To confess your sins to God is not to tell [God] anything [God] doesn't already know. Until you confess them, however, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the bridge.
Frederick BuechnerRead
Your vocation in life is where your greatest joy meets the world's greatest need.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Your true calling arises at the intersection of personal joy and societal need.
This quote emphasizes the importance of finding a vocation or purpose in life that not only brings personal fulfillment and happiness but also addresses the needs of the world around us. It suggests that the ideal career or life path is one that aligns individual passions with contributions that benefit others, creating a sense of meaning and significance in one's life.
Themes
VocationJoyNeedPurposeLife
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a career counseling session to guide individuals in choosing their paths.
More from Frederick Buechner
All quotes βBy and large a good rule for finding out is this: the kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work a) that you need most to do and b) the world most needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you've presumably met requirement a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials, the chances are you've missed requirement b).
Frederick BuechnerRead
When you remember me, it means you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. It means that you can summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us. It means that if we meet again, you will know me. It means that even after I die, you can still see my face and hear my voice and speak to me in your heart.
Frederick BuechnerRead
We find by losing. We hold fast by letting go. We become something new by ceasing to be something old. This seems to be close to the heart of that mystery. I know no more now than I ever did about the far side of death as the last letting-go of all, but now I know that I do not need to know, and that I do not need to be afraid of not knowing. God knows. That is all that matters.
Frederick BuechnerRead
To be wise is to be eternally curious.
Frederick BuechnerRead
if you don't have doubts you're either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants-in-the-pants of faith. They keep it alive and moving.
Frederick BuechnerRead
Similar quotes
The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment.
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But you can't start. Only a baby can start. You and me - why, we're all that's been. The anger of a moment, the thousand pictures, that's us. This land, this red land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us. We can't start again.
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In order to understand the interrelation of truth and falsehood in life, a man must understand falsehood in himself, the constant incessant lies he tells himself.
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Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.
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The best actors just stay in the moment,and whatever happens in the scene is a genuine surprise. You really do not know what's going to happen next. But living that out in life is very dangerous because it throws you into a place where you don't know if you're going to survive.
Lee GrantRead
Natural rights are those which always appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the rights of others.
Thomas PaineRead