297 results for tag: Quote for today
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 31, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“The best way to announce, send and share a vision is to encase and enfold that dream in a person. That’s what happened when God became a man. Mary… ‘wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger’ (Luke 2:7 KJV).
Sending a message, wrapped up in a person, is at the heart and core of the meaning and significance of the birth of Jesus, and of the celebration of his birth we call Christmas.
Jesus was God in human flesh – the God-man. He brought wonderful news to our world – we call it the gospel – and that gospel was wrapped up in his person. Jesus ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 28, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“In his classic book, The Seven Story Mountain, Thomas Merton says this: ‘There were only a few shepherds at the first Bethlehem. The ox and the ass understood more of the first Christmas than the high priests in Jerusalem. And it is the same today.’
Thomas Merton was saying that many people experience the hoopla and excitement of Christmas, but fail to grasp its profound meaning… Experiencing Christmas is one thing, but grasping its far-reaching significance is yet another.”
Originally published in:
Spiritual Soup for the Hungry Soul, Volume 3
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Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 26, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“… when Jesus was born, he was born far from the doors of any cathedral or temple made with human hands – far from any mega-church campus. The place where Jesus was born had more in common with places today where homeless people fill shopping carts with redeemable containers and poor day laborers wait for someone to hire them… When Mary gave birth, she gave birth to Jesus in a barnyard, and laid him in a feeding trough designed to feed animals. This scene was not a beautiful hospital birthing room – Jesus was not laid in a hygienic room with a window where friends and relatives could view ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 24, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“The Incarnation is about The Visitor, when we became a visited planet… The Visitor brought heaven to earth. Moses gave us the law, but The Visitor personally delivered his grace and truth (John 1:17). When the law came, it came by the mailman (or, if you like, by Fedex), but when grace and truth came, God delivered it personally. God, in the person of Jesus, personally delivered grace and truth, so that you may know that God’s law has no power or condemnation over you. God’s law, delivered through Moses, cannot accuse you, because it was God in that manger.”
Originally ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 21, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“Christmas is about a baby, a really vulnerable baby, born into poverty, into a land that is militarily occupied, to a race of people who are horribly oppressed. God in the flesh – even when it didn’t seem like God is with us.
Christmas is about a baby whose life is threatened soon after his birth so that his family has to run to save his life – they have to become aliens and immigrants. That doesn’t sound like God is with us, does it?
Wait – What about beautiful Christmas trees and expensive presents and lavish meals and feasts and huge choral concerts? Nothing ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 19, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning (John 1:1-2). While many stories begin with the words ‘once upon a time’ John’s Christmas story, about eternity invading human time and space… begins with the words ‘in the beginning.’ Instead of telling us about ‘once upon a time’ the sense here is ‘once before time.’ John writes about ‘in the beginning’ – before time existed, before time began, before the creation of the world as we know it, and before God came into the world in the person of Jesus… He ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 17, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“God, though what we call the Incarnation, came into our world in the person of Jesus. Jesus came into our time-bound world from eternity. The dilemma that the Incarnation presents for our human minds is that Jesus remained divine while becoming human. He still inhabited boundless eternity, but he also inhabited the limitations of our world and what it means to be human. He came into time. He was born, lived, died on the cross and was resurrected. He is now risen; He’s still in time as well as being outside of it. The Book of Revelation is from ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 14, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“How did this incredible and astounding story about God’s love incarnated for us become an orgy of eating, drinking, getting and grasping? How did God’s love being born into our story become so devalued that many primarily understand its celebration as a time when they shop until they drop, spending money they do not have in a vain pursuit of buying love and proving their love to those they hold near and dear?...
Sadly, a headlong pursuit of purchasing love for ourselves blurs and obscures the miracle, majesty and mystery of God’s love coming to this earth. Here-today-and-go...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 12, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“The Son of God was born into the world, not as a prince, but as a pauper. So, to deck up the legendary scene of his nativity with precious hangings, pictures, glittering lamps and other ornamentation, is to destroy whatever valid symbolism it might otherwise have had. Truly, we human beings have a wonderful facility for thus snatching fantasy from the jaws of truth. – Malcom Muggeridge Let us not think of Jesus as spiritual Prozac, designed to cure our depression by masking the symptoms but never offering a cure for the true problem. May we not be seduced by the silly and ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 10, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“Christmas is about God who, in the person of Jesus, came to us willing to confront the very worst of what it means to be human, and love us anyway.”
