Quotes about Tenderness

One of life's greatest paradoxes is that it's in the crucible of pain and suffering that we become tender.

If you took the love of all the best mothers and fathers who have lived in the course of human history, all their goodness, kindness, patience, fidelity, wisdom, tenderness, strength, and love and united all those qualities in a single person, that person's love would only be a faint shadow of the furious love and mercy in the heart of God the Father addressed to you and me at this moment.

Biblically, tenderness is what follows when someone reveals to you your own inner beauty, when you discover your belovedness, when you experience that you are deeply and sincerely liked by someone.

One of life's greatest paradoxes is that it's in the crucible of pain and suffering that we become tender. Not all pain and suffering, certainly. If that were the case, the whole world would be tender, since no one escapes pain and suffering. To these elements must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love and the willingness to remain vulnerable. Together they lead to wisdom and tenderness.

Do you honestly believe God likes you, not just loves you because theologically God has to love you?" If you could answer with gut-level honesty, "Oh, yes, my Abba is very fond of me," you would experience a serene compassion for yourself that approximates the meaning of tenderness.

The heart enveloped in the tenderness of God passes that tenderness around indiscriminately, making no distinction between the worthy and the unworthy.

To live in the wisdom of accepted tenderness is to humbly acknowledge the limitations of the rational, scientific, finite mind and to freely embrace mystery.

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

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.

We are sons and daughters of the Most High and maturing in tenderness to the extent that we are for others--all others--to the extent that no human flesh is strange 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.

The reply to the question Who is my neighbor? plunges us into the scandal of Jesus. The way of tenderness is not chronic niceness, sloppy sentimentality, or a soporific spirituality for the softheaded. The spiritual life isn't a theory. Living the spiritual life, treading the way of tenderness, calls for radical conversion, renunciation of a circumscribed moral code, and al life of humble service.

Come, all you who are wiped out, confused, bewildered, lost, beat-up, scarred, scared, threatened, and depressed, and I'll enlighten your mind with wisdom and fill your heart with the tenderness that I have received from my Father." This is unconditional pardon. The sinner need only live confidently in the wisdom of tenderness.