“In water one sees one's own face, but in wine one beholds the heart of another.”
~ French proverb

“Jesus uses the work of mercy to show us the essence of the righteousness God  requires in our relationships … Christians are charged to meet physical and  economic needs among brethren. This is not optional. If a professing Christian  does not do so, “how can the love of God be in him?”
The striking truth is that the work of mercy is fundamental to being a Christian …  Mercy to the full range of human needs is such an essential mark of being a  Christian that it can be used as a test of true faith. Mercy is not optional or  additional to being a Christian. Rather, a life poured out in deeds of mercy is
the inevitable sign of true faith.”
~ Tim Keller, Ministries of Mercy

These prophets learn their speech from God. Their words are God-grounded,
God-energized, God-passionate. As their words enter the language of our communities, men and women find themselves in the presence of God,
who enters the mess of human sin to rebuke and to renew.

Left to ourselves we turn God into an object, something we can deal with, some thing we can use to our benefit, whether that thing is a feeling or an idea or an image. 1

Eugene Peterson, The Message: Introduction to the Book of Micah

The world – heaven and earth, men and women, animals and birds – was made in the first place by God's Word. Prophets, arriving on the scene and finding that world in ruins, finding a world of moral rubble and spiritual disorder, take up the work of words again to rebuild what human disobedience and mistrust demolished...
To experience God's presence is to enter a far larger world of reality, one that our sensory experiences can point to but cannot describe – the realities of love and compassion, justice and faithfulness, sin and evil... and God. Mostly God. The realities that are Word-evoked are where most of the world's action takes place.1

Eugene Peterson, The Message: Introduction to the Book of Micah

“The Bible’s purpose is not so much to show you how to live a good life. The Bible’s  purpose is to show you how God’s grace breaks into your life against your will  and saves you from the sin and brokenness that otherwise you would never
be able to overcome…
Religion says ‘if you obey, then you will be accepted’. But the Gospel claims that  'if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you’re accepted, only then will you ever  begin to obey’. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible  shows the difference.”
~ Tim Keller, The Centrality of the Gospel

The Christian congregation is a place where people find their true freedom,
their true dignity, and their true equality in reverence to the One who is worthy
of all the praise that we can offer.1

Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society.

God created all things to be in a beautiful, harmonious, interdependent, knitted, webbed relationship to one another. Just as rightly related physical elements
form a cosmos or a tapestry, so rightly related human beings form a community. This interwovenness is what the Bible calls shalom, or harmonious peace.
It means complete reconciliation, a state of the fullest flourishing in every dimension – physical, emotional, social, and spiritual – because all relationships are right, perfect, and filled with joy.1

Tim Keller, Generous Justice

“You don’t know mercy until you’ve really needed it. As Thomas Merton once said,  'Mercy within mercy, within mercy.' It’s as if we collapse into deeper nets of  acceptance, deeper nets of being enclosed and finally find we’re in a net we can’t  fall out of. We are captured by grace. Only after much mistrust and testing do we  accept that we are accepted.”
~ Richard Rohr

[In the early 1900s, London newspaper The Times invited readers to answer the question: “What's Wrong with the World?” To which G. K. Chesterton famously replied...]
“Dear Sirs. I am. Sincerely yours, G. K. Chesterton.”

Testing 1-2-3

The purpose of this website is to catalog QUOTES for All Souls Missoula worship guides.