The church, if it is going to be the church God designed it to be, must become a space for the full story of God’s artistic grace — the story about where we were, where we are now, and where we will be someday. from A Fellowship of Differents: Showing the World God's...
Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future.
The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.
The new thing that God seeks often occurs in times of disruption, when the familiar world has collapsed and the future is in doubt, when the days grow shorter, and we wonder if darkness will swallow the light... God's new thing is the vision of "something more," a...
Surrender to what is.Let go of what was.Have faith in what will be.
What you do in the present--by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself--will last into God's future. from Surprised by...
The decision for hope rests on what we believe at the deepest levels — what our most basic convictions are about the world and about God and about the future. We choose hope, not as a naïve wish, but as a choice with our eyes wide open to the reality of the world and...
Hope is never calibrated to the fervor of optimism or the distress of pessimism. Hope is fixed to a larger horizon and rooted in an expansive memory. Hope cannot be auctioned off to the highest bidder; cannot be put up for collateral; cannot be traded on the big board...
We must be the ones that invest in abandoned places. In abandoned people. Because when the world says that there is no future there, we are the ones who know better. We believe in a God that restores.
No amount of regret changes the past. No amount of anxiety changes the future. ANY amount of gratitude changes the present.