Tag: Chrestomathy

“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

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

“What is in the sermon must be in the preacher first.”

Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 167

“God created us for glory, and there is no way for us to find a switch that will turn that off. We are inveterate glory seekers, and the thing that distinguishes a good man from a bad man is what he finds glorious—not whether he finds something glorious.”

Ploductivity, p. 76

“Glory is not something that fossilizes. When the Spirit departs, the glory departs, and the church building becomes Ichabod Memorial . . . Let us never exchange the glory of God for a fog of nuance.”

Let the Stones Cry Out, pp. 91-92

“Remembering the finitude of your labors will keep you humble. Recognizing that your labors have a place in God’s cosmic intentions for the universe will keep you from thinking that your tiny labors are stupid labors. They are nothing of the kind.”

Ploductivity, p. 74

“The privilege we have in this world is to yearn for the next.”

Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 89

“God designs the huge projects and He assigns all the bit parts to all the little people. He says to Smith that he is to stand in this particular spot, and when the whistle blows, he is to pull that lever. Why? Smith wonders. Just pull the lever, God replies” (Ploductivity, p. 72).

“This kind of thing can even reach pathological levels, where we take pride in how much more humbly we yearn for the transcendent than they do. Pride is an insidious sin, and it is capable of working with any materials.”

Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 87

“In the cosmic scheme of things, the work that is assigned to us, and which God has given us to do, is tiny. The work that we will do by the grace of God, and to which God will respond with ‘well done, good and faithful servant,’ will be work that is teeny tiny. Finitude is one of our glories. God will not say well done to any human whose work is the size of three galaxies. He will say well done to pipsqueaks with a couple of fists full of nanoworks . . . A short space of time looking through a telescope should convince you that we actually live in Whoville.”

Ploductivity, pp. 71-72