Quotes about Life

We are not cowed into timidity by death and life. Were we forced to rely on our own shabby resources we would be pitiful people in deed. But the awareness of Christ's present risenness persuades us that we are buoyed up and carried on by a life greater than our own.

We are not pro-life simply because we are warding off death. We are pro-life to the extent that we are men and women for others, all others; to the extent that no human flesh is a stranger to us; to the extent that we can touch the hand of another in love, to the extent that for us there are no "others.

Those were days of learning the reality behind the phrase I've often used, "ruthless trust." It's something easy to say but much harder to live. But I have learned in my life that grace often gestates, like an unborn child. And when the expectant mother grabs the hospital-prepared suitcase and screams, "Let's go!" then you'd better go.

We encounter God in the ordinariness of life: not in the search for spiritual highs and extraordinary, mystical experiences, but in our simple presence in life.

Everybody has a vocation to some form of life work. But behind that and deeper than that, everybody has a vocation to be a person, to be fully and deeply a human being, to be Christlike. And the second thing is more important than the first. It is more important to be a great person than a great teacher, butcher or candlestick maker. And if the only chance of succeeding in the second is to fail in the first, the failure, from God's point of view, is fruitful.

Each time we deal a mortal blow to the ego, the pasch of Jesus is traced in our flesh. Each time we choose to walk the extra mile, to turn the other cheek, to embrace and not reject, to be compassionate and not competitive, to kiss and not bite, to forgive and not massage the latest bruise to our wounded ego, we are breaking through from death to life.

One spiritual writer has observed that human beings are born with two diseases: life, from which we die; and hope, which says the first disease is not terminal. Hope is built into the structure of our personalities, into the depths of our unconscious; it plagues us to the very moment of our death. The critical question is whether hope is self-deception, the ultimate cruelty of a cruel and tricky universe, or whether it is just possibly the imprint of reality.

Every change in the quality of a person's life must grow out of a change in his or her vision of reality.

To be alive is to be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace.

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.

Through no merit of ours, but by His mercy, we have been restored to a right relationship with God through the life, death, and resurrection of His beloved Son. This is the Good News, the gospel of grace.

Faith in the present risenness of Jesus carries with it life-changing implications for the gritty routine of daily life.