The Jesus I Never Knew Quotes
"How many times did Mary review the angel's words as she felt the Son of God kicking against the walls of her uterus?"
"God, who knows no before or after, entered time and space."
"The God who created matter took shape within it, as an artist might become a spot on a painting."
"To my fish I was deity. I was too large for them, my actions too incomprehensible."
"In Jesus, God found a way of relating to human beings that did not involve fear."
"He was the first person to accept Jesus on his own terms, regardless of the personal cost."
"A work of God comes with two edges, great joy and great pain."
"God's visit to earth took place in an animal shelter with no attendants present."
"Never again need we wonder whether what happens on this dirty little tennis ball of a planet matters to the rest of the universe."
"The great divide of history traces back to Bethlehem and Jerusalem."
"Jesus' true-blue Jewishness leaps out from Matthew's very first sentence."
"In Jesus, God lay down on the dissection table, as it were, stretched out in cruciform posture for the scrutiny of all skeptics who have ever lived."
"The hopes and fears of all the world do rest on thee tonight."
"It took courage for God to lay aside power and glory and to take a place among human beings."
"The birth of Jesus was overlooked by the chroniclers of the day."
"Jesus was not the first and certainly not the last Jew to cry out words from the Psalms at a time of torture."
"Jesus' social contacts with Gentiles and foreigners would have driven the jingoistic Zealots to fury."
"It is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish."
"Human beings do not readily admit desperation. When they do, the kingdom of heaven draws near."
"People who are rich, successful, and beautiful may well go through life relying on their natural gifts."
"The poor know they are in urgent need of redemption."
"The fears of the poor are more realistic and less exaggerated, because they already know that one can survive great suffering and want."
"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled."
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God."
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God."
"Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me."
"Without question, I would rather spend time among the servants than among the stars: they possess qualities of depth and richness and even joy that I have not found elsewhere."
"The poor in spirit and the meek are indeed blessed, I now believe. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven, and it is they who will inherit the earth."
"The merciful are indeed blessed, I learned, for they will be shown mercy."
"Peacemakers will be called sons and daughters of God."
"Blessed also are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
"Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness get filled."
"The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure of such value that any shrewd investor would ‘in his joy’ sell all he has in order to buy it."
"We are judged by the righteousness of the Christ who lives within, not our own."
"Jesus offers a paradoxical key to abundant life. The emphasis is not on what we give up but on what we receive."
"The pure in heart are truly blessed, for they will see God."
"God's grace requires that our faculties be cleansed and purified before we can receive a higher love, one attainable in no other way."
"Almost all the pain they feel comes from outside, the pain of rejection imposed on them by the surrounding community."
"He is crying because you put your hand around his shoulder. Until he came here no one had touched him for many years."
"AIDS is the modern-day leprosy," says former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.
"Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty."
"Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man."
"We have drugs for people with diseases like leprosy. But these drugs do not treat the main problem, the disease of being unwanted."
"Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean," he said.
"Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’?"
"But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins …"
"The law and the prophets had focused like a beam of light on the One who was to come, and now that light, as if hitting a prism, would fracture and shoot out in a human spectrum of waves and colors."
"You ascended from before our eyes, and we turned back grieving, only to find you in our hearts."
"Would it be too much to say that, ever since the Ascension, Jesus has sought other bodies in which to begin again the life he lived on earth?"
"The church serves as an extension of the Incarnation, God's primary way of establishing presence in the world."
"What Jesus brought to a few—healing, grace, the good-news message of God's love—the church can now bring to all."
"Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds."
"Living two millennia after the disciples, I look back and marvel at how little difference the church has made in such a world."
"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses."
"The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, because the kingdom of God is within you."
"God weeps with us so that we may someday laugh with him."
"By ascending, Jesus took the risk of being forgotten."
"God has not absconded at all. Rather, he has taken on a disguise of the stranger, the poor, the hungry, the prisoner, the sick."
"God's kingdom advances slowly, humbly, like a secret invasion force operating within the kingdoms ruled by Satan."
"The cross enacts for us deep truths that would make no sense apart from it."
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
"Prayer is an expression of who we are... We are a living incompleteness. We are a gap, an emptiness that calls for fulfillment."
"In much of the world, modern skepticism taints prayer."
"The wealthy rely on talent and resources to solve immediate problems and insurance policies and retirement plans to secure the future."
"We have the constant sensation of not enough: not enough time, not enough rest, not enough exercise, not enough leisure."
"Prayer is universal because it speaks to some basic human need."
"Prayer includes moments of ecstasy and also dullness, mindless distraction and acute concentration, flashes of joy and bouts of irritation."
"I write about prayer as a pilgrim, not an expert."
"Most of my struggles with the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way we want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to."
"Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge."