Quotes About Reflection

Rather than being quick to settle on final answers to puzzling questions, a trust-centered faith will find time to formulate wise questions that respect the mystery of God and call upon God for the courage to sit in those questions for as long as necessary before seeking a way forward.

judging by how the Bible actually behaves—God did not design scripture to be a hushed afternoon in an oak-paneled library. Instead, God has invited us to participate in a wrestling match, a forum for us to be stretched and to grow.

Anyway, we don't need to get into all that. My point is simply, no, King David, the heavens are not telling the glory of God (Ps. 19:1)—at least not without a lot of heavy theological lifting and perhaps a double bourbon. The heavens actually freak me out and make me wonder whether there is a God at all

The broader we cast our net, the deeper we wind up owning our own thoughts.

But doubt is not the enemy of faith, a solely destructive force that rips us away from God, a dark cloud that blocks the bright warm sun of faith. Doubt is only the enemy of faith when we equate faith with certainty in our thinking.

Thomas Merton's Thoughts in Solitude.

To mention just a few: Brian McLaren, The Last Word and After That; Valerie Tarico, Trusting Doubt; Greg Boyd, Benefit of the Doubt; Rachel Held Evans, Faith Unravelled (formerly, Evolving in Monkeytown); Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God; Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith.

Transposing the past is an act of wisdom. It is not scripted. It can't be predicted.

I was drawn to authors and others who were explicitly outside of the Christian tradition . . . Such as Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth), Robert Bly (Iron John), Don Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements), and Sam Keen (Fire in the Belly). I also re-read Viktor Frankl's classic Man's Search for Meaning (which my daughter Lizz and my wife Sue also read while Lizz was away).

they introduced me to extended communities of faith through writers I had never heard of before . . . Along with the writings of Gerald May and Thomas Keating, whom I had not known before, I was encouraged to explore or revisit a few other writers, including Richard Rohr (Adam's Return and The Naked Now), Thomas Merton (Thoughts

And taking seriously the historically shaped biblical portrayal of a violent God drives us to ask for ourselves, "Is this what God is like?

And it's always a bad move to invent a Jesus who agrees with us rather than challenges us.

I still think and talk about what I think God is like, but I've hopefully learned (feel free to keep me honest here, people) that being right and winning isn't the endgame here. Loving as God loves is.

Reading the situation—not simply the Bible—is what wisdom is all about.

my disruptive experiences are not outside impositions to or an attack on my faith, but are the soil out of which my faith matures and takes shape.

Strict legalism is a myth. Laws have a knack for ambiguity, and it only takes a moment of reflection to see that they have to be interpreted, which isn't exactly breaking news. The entire history of Judaism and Christianity bears witness to people of faith doing just that.

I'VE BEEN ON A JOURNEY of rediscovering the Bible and the God behind it for over thirty years and I don't see that journey ending any time soon.

Wisdom leads us to dialogues with the past. It doesn't lead us back to the past.

To live by faith—to live wisely—means living with an ever-increasing awareness of the hidden things, not simply a detached general knowledge that, say, "Money can be harmful," but a deep knowledge of ourselves, a true self-awareness of what money is doing to me . . . right now.

Anyone who hangs out on social media at all knows how effortlessly it can bring out the worst in us. Not me, of course, but everyone else. I'm an angel.

In reading the Bible we are watching the spiritual journeys of people long ago.

The point is that Proverbs 26:4–5 doesn't tell me what to do. It wasn't designed to. It models something better: the permission to think it through, figure it out, and learn from experience for next time. In fact, more than just giving us permission, the contradiction sets up our expectation that we will have to think it through.

And it is sacred because all of our efforts, big and small, to live wisely are sacred acts of bowing to and seeking alignment with the Wise Creator.

Life alone is precious, but conscious thought is the greatest gift the universe offers.