The proof of spiritual maturity is not how pure you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace.
Philip YanceyRead
We grow up hungry for love, and in ways so deep as to remain unexpressed we long for our Maker to love us.
Interpretation
This quote expresses the deep human desire for love and connection with our creator.
Philip Yancey's quote highlights the inherent longing within every individual for love, pointing to a profound relationship with our Maker. This desire often runs deep and remains unspoken, suggesting that our quest for love is not just a mere desire for human affection, but an innate yearning for the divine connection that nurtures our souls.
In practice
In a speech about love and relationships, one might use this quote to illustrate the depth of human emotional needs.
The proof of spiritual maturity is not how pure you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace.
If my activism, however well-motivated, drives out love, then I have misunderstood Jesusβ gospel. I am stuck with law, not the gospel of grace.
In the stories of extravagant grace given to us by Jesus, there are no loopholes disqualifying us from God's love.
Parents learn the uses of power and its limits. They can insist on certain outward behavior but cannot change inner attitudes. They can require obedience but not goodness - and certainly not love.
Prayer is to the skeptic a delusion, a waste of time. To the believer it represents perhaps the most important use of time.
I once heard a theologian remark that in the Gospels people approached Jesus with a question 183 times whereas he replied with a direct answer only three times. Instead, he responded with a different question, a story, or some other indirection. Evidently Jesus wants us to work out answers on our own, using the principles that he taught and lived.
Never's just the echo of forever, lonesome as a love that might have been. Let me go on lovin' and believin' 'til it's over. Please don't tell me how the story ends.
There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.
Awareness born of love is the only force that can bring healing and renewal. Out of our love for another person, we become more willing to let our old identities wither and fall away, and enter a dark night of the soul, so that we may stand naked once more in the presence of the great mystery that lies at the core of our being. This is how love ripens us -by warming us from within, inspiring us to break out of our shell, and lighting our way through the dark passage to new birth.
Man reaches the highest point of lovableness at 12 to 17 - to get it back, in a second flowering, at the age of 70 to 90
I think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each other's dreams, we can play together all night.
Outside it's a perfect spring night. We stand on the sidewalk in front of our apartment building, and Henry takes my hand, and I look at him, and I raise our joined hands and Henry twirls me around and soon we're dancing down Belle Plaine Avenue, no music but the sound of cars whoosing by and our own laughter, and the smell of cherry blossoms that fall like snow on the sidewalk as we dance underneath the tress.
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