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January 4 - February 6, 2020
He went from speaking the universe into existence by his Word to not being able to speak a word.
In trying to free ourselves from our limitations, we brought the ultimate limitation of death into the world.
Gratitude is the way of happiness.
Let me love others today like you love me.”
To long to be omnipresent is a false, bent longing to be God himself. It is not the way we were made to be. And like all efforts to be God, it will break us.
We become what or who we reflect, which is to say we become what we pay attention to.
when we turn our eyes toward Jesus, only there do we finally see the kind of person we were made to be like. We are children of the king, perfectly loved—not because that’s “just who we are” but because that’s who he is making us.
once you know who you are in God, you can turn to the world in love. But if you don’t, you’ll turn to the world looking for love.
How do we be in these realms but not of these realms?
Only when we feel that in our bones can we use social media to love neighbors instead of trying to get their love.
“What do I need to do today?” with a better one, “Who am I and who am I becoming?”
God is a fellowship. That means we are made in the image of fellowship.
friendship is: vulnerability across time.
The vulnerable friendships that embody the gospel don’t happen because we wish we had them; they happen because they’re cultivated over time. They grow because we arrange the trellis of habit that allows them to flourish.
keeping friendships closed is a broken twist on what true friendship is.
love is infinite.
The nature of true friendships is not to shut the outsider out, it is to draw them in.
Love defies mathematics and geometry.
there is no better witness to the Trinity than embodying a counterculture of real friendship.
Mortimer J. Adler’s How to Read a Book.
That’s when I had a realization of my mortality.
The Latin root of the word decide—cise or cide—is to “cut off”
We become the stories we consume.
God will not just come for his people; he will become his people.
We don’t just watch stories, we live in one.
They tell us what is beautiful, what is just, and how we should live with each other.
targeted to find us even when we’re trying to give our attention to something else.
as a consequence of my own limitations.
We are guaranteed to be formed in consumption unless we ruthlessly pursue curation.
the good life comes from the ability to choose good things by setting limits.
The stomach was made to hunger for food; the eye was made to hunger for beauty.
We need to see justice on display because it’s jaw-dropping gorgeous.
These long-form articles, podcasts, and documentaries are more likely to inform us about our vulnerable neighbors, stir our hearts toward them, and send us out into the world instead of just boomeranging us into more media.
We can’t curate for justice when we look at stories through only our own eyes.
resist the slide into tribalism.
Bryan Stevenson,
prick my heart, which would much rather be numb.
curate specifically to hear them, to love them, and at some point, to close our screens and walk out our doors to where they are.
watch most, if not all, media with someone else.
I’m more skeptical of a wisdom that separates us than a wisdom that binds us, and I will always err on the side of community.
Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale, Frederick Buechner
Feasting to fill the emptiness is not feasting; it is coping.
They ate to become God instead of to celebrate God.
Fasting is a way to resist the original sin of trying to eat our way to happiness and to force ourselves to look to God for our fullness.
his forty-day fast was an act of longing for the world to be restored by his ministry to come.
we fast because we long for the wedding supper of the Lamb.
It suddenly exposes the self because you can’t use food to dull your desires, numb your feelings, or make you feel satisfied or happy.
It’s the way it is because we have made it that way.
It’s an imitation of Christ, limiting ourselves for the sake of someone else.
A man who works with his mind should sabbath with his hands, and a man who works with his hands should sabbath with his mind. ABRAHAM HESCHEL
