Quotes About Renewal

The healthy do not need a doctor, but sick people do. I have not come to coddle the comfortable, but to set trapped people free for a new life." Luke 5:31–32

All the emptying out is only for the sake of a Great Outpouring.

We mend and renew the world by strengthening inside ourselves what we seek outside ourselves, and not by demanding it of others or trying to force it on others.

Every time you take in a breath, you are repeating the pattern of taking spirit into matter, and thus repeating the first creation of Adam. And every time you breathe out, you are repeating the pattern of returning spirit to the material universe. In a way, every exhalation is a "little dying" as we pay the price of inspiriting the world.

I further believe that a free and loving God would create things that continue to recreate themselves, exactly as all parents desire for their children.

favorite metaphors. I love the image of fire, not for its seeming destructiveness, but as a natural symbol for transformation—literally, the changing of forms. Farmers, forestry workers, and Native peoples know that fire is a renewing force, even as it also can be destructive. We in the West tend to see it as merely destructive (which is probably why we did not understand the metaphors of hell or purgatory).

Church" in any form should be a "laboratory for resurrection

you must first "go into the tomb" with Jesus (Romans 6:4)

The loss and renewal pattern is so constant and ubiquitous that it should hardly be called a secret at all.

Francis of Assisi was a master of making room for the new and letting go of that which was tired or empty.

In the larger-than-life, spiritually transformed people I have met, I always find one common denominator: in some sense, they have all died before they died. They have followed in the self-emptying steps of Jesus, a path from death to life that Christians from all over the world celebrate during Easter week.

Yearning for a new way will not produce it. Only ending the old way can do that.

the Greek word meta-noia, which literally means to move "beyond the mind," is usually translated "repentance" and no longer points to its much deeper meaning.

Really? When? Had all his material become threadbare? After thirty years of marriage, were you supposed to come up with new stuff all the time?

A bicycle promises spring as surely as the hollowing out of melting snowbanks, the return of song birds, the first bright tulip bud.

In the godly, holy truths are conveyed by way of a taste; gracious men have a spiritual palate as well as a spiritual eye. Grace alters the spiritual taste.

They had this block to themselves. The windows of all the tenements on both sides were marked with the white X of urban renewal; they stood nearly empty, waiting for the wreckers. Within them the cockroaches crawled and the rats chittered, but the humans were away, infesting some other neighborhood.

there are times when life's ends are so raveled that reason and sense cry out that we stop and gather them together again before we can proceed

As though for purposes of renewal, he had for a time gone back into the insensible world out of which life had originally sprung, and, before he could live again, hope or plan again, a regrouping of his faculties into a new personality structure would be necessary.

No,' Nico said. 'Getting a second life is one thing. Making it a better life, that's the trick.' As soon as he said it, Nico realized he could've been talking about himself. He decided not to bring that up.

Nothing lasts forever, not even the best machines. And everything can be reused. - Hephaestus

Egyptians believe in the power of the sunrise. They believe each morning begins not just a new day, but a new world.

The world may need fixing, but it's worth preserving.

Everything living deserves a chance to grow.