on paper into a three-dimensional encounter with God, so that the text takes on life and meaning and depth and perspective and gives us direction for what to do today.

There is no kingdom that is not about a just society, as there is no kingdom without redemption under Christ. Yet I'm convinced that both of these approaches to kingdom fall substantially short of what kingdom meant to Jesus, so we need once again to be patient enough to ponder what the Bible teaches.