Quotes about Understanding

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

When Jesus wanted to explain to his disciples what his death was all about, he didn't give them a theory, he gave them a meal.

I was all ear, And took in strains that might create a soul under the ribs of death.

Misunderstanding must be nakedly exposed before true understanding can begin to flourish.

Jesus did not give the parables to teach us how to live. He gave them, I believe, to correct our notions about who God is and who God loves.

Sometimes the only meaning we can offer a suffering person is the assurance that their suffering, which has no apparent meaning for them, has a meaning for us.

The main purpose of prayer is not to make life easier, nor to gain magical powers, but to know God.

The Quakers have a saying: "An enemy is one whose story we have not heard." To communicate to post-Christians, I must first listen to their stories for clues to how they view the world and how they view people like me. Those conversations are what led to the title of this book. Although God's grace is as amazing as ever, in my divided country it seems in vanishing supply.

Faith, I've concluded, means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.

Ungrace causes cracks to fissure open between mother and daughter, father and son, brother and sister, between scientists, and prisoners, and tribes, and races. Left alone, cracks widen, and for the resulting chasms of ungrace there is only one remedy: the frail rope-bridge of forgiveness.

Prayer is the act of seeing reality from God's point of view.

We do not pray to tell God what he does not know, nor to remind him of things he has forgotten. He already cares for the things we pray about... He has simply been waiting for us to care about them with him.