Quotes by American Authors - Page 3274

The divine is in the present and you must be present to experience it. When you vacate the present and recede into your mind, allowing worries or work to remove you from the moment, you leave the plain upon which the divine dwells. When you are constantly under the anesthetic of digital distraction, you withdraw; you are no longer conscious, and therefore are in no fit state to commune with the sacred. If you wish to hear the answers you seek, you must be present to hear them. If you wish to partake in the insights there to be known, you must be present to receive them. If you wish to know the divine, you must be present to meet it. …you must be present.
L.M. Browning
Beware the God who seeks praise. Beware the guru who presumes to teach that which is unfixed and boundless. Beware the healer who sets a price on aid. Beware the lover who would make you a lesser version of yourself. Beware the doctrines that discourage independent thought. Beware any person of faith who doesn’t understand doubt. Filter all things through yourself. Accept only that which sits right with your soul.
L.M. Browning
Dreams hit the fan? Life unexpectedly take a turn for the worst? Here’s what you do:First thing I think is to realize God didn’t do this to you. It’s just life.Second, know that it sucks. It does.Third, it’s a tunnel not a cave.Fourth, it still sucks.Fifth, it’s not hopeless. Assign meaning to it. Choose for these horrible things to bring you closer to family and god and not farther apart.Praying for you
Richie Norton
The front door is usually unlocked and there is no alarm system. They don't wear their seat belts in the car; they don't wear suntan lotion in the sun. They have decided nothing can kill them but God himself, and they don't even believe in him.
David Benioff
Don't take life for granted or love ones for granted. Today may be the only time you have left to smell the roses, to laugh at silly jokes, to dance in the rain, or to hold your loved ones close. Life is a vapor, inhale the beautiful things in life and exhale the ugly things in life!
Theresa Lewis
I sometimes sit on my roof. Not to be closer to god. To be further from y'all.
Darnell Lamont Walker
I am not questioning God's power! It is God who gave us reason and circumspection! It is God we serve by exercising prudence!
Dan Brown
WTF is praying gonna do for Vegas? Apparently God likes mass shootings.
Oliver Markus Malloy
Maybe I will always have to love the idea of love or a concept of God more than I can love a person.
Catherine Lacey
The sun might be God. God might not watch us at night.
Darnell Lamont Walker
At the moment that everything goes dark, the sunset in front of us becomes the whole story. But if we find courage enough to wait until tomorrow morning, we will suddenly come to understand that in reality yesterday’s sunset was only half of the story.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The world is shaken by major events, but it is ‘transformed’ by slight subtleties. And while we may be far too small to create even one major event, we are just the right size to craft a thousand subtleties.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Doubt is how you find God
Mitch Albom
God’s absence in the carnage is due to one single rather unnerving fact; that at some time past He honored our request that He leave. And if we are not brutally honest with ourselves regarding that choice, it is we ourselves who have set the stage for the next tragedy.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Tragedy descends, and in the carnage our enraged cynicism screams ‘If there was a God, He would not have allowed this!’ And somehow we’ve conveniently forgotten that once upon a time He allowed us to tell Him to go away, and once upon that time we allowed ourselves to take Him up on that offer.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We are all innocent, until we die.
Anthony Liccione
If I’ve prayed, I never have to worry about being the first one to show up.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
You are not made in ‘your image’. You are, in fact, made in ‘God’s image’. Therefore, which one are you looking for when you look in the mirror?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We ask, ‘Why the need for God?’ Maybe the better question is ‘Why the need not to need Him?’ And could it be that that question in fact evidences our need for Him?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Through the door at the end of the hall, Bushrod could see daylight. Gray and sullen it was, but daylight all the same. Through the years Bushrod had seen the dawn come to many fields, after many hard fights, and it was always a sacred moment to him--proof that the universe was still intact in spite of the blood on the ground, the hosts of Departed beginning their first day in eternity, the dead horses and broken gun carriages and scattered equipment--in spite of all the panoramic ruin of the battlefield so brutal and grotesque that it was a wonder God did not bury it in darkness forever--and with it the guilty living, who crept from their holes or their stiff blankets and looked about with astonishment on what they had done. But God never would bury it. He always seemed to want to start over again, whether out of anger or pity Bushrod could not say. And now here was another dawn, after another great fight, and once more God had permitted Bushrod Carter to live.
Howard Bahr
If I had my way, I would declare a moratorium on public preaching of 'the plan of salvation' in America for one to two years. Then I would call on everyone who has use of the airwaves and the pulpits to preach the holiness of God, the righteousness of God, and the Law of God until sinners would cry out, 'What must we do to be saved?" Then I would take them off in a corner and whisper the gospel to them. Don't use John 3:16. Such drastic action is needed because we have a gospel hardened generation of sinners by telling them how to be saved before they have any understanding why they need to be saved.
Paris Reidhead
God's image…is found not best in individual humans, but in humans as they relate to each other.
