That's the whole spiritual life. It's learning how to die. And as you learn how to die, you start losing all your illusions, and you start being capable now of true intimacy and love.

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Pity can be nearsighted and condescending; shared suffering can be dignifying and life-changing.

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I will not try to run my own life or the lives of others; that is God's business.

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Prayer is the disciplined refusal to act before God acts.

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If you don't take a Sabbath, something is wrong. You're doing too much, you're being too much in charge. You've got to quit, one day a week, and just watch what God is doing when you're not doing anything.

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Worship does not satisfy our hunger for God; it whets our appetite.

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Wisdom is the art of living skillfully in whatever actual conditions we find ourselves.

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There are no experts in the company of Jesus. We are all beginners, necessarily followers, because we don’t know where we are going.

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The gospel is never about everybody else; it is always about you, about me. The gospel is never truth in general; it's always a truth in specific. The gospel is never a commentary on ideas or cultures or conditions; it's always about actual persons, actual pains, actual troubles, actual sin; you, me; who you are and what you've done; who I am and what I've done.

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The word 'christian' means different things to different people. To one person it means a stiff, upright, inflexible way of life, colorless and unbending. To another it means a risky, surprised-filled adventure, lived tiptoe at the edge of expectation...If we get our information from the biblical material, there is no doubt that the Christian life is a dancing, leaping, daring life.

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