Quotes About Love

This is how you remember God: you bless those who need it the most in the same way that God blessed you when you needed it the most.

What does it mean to never be separated from love? Is that how you live every day? In every thought, are you constantly reminded that love is the ground of your being?

This story... blasts to pieces our biases and labels with a declaration that God is on everyone's side, extending grace and compassion to everyone, especially those we have most strongly decided are not on God's side.

But this lawyer, he can't even answer Jesus's question by saying the name. He simply replies the one . . . That's your neighbor. That's who you're called to love. That's where the eternal life is found. In showing kindness to the one you hate, the one you despise, the one you wish didn't exist, the one whose name you can't even say.

Has God created millions of people over tens of thousands of years who are going to spend eternity in anguish? Can God do this, or even allow this, and still claim to be a loving God? Does God punish people for thousands of years with infinite, eternal torment for things they did in their few finite years of life?

We cannot earn what we have always had. What we can do is trust that what God keeps insisting is true about us is actually true.

Grace is when you aren't striving or controlling or trying to change or manipulate or make something happen. Grace is when you find yourself carried along, when all that's left to do is receive. Grace is when you know you're loved, exactly as you are. Grace is an entirely different way of experiencing life.

Forgiveness is unilateral. God isn't waiting for us to get it together, to clean up, shape up, get up - God has already done it.

The scorecard is rooted in resentment, and the space between you is highly responsive to resentment. The scorecard is lethal because its rooted in fear - fear that we're on our own, that we're not going to be taken care of, that we're not going to get what we need...In order to get rid of scorecard, you have to choose to act in love instead of fear. To get rid of your scorecard, someone has to move toward the other first.

Arguing about how it literally happened can be an easy way to avoid facing the people in your life you need to forgive. For the people who first heard this story, the story would have had a provocative, unsettling effect. The Assyrians? The Assyrians were like a huge, gaping, open wound for the Israelites. Bless the Assyrians? The story is extremely subversive because it insists that your enemy may be more open to grace and love than you are.

for a staggering number of people in our world the for of the Jesus message has been buried under a massive pile of againsts. Somewhere

It's one thing to be in love; it's another to act because of love. Love is a noun—a feeling you have—and it's also a verb, something you do.

Because if something is wrong with your God, if your God is loving one second and cruel the next, if your God will punish people for all of eternity for sins committed in a few short years, no amount of clever marketing or compelling language or good music or great coffee will be able to disguise that one, true, glaring, untenable, unacceptable, awful reality.

Gospel is the divine announcement that you are loved and accepted exactly as you are, that everything has been taken care of, that everything you've been striving to earn has been yours the entire time, that you belong, in exactly this condition that you are currently in, nothing additional required or needed.

Jesus says, he "did not come to judge the world, but to save the world" (John 12). We can name Jesus, orient our lives around him, and celebrate

What you find in the Bible are stories accurately reflecting the dominant consciousness of the day, and yet right in among and sometimes even within those very same violent stories, you find radically new ideas about freedom, equality, justice, compassion, and love. New ideas sit side by side with old ideas. Vicious violence is right there next to new understandings of peace and justice. (Kind of like now.)

When you get married you're starting a conversation that never ends

Gospel is the announcement of who God insists you are. You're a child of God, not because of how great you are but because God has all kinds of kids and you're one of them.

Even the slightest tremors of bitterness can block the flow of love.

When you are both intentional about moving toward the other in love, over time you build up tremendous reserves of love and grace and goodwill. Love - with spark and substance and sacrifice all together - is a cumulative phenomenon. It builds on itself, it gains a head of steam, it grows in depth and breadth and intensity. This propels you into an entirely different way of relating to each other - another kind of life altogether.

Which is stronger and more powerful, the hardness of the human heart or God's unrelenting, infinite, expansive love?

it is absolutely vital that we acknowledge that love, grace, and humanity can be rejected. From the most subtle rolling of the eyes to the most violent degradation of another human, we are terrifyingly free to do as we please. God gives us what we want, and if that's hell, we can have it. We have that kind of freedom, that kind of choice. We are that free.

Neither son understands that the father's love was never about any of that. The father's love cannot be earned, and it cannot be taken away. It just is.

We're here on earth, in these bodies, feeling the pull of gravity, knowing that we're only here for a while. But then there are these moments— like brushes or glimpses— of love and connection and hope, and suddenly we're here, and we're everywhere. Our feet are on the ground, but we're flying. Our hearts are still beating, but our souls are soaring.