Quotes About God

Now I lay me down to sleep. I pay the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pay the Lord my soul to take.

Kovin monen jumala on taivaisiin asti venynyttä narsismia.

God will stop at nothing to get through to us, overwhelming us with symbols, piling them up one on another without carefully codifying whether and how they all make sense. One thing they are not is tragically empty, distant, cold. They are humming, hot-blooded, and full of life.

One of the first things we learn from our earliest teachers in the church is that the bible has a purpose, a point, a goal, a telos. It wants to save us. Or rather God wants to save us, and the whole world that God created in the first place, and all who bear the gospel to us leave their fingerprints on it as they transmit goodness to us.

Modern, technique-based ways of reading have their place, but reading scripture is not complete until the church loves God and neighbor more.

With an eye trained for finding this God, an ear tuned to his voice, we learn to find him again and again. Every beloved loves her lover in his specificity—his face, his hands, his voice— and love leads her to "act in all respect and regulate her every movement in a manner designed to please the man she loves".

The only way that apple trees, lilies, marriage and sex, gender and procreation, or even Bibles or language can reveal to us so much about the nature of God is that they're good gifts that bear the imprint of their divine Maker.

The point of the Bible isn't to learn what it says. The point of going to church isn't to be more religious. The point of both is to be made into nothing but love of God and neighbor.

When we read the Bible christologically, we are not smuggling Jesus in -- we are discovering him there, to our and others' delight. To say otherwise is to fail to read Paul or Luke well. It's to miss that all creation hollers praise. It is to leave the world ungraced, uncharged by the grandeur of God, with no witness to the One who creates and redeems it in Christ.

If you want to know where God is, look where God is unendingly sharing the divine presence. The space between us and the bible isn't a tragically empty vacuum. It is a resplendent party, full of angels and saints and not a few rogues, and there's a place for you and me. The host is Jesus alone.

Desire is what makes us human. No wonder—God planted it in us to lure us back to God's self.

The gospel he [St. Paul] received already had someone else's fingerprints on it. And this is nothing to lament. Christianity is the sort of gift you cannot receive without giving it away. Our fingerprints add to the many layers of those already there. And here's the most glorious thing of all—God has fingerprints. God is a Jew from first-century Palestine.

the nature of desire is the same. We notice others' desire. It shapes ours. ... Desire is what makes us human. No wonder—God planted it in us to lure us back to God's self.

St. Augustine imagines standing on tiptoes, trying to catch a glimpse of a God who is unbound by time and space, who knows all, is all-powerful, and is entirely unbearably good. We can't imagine such a God. All our thoughts are bounded by time, space, weakness, our own sinfulness. But we can just brush up against the underside of such thoughts as we reach reach reach . . . and then we trip over the crucified slave who is washing our feet.

God, on Christian lights, isn't just high, lofty, far away, distant, unsullied with us. God, in Christian thought, is Jewish. Human. Not just great and holy but little and lowly. ... God becomes our neighbour. ... If it takes a neighbour's desire to set ours alight, then the one living and true God will become that flesh-and-blood neighbour.

All is not lost. In fact, as ever with Augustine, God uses our sin to move us toward salvation. The theologian for whom the fall is a "happy fault," felix culpa, —since redemption will be sweeter after the fall than it would have been without it— argues that God can make use of our hard-headedness in teaching and being taught.

The key to interpretation, as Augustine once told Deogratias, is your delight as an interpreter. Your delight is what your listeners will notice. It is what will return you to the text for more. It is what has a chance to draw in your hearers. It is the tether God has left in your soul with which to draw you to God's self, and others through you.

In describing their search for the sublime, Celtic pilgrims talk of "thin places" where the distance between heaven and earth narrows and the presence of God is more readily felt. Rosalie, the almost nun, worked in a thin place.

The right relationship won't distract you from God. It will bring you closer to Him.

Dios, ¿no tengo necesidades y derechos?». Dios le habló a su corazón diciéndole: «Sí, tienes derechos. Tienes derecho a que todo se trate de ti. Tienes derecho a satisfacer tus necesidades. Tienes derecho a no ser heroico. Tienes todo el derecho de no convertirte en un santo».

Purity also offers you a new lens through which you view life. Not only are you more able to see God with the eyes of faith, you're also more able to see Him in others....Wouldn't it be nice not only to see God in a boyfriend, but know that your boyfriend sees God in you?

If your relationship with God is secondary to your relationship with a man, the human relationship can grow into an idol. It will reign over your heart and dictate your level of happiness. Not only is this unfair to the man, it will ultimately end in disappointment. For things to run more smoothly, put God first and let Him worry about the rest.

You could see that he physically was there, but one could sense that he was immersed in the love of the Lord. They were united in talking to each other.

For God did not call us to impurity but to holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards this, disregards not a human being, but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you. 1 Thess. 4:7–8