“You cannot love God whom you have not seen, if you do not love your brother, whom you have not paid.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 103
Gushing No Good
“A poet who has mastered (by imitation) all the classic forms of poetry might be in a good position to develop a new and challenging form. But if he passes by all that, and sits down to write poetry that just expresses himself, then he is likely only to achieve a form of free verse that was invented by junior high girls who had just finished sobbing.”
Ploductivity, p. 82
Seedy Company
“Loose living can take many forms—raunchy movies, corrupt friends, ungodly parties, envious snark and complaining, and all the rest of that unsightly crew.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 100
Gospel Logic
“Work for the work, not the award. Those who work for the work, and not the award, are—get this—more likely to win the award.”
Ploductivity, p. 81
That I Have Built
“When we have built something, the pride of man wants to look out over it all, like Nebuchadnezzar on the walls of Babylon, and somehow to take credit. This is the beginning of insanity.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 97
Ephraim is a Cake Half Turned
“The kind of ambition that wants to clamber over half-finished work in your initial radius of influence, in order to get that next promotion, is an ambition that is being driven by the wrong kind of motivation entirely.”
Ploductivity, p. 79
Christ Gives Dignity to Life
“If you want paganism without an attendant contempt for life at the margins, you want something that has never existed.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 95
Purified by Fire
“Every week you place all your ambitions on His altar and watch them ascend to Heaven in a column of smoke. When you get to your office Monday morning, they will be there on your desk, cleansed and waiting for you.”
Ploductivity, p. 78
Tracking Sin In
God “knows when we come to church and do not confess our sins honestly at the beginning of the service. He knows when we move through the rest of the service pretending that we didn’t track in what He knows we tracked in.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 93
And Be There as a Permanent Resident
“What is in the sermon must be in the preacher first.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 167