Quote for the Day

Throughout the New Testament, the only kind of people with whom Jesus consistently took frightful exception were the very “teachers of the law and Pharisees” we see him dressing down in the passages above. One thing that often gets lost in our considerations of Jesus is the degree to which he is exactly the wrong person to piss off. And you don’t have to spend a lot of time in the New Testament before you understand that the only kind of people who seem to ever truly anger him are those who put religious dogma above what he most stood for, which was God’s compassionate will.

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I’m not exactly sure how we came to so often consider Jesus-formerly-known-as-The-Carpenter as a kind of a soft, dreamy, namby-pamby sort. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!) But it’s hard to believe it was from the accounts of Jesus we have in the Gospels. That’s just not the guy on those pages.

Jesus is scary when he’s riled. And the only people who rile him are those who, in His name, set themselves up as sanctimonious judgers of others.

John Shore, johnshore.com

Quote for Today

Do you think that maybe, just maybe, God wants us to get to know him, too? Is it possible that God is more interested in us learning about who he really is than us memorizing a list of things to do and things to avoid doing? If we believe–and this is no small thing–that God really does love us, that he wants to be our only lover, don’t you think he wants us to get to know his personality, and not just his rules? Joe Spann said something to me several years ago that still rattles my cage to this day. “Following Jesus,” he said, “is a lot less like getting all the answers right on a quiz, and a lot more like having a wild affair with the teacher.” Well, that teacher is Jesus. He wants to have a fling with us that will last into eternity. And he wants us to know him as he truly is, not as we box him up in our narrow view from Scriptures to be.

Jeff Dunn at internetmonk.com

A Couple of Great Quotes for Today

Let’s pray, most. Did God call us to preach without ceasing? Or teach without ceasing? Or have committee meetings without ceasing? Or sing without ceasing? No, but he did call us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17).

Did Jesus declare: My house shall be called a house of study? Fellowship? Music? A house of exposition? A house of activities? No, but he did say, “My house will be called a house of prayer” (Mark 11:17 NIV).

(Max Lucado, Outlive Your Life: You Were Made to Make a Difference)

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression “As pretty as an airport.” Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only know exception to this otherwise infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs.

They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve-jangling colors, to make effortless the business of separating the traveler forever from his or her luggage or loved ones, to confuse the traveler with arrows that appear to point a the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible to expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the location of the departure gates, presumably on the grounds that they are not.

(Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul)

A Couple of Great Quotes Today!

Let’s pray, most. Did God call us to preach without ceasing? Or teach without ceasing? Or have committee meetings without ceasing? Or sing without ceasing? No, but he did call us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17).

Did Jesus declare: My house shall be called a house of study? Fellowship? Music? A house of exposition? A house of activities? No, but he did say, “My house will be called a house of prayer” (Mark 11:17 NIV).

(Max Lucado, Outlive Your Life: You Were Made to Make a Difference)

 

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression “As pretty as an airport.” Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only know exception to this otherwise infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs.

 

They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve-jangling colors, to make effortless the business of separating the traveler forever from his or her luggage or loved ones, to confuse the traveler with arrows that appear to point a the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible to expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the location of the departure gates, presumably on the grounds that they are not.

(Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul)