discipleship

Romance depends upon imperfect knowledge.

Nothing teaches us about the preciousness of the Creator as much as when we learn the emptiness of everything else.

If I can hold God's attention, I can hold the world's..

It was well to be Martha and serve, but better to be Lazarus and commune.

It is the heaven-born instinct of a gracious soul to seek shelter from all ills beneath the wings of Jehovah. A hypocrite, when afflicted by God, resents the infliction, and, like a slave, would run from the Master who has scourged him

As we gaze on Christ, the mind is informed, and the heart is inflamed, and the body begins to line up.

Only he who cries out for the persecuted Jews can sing Gregorian chants. _ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Terror and rapture to Emily Dickinson are alternative words for "transport".

Jesus did not command us to "develop" leaders. He commanded us to make "disciples". The world "develops" leaders, the Church "disciples" them. The two are not the same.

Being a __hristian_ _ a word used only three times in the New Testament _ is not Jesus_ goal for his people. But the making of a community of revolutionary followers or __isciples_ _ a word used nearly three hundred times in the New Testament _ seems to be exactly the goal. The church must return to these roots. The church must become a way of life, an alternative lifestyle, a counter-community of Christ-followers. Church must once again become a people who are on __he Way_ formed by the words and way of Jesus.

Like the hub of a wheel, the church__ corporate life is an extension of the good news that God was in Christ reconciling the whole world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.

If colleges are going to justify themselves, they are going to have to thrive at those things that require physical proximity. That includes moral and spiritual development. Very few of us cultivate our souls as hermits. We do it through small groups and relationships and in social contexts.

We would like a church that again asserts that God, not nations, rules the world, that the boundaries of God's kingdom transcend those of Caesar, and that the main political task of the church is the formation of people who see clearly the cost of discipleship and are willing to pay the price.

You cannot have a moral holiday and remain moral, nor can you have a spiritual holiday and remain spiritual. God wants you to be entirely his, and this means that you have to watch to keep yourself fit. It takes a tremendous amount of time. Some of us expect to __lear the numberless ascensions_* in about two minutes.

All of life comes in seed form _ not as monuments.

Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten. It wants to break open the ripe fruit when it has hardly finished planting the shoot. But all too often the greedy eyes are only deceived; the fruit that seemed so precious is still green on the inside, and disrespected hands ungratefully toss aside what has so disappointed them.

Better to wait actively than passively.

When it comes to doing something about what is wrong in the world, Jesus is best known for his fondness for the minute, the invisible, the quiet, the slow _ yeast, salt, seeds, light. And manure.