Ask yourself what you would do if you had an unlimited supply of both courage and hope. Now begin answering that question with action. Take one step today — then repeat, repeat, repeat.
KEEP MOVING.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 153
Photo: Bull Run Regional Park, Virginia, March 29, 2024
If you’ve ever felt the pull between being the woman you are and being the woman you think you’re supposed to be, if you’ve ever believed that the heart of God’s plan for us was doing more and trying harder — then this book is for you. I spent years and years tangled in the idea that I needed to measure up to the women around me, that I needed to fit in and look the part and check the boxes all to somehow prove that I loved God enough, that I was godly enough. I didn’t understand who I was created to be or how I was to live that out, and, as a result, I was left sinking in shame instead. But that is not God’s plan for us. His plan is not for shame but for freedom, not for comparison but for flourishing; his plan is that we be his image.
— Elizabeth Garn, Freedom to Flourish, p. 13
Photo: Bull Run Regional Park, Virginia, March 29, 2024
What sin could be more damnable than the murder of God’s only begotten Son? What crimes could compare to crying out for his death, driving the nails into his wrists, mocking his pain, and then abandoning him to his cross? Yet at that very moment, with his last few breaths, Christ proclaimed their forgiveness — even as they were still murdering him.
Why hasn’t this become the lens by which we interpret everything the Bible has to say about the afterlife rather than pagan myths that we don’t even understand? Why doesn’t the immensity of God’s grace capture our imaginations in the same way as eternal divine vengeance? Why do we work so hard to defend the idea that in order for the gospel to be “good news” for us, it must be a curse for others?
— Derek Ryan Kubilus, Holy Hell, p. 45
Photo: Bull Run Regional Park, Virginia, March 29, 2024
The word is made known in the person. It cannot be contained to the pages of Scripture alone. It is embodied and incarnated. If the word is constricted to the pages, the gospel is neutered. As a Christian, I believe that God is made known in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The Jewish teacher who took the actual words of scripture and said, “You have heard it said, but I say to you…” suggests that there is more to God than simply knowing the scriptures. The fullness of God is discerned in the reality of existence. The word of God is experienced.
— Trey Ferguson, Theologizin’ Bigger, p. 12
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 23, 2024
Remember, not everything has to be done. And not everything has to be done by you. May you find a small place for rest that is life-giving and fits what is available to you today.
— Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie, Good Enough, p. 58
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 5, 2024
If God required the execution of an innocent man before God could save us, then what does that say about God’s power? Or God’s goodness? Isn’t God powerful enough to forgive sin without an unjust execution? Isn’t God good enough to desire to use divine power to save us without violence? If we think in terms of “ransom,” in which Jesus pays God for our release from eternal death, then Go saves through bribery. These thoughts about God’s actions should upset our moral equilibrium — the morality that God instilled in us. When we hold to our traditional theories of atonement we choke out God’s compassion, grace, and power to heal and save us and compromise love with the divine necessity for retribution.
— Sharon L. Baker, Executing God, p. 70
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, February 8, 2024
It may be that we have lost our ability to hold a blazing coal, to move unfettered through time, to walk on water, because we have been taught that such things have to be earned; we should deserve them; we must be qualified. We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift.
But a child rejoices in presents!
— Madeleine L’Engle, quoted in Glimpses of Grace, collected by Carole F. Chase
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 20, 2024
Your emotions are not wrong or bad
or lying to you or telling the full truth.
They are giving you a bit of data
that you shouldn’t ignore.
We love, and lose, and fall, and get back up,
and fail, and try again.
Your humanity is not an affront.
We are reminding ourselves that
this is who we are, how we’re made:
to feel the pain, the grief, the stress,
the risk, the fear, the heartbreak.
So, you beautiful creature,
here is your permission slip to feel it all.
To feel the joy and delight and excitement.
And the sorrow and fear and despair.
All the yellows and pinks, and violets and grays.
Because you are the whole damn sky.
— Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie, The Lives We Actually Have, p. 4-5
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 18, 2024
We can never undo what we have done. We can never go back in time. We write history with our decisions and our actions. But we also write history with our responses to those actions. We can leave the pain and the damage in our wake, unattended, or we can do the work of acknowledging and fixing, to whatever extent possible, the harm that we have caused. Repentance — tshuvah — is like the Japanese art of kintsugi, repairing broken pottery with gold. You can never unbreak what you have broken. But with the sincere and deep work of transformation, acts of repair have the potential to make something new.
— Danya Ruttenberg, On Repentance and Repair, p. 45
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, December 22, 2023
All I can do is try to draw closer to your uniqueness, to feel linked by the small overlaps between us. This is how empathy works. It’s how differentness starts to weave itself into togetherness. Empathy fills the gaps between us, but never closes them entirely. We get pulled into the lives of others by virtue of what they feel safe and able to show us, and the generosity with which we are able to meet them. Piece by piece, person by person, we begin to apprehend the world in more fullness.
— Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry, p. 241-242
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, December 8, 2023