Quotes from Philip Yancey

Según Abraham Heschel, la sociedad antigua apreciaba tres cosas por encima de todo: la sabiduría, la salud y el poder. (¿Ha cambiado algo desde entonces?) Los profetas hebreos atacaban esos tres valores, porque cualquiera de ellos podía convertirse en ídolo.

Por todo esto y mucho más deberíamos estar viviendo un amanecer de gran promesa. Pero ahora que somos más libres para disfrutar la vida, estamos profundamente decepcionados de que la libertad y la comodidad, que buscamos con tan profundo deseo, no le da significado ni propósito a nuestra vida.

La presencia visible de Dios no mejoró en nada su fe ni la hizo duradera.

never live as though God does not exist." Or, stated positively, "Always live in awareness of God's existence.

I have marveled at, and sometimes openly questioned, the self-restraint God has shown throughout history, allowing the Genghis Khans and the Hitlers and the Stalins to have their way. But nothing - nothing - compares to the self-restraint shown that dark Friday in Jerusalem.

I fight the tentacular grip of ungrace in my own life. Although I may not perpetuate the strictness of my upbringing, I battle daily against pride, judgmentalism, and a feeling that I must somehow earn God's approval.

the Gospels make clear the connection: God forgives my debts as I forgive my debtors. The reverse is also true: Only by living in the stream of God's grace will I find the strength to respond with grace toward others.

Sometimes God seemed as close as his wife or children. Sometimes he had no sense of God's presence, no faith to lean on. God is wild, you know, he wrote. We're not in charge.

Rather than looking back nostalgically on a time when Christians wielded more power, I suggest another approach: that we regard ourselves as subversives operating within the broader culture.

The medical community now freely admits that in a larger sense a person's attitude is one of the chief factors in determining the effect of all suffering.

Over time Christians learned that the faith grows best from the bottom up rather than being imposed from the top down.

The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea

senseless. I prefer the word "buzzed," following the brain/amplifier analogy.

You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is required. The stars neither require it nor demand it. ANNIE DILLARD

Legalism may "work" in an institution such as a Bible college or the Marine Corps. In a world of ungrace, structured shame has considerable power. But there is a cost, an incalculable cost: ungrace does not work in a relationship with God. I have come to see legalism in its pursuit of false purity as an elaborate scheme of grace avoidance. You can know the law by heart without knowing the heart of it

the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt said, the only remedy for the inevitability of history is forgiveness; otherwise, we remain trapped in the "predicament of irreversibility.

Jesus gave us these stories about grace in order to call us to step completely outside our tit-for-tat world of ungrace and enter into God's realm of infinite grace.

the same answer from suffering people: it matters little what we say — our concern and availability matter far more.

Viktor Frankl, who spent time in one of Hitler's camps, said, "Despair is suffering without meaning.

Aprendió la dura lección que Moisés había tratado de enseñar a los israelitas siglos atrás: cualquier cosa que los seres humanos toquen, llevará un defecto fatal. Los buenos tiempos representan el verdadero peligro; nuestros mejores esfuerzos nos llevan a la ruina. En resumen, los seres humanos no son dioses, y ese entendimiento llevó al Maestro a la desesperación.

In the context of real life, the Bible seems refreshingly whole, an honest reflection on humanity in relation to the sacred and the profane.

Dios no le importa tanto que lo analicemos. Principalmente, lo que quiere es que lo amemos.

if I care to listen, I hear a loud whisper from the gospel that I did not get what I deserved.

Lewis Smedes points out, "The first and often the only person to be healed by forgiveness is the person who does the forgiveness. . . . When we genuinely forgive, we set a prisoner free and then discover that the prisoner we set free was us.