Quotes from Rob Bell

This death-and-life mystery, this mechanism, this process is built into the very fabric of creation. The cells in our bodies are dying at a rate of millions a second, only to be replaced at a similar rate of millions a second. Our skin is constantly flaking off and our body is continually replacing the skin cells with new ones; we have entirely new skin every week or so.

Your blinking line is whatever sits in front of you waiting to be brought into existence.

right isn't even the best way to think about the Bible. How about dancing? You dance with it. And to dance, you have to hear its music. And then you move in response to it.

We're engaged more than ever by the possibilities of soul and spirit, and by the nagging suspicion that all of this may not be a grand accident after all; but God, an increasing number of people are asking—what does God have to do with that?

What you do with your life is fundamentally creative work. The kind of life you lead, what you do with your time, how you spend your energies—it's all part of how you create your life.

When we spent a day being fully present, we quickly discovered how much of the rest of our lives we weren't fully present.

Which takes us back to this creation poem, which grounds all creativity in the questions that are asked of all of us: What kind of world are we making? Which always leads to the pressing personal question: What kind of life am I creating?

What we see in Jesus's story about the rich man and Lazarus is an affirmation that there are all kinds of hells, because there are all kinds of ways to resist and reject all that is good and true and beautiful and human now, in this life, and so we can only assume we can do the same in the next.

gospel that has as its chief message avoiding hell or not sinning will never be the full story. A gospel that repeatedly, narrowly affirms and bolsters the "in-ness" of one group at the expense of the "out-ness" of another group will not be true to the story that includes "all things and people in heaven and on earth.

Because the blinking line doesn't just taunt you with all the possibilities that are before you, the potential, all that you sense could exist but isn't yet because you haven't created it. The blinking line also asks a question: Who are you to do this? And that question can be paralyzing. It can prevent us from overcoming inertia. It can cause crippling doubt and stress. It can keep us stuck on the couch while life passes us by.

The intellect has a way of building a fence around the heart, cutting us off from what we know to be true in a way that is hard to prove according to the categories in which proof matters.

Sabbath leaks. It spills over. It changes how you live the other six days. When you intentionally slow down, you instantly see how fast you've been moving the rest of the time.

Sabbath is when you spend a day remembering that efficiency and production are not God's highest goals for your life. Joy is.

It often appears that those who talk the most about going to heaven when you die talk the least about bringing heaven to earth right now, as Jesus taught us to pray: "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." At the same time, it often appears that those who talk the most about relieving suffering now talk the least about heaven when we die.

The world is free to be a world. It's free to be beautiful and safe, and it's free to break your heart in a thousand ways. That free.

Sabbath forces you to listen to your life. Sabbath is a day when you are fully present to your pain, your stress, your worry, your fear. Sabbath is when you let whatever you've pushed down rise to the surface. Sabbath is a day when things that are broken get fixed, when things within you that have torn are mended.

And in response, I had stored up reserves of I'll show you anger. That's a particular kind of anger. When you feel like someone wouldn't let you be you, it strikes at the core of who you are. And that sacred wound can animate all kinds of action. There's a ton of activating energy there.

Our eschatology shapes our ethics. Eschatology is about last things. Ethics are about how you live. What you believe about the future shapes, informs, and determines how you live now.

It is your responsibility to stop listening to voices that hinder your ongoing growth and maturity.

If you believe that you're going to leave and evacuate to somewhere else, then why do anything about this world? A proper view of heaven leads not to escape from the world, but to full engagement with it, all with the anticipation of a coming day when things are on earth as they currently are in heaven.

I saw that there's no word for spiritual in the Hebrew scriptures (also called the Old Testament). So basic, and yet so revolutionary. There's no word for spiritual, because to call something spiritual would be to imply that other things aren't. In the Bible, everything is spiritual. All of life.

Jesus did not use hell to try and compel "heathens" and "pagans" to believe in God, so they wouldn't burn when they die. He talked about hell to very religious people to warn them about the consequences of straying from their God-given calling and identity to show the world God's love.

The writers of the scriptures consistently affirm that we're all part of the same family. What we have in common—regardless of our tribe, language, customs, beliefs, or religion—outweighs our differences.

Tragically, Solomon's