Originally published in:
Letters to My Friends
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Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 7, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“She had never been with a man – not even the man she was going to marry. As a bride-to-be, the teenage girl named Mary lived each day making plans, dreaming of the future and looking forward to her marriage. Everything was ‘normal’ and her future seemed promising until an angel of the Lord appeared to her saying, she was ‘highly favored.’ … Having a child before she was married was not high on the list of things to which Mary aspired – giving birth to a child before marriage whose father was anyone other than Joseph, her fiancé, would be a disaster!”
Originally published ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 5, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“… this season of the year reminds us that the future is not our enemy. For Christians, the future is not a time to fear, it is not the place of death and defeat. For as certainly as Jesus was born, he will come again. Christ the Lord has come. He has come to be one of us, born of the virgin Mary, born in humility and poverty. He died on his Cross. He rose from his tomb. He is coming again!”
Originally published in:
Spiritual Soup for the Hungry Soul, Volume 1
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Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 3, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“That was God in that crib amidst the animal sounds and smells in Bethlehem, and that was God on that cross on the garbage dump just outside of Jerusalem. God in a crib – God in human flesh – God in diapers – defenseless, crying and fighting for breath. God on the cross, his flesh pierced and just as he was in his crib – defenseless and fighting for breath. The crib and the cross, carved from the same wood – only God can make a tree.”
Originally published in:
Letters to My Friends
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Reflections Along the Jesus Way
November 30, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“It is my contention – and you may choose to disagree – that legalistic religion has fabricated and invented eternal conscious torment as the way God will punish those who don’t measure up. But in the next breath, after condemning people to eternal conscious torment, Christ-less religion will assure them, ‘But don’t forget, God loves you.’ Think about it: Why is it so important for religion to believe that God loves its followers but wants those who are not members of their church to suffer?
Why are so many churches within Christendom willing to extend one hand to ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
November 28, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“The teaching that God’s love is given to us, without strings attached, free of charge, goes against every human instinct. All other religions – the Jewish old covenant, the Muslim code of law, the Buddhist eightfold path and the Hindu doctrine of karma all offer a way to earn God’s approval by human performance. Authentic, biblically based Christianity is unique in its teachings and beliefs that God’s love is given to us by faith alone, grace alone and Christ alone.”
Originally published in:
Spiritual Soup for the Hungry Soul, Volume 2
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Reflections Along the Jesus Way
November 26, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17). He didn’t come breathing fire. He didn’t come filled with threats and condemnation. He didn’t come so that we could receive lurid, detailed explanations of the eternal torture that surely awaits us if we don’t start obeying the law. He didn’t come to reveal an angry and vindictive God. Jesus came as a breath of fresh air. He came, not to start another religion, but to begin a revolution that would eventually put religion out of business.”
Originally published in:
Spiritual Soup for the Hungry Soul, Volume ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
November 23, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“When you begin reading a book, you don’t pick it up and start reading page 78, do you? You know that there is no way you will be able to make sense of the plot, the story thread, the theme or the main characters if you just plunge into the story without understanding the background. If you go to a movie, you try to arrive before it starts. You don’t want to miss anything you will need to understand as the story unfolds.
We all like to see movies from the very beginning, and we all know that it’s hopeless trying to read a 600-page book in about 15-20 minutes by starting to ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
November 21, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“Isn’t it ironic that legalism threatens humans with hell if they don’t measure up and perform, but in reality the hell it threatens is the hell it produces in the lives of its slaves? Many live wretched lives in the hellish swamps of legalism, trapped by an obsession with good deeds they attempt to produce, threatened with continuing and intensified hell in the afterlife. Apart from Christ we cannot be freed. I know, for I have been to religious hell and by God’s grace returned to tell you this story.
I know many ‘good’ and sincere people, many of them dear friends, who are ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
November 19, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“Many North Americans seek religious meaning by continuing a cultural trend first exemplified in the freedom movement of the 1960s. In many celebration (or praise and worship) churches the underlying assumption is that God enjoys receiving what we most enjoy giving, in terms of worship. In such a religious culture the underlying premise seems to be that God embraces our agenda, rather than the other way around. Spiritual menus in many mega-church environments are based on predigested, feel-good, positive thinking, self-empowering messages based on self-esteem. God’s will has become a cliché in ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
November 16, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“Some suggest that laws and behavior create morality. I insist that true morality is a product of God – the fruit of Christ’s Spirit alive in us. Morality does not induce God’s favor or motivate God to take action. True morality is because of God. God does not serve laws. God’s laws came from God and are given by God. God’s law boils down to love. Such love is the product of God, rather than humanly-produced morality, as if we could prove that we are good enough for God to love us back. Rather, we willingly love God and our neighbor as God’s ...
Plain Truth Ministries | Box 300 | Pasadena, CA 91129-0300
