Quotes about Encounter

Second, Paul came to Christ through an experience in which he thought he encountered the risen Jesus. This account also dates very early. We need reasons for his conversion from unbelief, since his conversion was based on a personal appearance of Jesus and counts very heavily against embellishment.

Do you know-I hardly remembered you? Hardly remembered me? I mean: how shall I explain? I-it's always so. Each time you happen to me all over again.

[Jesus Christ to Pope Francis] is the Lord with whom he speaks for hours every day in prayer. The Risen One who reached out, touched his life, and called him into mission.

I trust that when people meet, we meet for a transcendent reason, and that the challenges we face in life are always lessons that serve our soul's growth.

Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?

I went to America to convert the Indians; but oh! who shall convert me?

Who had persuaded me that God preferred four walls and a roof to wide-open spaces? When had I made the subtle switch myself, becoming convinced that church bodies and buildings were the safest and most reliable places to encounter the living God?

God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes, and perfect strangers.

God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes, and perfect strangers.

How wonderful of [Jesus] to come back undercover, so that even the people who knew him best had to look, then look again, before they got the crawly feeling that they had seen him somewhere before. It was the perfect setup for people who wanted to know what made him different from anyone else they had met: his ability to reflect their humanity back to them, both familiar and strange, so that they never got tired of searching each other's faces for some sign of him.

I can begin to love the dried ink marks on the page more than I love the encounters that gave rise to them. If I am not careful, I can decide that I am really much happier reading my Bible than I am entering into what God is doing in my own time and place, since shutting the book to go outside will involve the very great risk of taking part in stories that are still taking shape.

Do not reject any of My gifts; find Me in every situation.