March 2 1998

ARTICLE TOOLS

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WHEN GOD FINDS US
Kierkegaard said that most of us read the Bible the way a mouse tries to remove the cheese from the trap without getting caught. Some of us have mastered that. We read the story as though it were about someone else a long time ago; that way we don't get caught. But if we see the Bible as the story of the triumph of God's grace, the story of God searching for us, then look out. The story will come alive. God will find us and we will know that we are found.

—Maxie Dunnam in
Living the Psalms

MORE THAN ONE USE
[Y]ou don't always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it, too.

—Anne Lamott in
Bird by Bird

WORTHWHILE LIFE
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

—Mark Twain, quoted in "A Word a Day" electronic posting

DESENSITIZED ABOUT GOD
It is curious that people who are filled with horrified indignation whenever a cat kills a sparrow can hear the story of the killing of God told Sunday after Sunday and not experience any shock at all.

—Dorothy Sayers, quoted in
God in Pain, by Barbara Brown Taylor

GOD IN ME
Compassion lies at the heart of our prayer for our fellow human beings. When I pray for the world, I become the world; when I pray for the endless needs of the millions, my soul expands and wants to embrace them all and bring them into the presence of God. But in the midst of that experience I realize that compassion is not mine but God's gift to me. I cannot embrace the world, but God can. I cannot pray, but God can pray in me. When God became as we are, that is, when God allowed all of us to enter into the intimacy of the divine life, it became possible for us to share in God's infinite compassion.

—Henry Nouwen in Seeds ...