Luke Timothy Johnson
But humans disappoint. Adam, in tasting the fruit, indicates that he prefers Eve to God, so God banishes them.
Bruce Feiler
...a deep and even paranoid suspicion continues to disparage higher criticism of the Bible, as if someone could publish a paper that would unravel God. (p. 151)
Robin R. Meyers
(Wallace) Stevens turns to the idea of the weather precisely as the religious man turns to the idea of God.
Harold Bloom
... the divine knowing - what the Father knows, and what the Word says in response to that knowing, and what the Spirit broods upon under the speaking of the Word - all that eternal intellectual activity isn't just daydreaming. It's the cause of everything that is. God doesn't find out about creation; he knows it into being. His knowing has hair on it. It is an effective act. What he knows, is. What he thinks, by the very fact of his thinking, jumps from no-thing into thing. He never thought of anything that wasn't.
Robert Farrar Capon
Look there.” Regina pointed toward the northern sky. “Polaris.”Viktor looked up. “The constant north star, one of man’s most dependable guides.”“Polaris will be waiting for us there when we are old and have experienced a lifetime of joys and regrets,” Regina said, a wistful note in her voice. “That fact makes me feel like one of God’s most insignificant creatures.
Patricia Grasso
In the desert, the only god is a well.
Vera Nazarian
the best existential analysis of the human condition leads directly into the problems of God and faith
Ernest Becker
Why not? Why not anything? If God ain’t a God of why nots, than I say ‘Why bother,’ and I don’t think that’s takin his name in vain, I think it’s tellin the truth about what people need.
Todd Johnson
You have perhaps heard some false reportsOn the subject of God. He is not dead; and he is not a fable. He is not mocked nor forgotten--Successfully. God is a lion that comes in the night. God is a hawk gliding among the stars--If all the stars and the earth, and the living flesh of the night that flows in between them, and whatever is beyond themWere that one bird. He has a bloody beak and harsh talons, he pounces and tears--And where is the German Reich? There alsoWill be prodigious America and world-owning China. I say that all hopes and empires will die like yours;Mankind will die, there will be no more fools; wisdom will die; the very stars will die;One fierce life lasts.
Robinson Jeffers
The finger of the atheists' own divinity, Reason, wrote on the wall the appalling judgments that there is no God; that the universe is only matter in spontaneous motion; and, most grievous word of all, that what men call their souls die with the death of the body, as music dies when the strings are broken.
John Lothrop Motley
... It's the rareGod who needs less stroking that a rockStar or poetician ...
Alice Fulton
For, what is order without common sense, but Bedlam’s front parlor? What is imagination without common sense, but the aspiration to out-dandy Beau Brummell with nothing but a bit of faded muslin and a limp cravat? What is Creation without common sense, but a scandalous thing without form or function, like a matron with half a dozen unattached daughters?And God looked upon the Creation in all its delightful multiplicity, and saw that, all in all, it was quite Amiable.
Vera Nazarian
After Hiram Bingham built the first church on Oahu the student recalls, "When it was completed some of the natives said among themselves, 'That house of worship built by the haoles is a place in which they will pray us all to death. It is meant to kill us.
Sarah Vowell
The cure for our modern maladies is dirt under the fingernails and the feel of thick grass between the toes. The cure for our listlessness is to be out within the invigorating wind. The cure for our uselessness is to take back up our stewardship; for it is not that there has been no work to be done, we simply have not been attending to it.
L.M. Browning
I believe in a benevolent God not because He created the Grand Canyon or Michelangelo, but because He gave us snacks.
Paul Rudnick
Reason is incompetent to answer any fundamental question about God, or morality, or the meaning of life.
Carl Lotus Becker
The sound of thunder awake me, and when I got up, my feet sank into muddy water up to my ankles. Mother took Buster and Helen to high ground to pray, but I stayed behind with Apache and Lupe. We barricaded the door with the rug and started bailing water out the window. Mother came back and begged us to go pray with her on the hilltop. "To heck with praying!" I shouted. "Bail, dammit, bail!"Mom look mortified. I could tell she thought I'd probably doomed us all with my blasphemy, and I was a little shocked at it myself, but with the water rising so fast, the situation was dire. We had lit the kerosene lamp, and we could see the walls of the dugout were beginning to sag inward. If Mom had pitched in and helped, there was a chance we might have been able to save the dugout - not a good chance, but a fighting chance. Apache and Lupe and I couldn't do it on our own, though, and when the ceiling started to cave, we grabbed Mom's walnut headboard and pulled it through the door just as the dugout collapsed in on itself, burying everything.Afterward, I was pretty aggravated with Mom. She kept saying that the flood was God's will and we had to submit to it. But I didn't see things that way. Submitting seemed to me a lot like giving up. If God gave us the strength to bail - the gumption to try to save ourselves - isn't that what he wanted us to do?
