Quotes about Reflection

Learning to preach is difficult because preaching is difficult.

If there is a disease in the preaching that I hear most often, it's not that what the minister says is wrong. It's that it is just too small.

When you remember me, it means you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. It means that you can summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us. It means that if we meet again, you will know me. It means that even after I die, you can still see my face and hear my voice and speak to me in your heart.

Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves. Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure, but clean enough for another day's chalking.

We must be careful with our lives, for Christ's sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously.

We can only love others as much as we love ourselves.

I've decided that if I had my life to live over again, I would not only climb more mountains, swim more rivers, and watch more sunsets; I wouldn't only jettison my hot water bottle, raincoat, umbrella, parachute, and raft; I would not only go barefoot earlier in the spring and stay out later in the fall; but I would devote not one more minute to monitoring my spiritual growth. No, not one.

A man doesn't grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideal wrinkles his soul.

We must go out into a desert of some kind (your backyard will do) and come into a personal experience of the awesome love of God.

Wrong thinking about God and people often begins with a debased image of ourselves.

One of my realizations in such an earthy atmosphere was that many of the burning theological issues in the church were neither burning nor theological.

The most important thing that ever happens in prayer is letting ourselves be loved by God. "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10).