Jeannette Walls
The core of liberation theology is profoundly "theologal" - that is, rooted in the very nature of God. You see, there's an immediate relationship between God, oppression, liberation: God is in the poor who cry out. And God is the one who listens to the cry and liberates, so that the poor no longer need to cry out. ( Leonardo Boff, p. 166)
Mev Puleo
In that moment, I understand the way that the noblest yearning for duty and sacrifice can be mixed up with all that is savage and shameful, like in the Bible, where a just and merciful God tells you to kill everyone, kill the children, kill the livestock, kill John Polling, leave nothing alive to sully this pure and just world. Except when it's all done you find out that wasn't really God after all, just some politician, or maybe it was God, but he taps you on the shoulder and says, 'No, dude, that isn't what I meant,' and leaves you sitting in a Dairy Queen in Bothell with blood on your hands and no further orders...
Stuart Archer Cohen
First and foremost, God is the true hero of the story. No matter how captivating the other characters may be, our top priority is to discover what the Bible reveals about God.
Carolyn Custis James
To know myself as woman in the image of God to know God as Mother and to know my own mother as a window into God: these three are inseparable.If one is implausible to the heart the other two are as well.
Roberta C. Bondi
Washed and waiting. That is my life – my identity as one who is forgiven and spiritually cleansed and my struggle as one who perseveres with a frustrating thorn in the flesh, looking forward to what God has promised to do. That is what this book is all about.
Wesley Hill
Justin Martyr explained the distinction and the sameness of the Father and the Son with the analogy of a candle. The flame can pass from one candle to another without changing in quality or diminishing the first.
Thomas F. Madden
Surrounded by Your glory, what will my heart feelWill I dance for you Jesus or in awe of you be stillWill I stand in your presence or to my knees will I fallWill I sing hallelujah, will I be able to speak at allI can only imagineI can only imagine
MercyMe
God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality which surrounds us. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us.
Henry David Thoreau
One of the most striking things about the New Testament teaching on homosexuality is that, right on the heels of the passages that condemn homosexual activity, there are, without exception, resounding affirmations of God's extravagant mercy and redemption. God condemns homosexual behavior and amazingly, profligately, at great cost to himself, lavishes his love on homosexual persons.
Wesley Hill
Whenever God thinks of you, he has your best interests in mind; he has plans to take you further, deeper, and higher than you ever dreamed. This process begins when you seek God and spend time with him. Look for every opportunity to know God. Consider your daily schedule. What does it include? A workout at the gym? A trip to the post office? A lunch hour? A commute? Look for ways to include God in your activities. Invite God to accompany you by talking together. Look for moments- even if it's only ten or twenty seconds- to steal away with him. God will reward your efforts as you reshape your inner life to be focused around him. As you seek God, you will find yourself abiding in him." -Hungry for God
Margaret Feinberg
The real crisis of worship today is not that the preaching is paltry or that it’s too drafty in church. It is that people have no sense of the presence of God, and if they have no sense of His presence, how can they be moved to express the deepest feelings of their souls to honor, revere, worship, and glorify God?
R.C. Sproul
Your heart of devotion and obedience is not in vain. Who knows but God how many people have come near to you and were forever changed simply by the fragrance of his love in you? Who knows but God if he will put you before kings and leaders to speak the truth, redirecting the future of nations? Who knows when that small crack in the dam of our enemy’s plans will give way and God’s glory will truly cover the earth as the sea? Do not become distracted or discouraged by the death around you. Death must always give way when the life of Christ enters the picture.
Amy Layne Litzelman
We must imagine our lives well. We must engage our conscience. Conscience is the voice of God in the nature and heart of man.
Laura Kasischke
I love God, Jesus Christ, my three children, mother, father, brother, sisters, family in general, my pets, my students, and true friends.
Ana Monnar
No human mind can fully grasp the gift of Christ’s atonement, the vastness and inclusiveness of the act—but in the end, it comes down to just you and Jesus. You’ve come, and He’s met you with open arms—and now it’s just between the two of you.
Toni Sorenson
The suffering of the Christian or anyone else in this world is never ultimately an accident. All suffering is within the pale of divine sovereignty. All suffering comes within the broader context of the sovereignty of God.
R.C. Sproul
God's holiness is not an unloving holiness, and God's love is not an unholy love. It is only by keeping these two primary moral qualities of the divine being closely related that we may rightly behold the character of God. (p. 98)
Thomas C. Oden
This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name. The consciousness that animates us is itself central to this mystery and the ground for any experience we might wish to call 'spiritual.' No myths need be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance. No personal God need be worshiped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation. No tribal fictions need be rehearsed for us to realize, one fine day, that we do, in fact, love our neighbors, that our happiness is inextricable from their own, and that our interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the opportunity to flourish.
Sam Harris
The glory of God is as destructive of evil as it is creative of good.
John G. Lake
Keep it simple and keep it real. The more basic we see our connection to God and Spirit, the easier it is to feel like you're a part of it.
Jim Fargiano
In recent times, more and more human thinking has come to assume that the idea of a universal natural law and the idea of 'God' are pointing to one and the same reality.
Wilhelm Reich