Grant Holmes > Grant's Quotes

“Jesus, in Matthew's gospel, says, "How narrow is the gate that leads to life." Mistakenly, I think, we've come to believe that this is about restriction. The way is narrow. But really it wants us to see that narrowness is the way... It's about funneling ourselves into a central place. Our choice is not to focus on the narrow, but to narrow our focus. The gate that leads to life is not about restriction at all. it is about an entry into the expansive. There is a vastness in knowing you're a son/daughter worth having. We see our plentitude in God's own expansive view of us.”
― Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.
That is real freedom.
That is being taught how to think.
The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the "rat race" — the constant, gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.”
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

“It’s more important to be good ancestors than dutiful descendants. Too many people spend their lives being custodians of the past instead of stewards of the future. We worry about making our parents proud when we should be focused on making our children proud. The responsibility of each generation is not to please our predecessors—it’s to improve conditions for our successors.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“A Person's Character is the internal. overall structure of the self that is revealed by long-running patterns of behavior and from which actions more or less automatically arise. It's what runs our life. It shows itself in our thinking and choices and in our habitual ways of behavior that are built into our bodies and become obvious in relationship.”
― Dallas Willard, The Scandal of the Kingdom: How the Parables of Jesus Revolutionize Life with God

“To love anything good, at any cost, is a bargain.”
― Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“A god who listens is love. A god who speaks is law. At their worst, the people who want a god who listens are self-centered...And the ones who want a god who speaks are cruel. They just want laws and justice to crush everything...Love is empty without justice. Justice is cruel without love....God should be both. If a god isn't, that is no God.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Christianity is a life, not a doctrine . . . I'm not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. I'm saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“We must understand that God does not "love" us without liking us - through gritted teeth - as "Christian" love is sometimes thought to do. Rather, out of the eternal freshness of his perpetually self-renewed being, the heavenly Father cherishes the earth and each human being upon it. The fondness, the endearment, the unstintingly affectionate regard of God toward all his creatures is the natural outflow of what he is to the core - which we vainly try to capture with our tired but indispensable old word "love".”
― Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God

“Salvation doesn’t mean simply being rescued from the consequences of our wrong choices. It doesn’t mean being delivered into better circumstances. It means being changed. Salvation isn’t primarily a matter of going to the good place. It’s about becoming good people.”
― John Ortberg, Eternity Is Now in Session: A Radical Rediscovery of What Jesus Really Taught about Salvation, Eternity, and Getting to the Good Place

“And in this truth lies the secret of the easy yoke: the secret involves living as he lived in the entirety of his life—adopting his overall life-style. Following “in his steps” cannot be equated with behaving as he did when he was “on the spot.” To live as Christ lived is to live as he did all his life.”
― Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives

“Whenever someone tells me they’re expecting their first baby and they’re nervous, I tell them the following: “Oh my goodness, that’s wonderful. I am so happy for you. Listen, of course you’re nervous but here’s the deal: you’re ready for all the bad stuff. You’ve been very tired before. You’ve been in pain before. You’ve been worried about money before. You’ve felt like an incapable moron before. So you’ll be fine with the difficult parts! You’re already a pro. What you’re NOT ready for is the wonderful parts. NOTHING can prepare you for how amazing this will be. There is no practice for that.”
― Rob Delaney, A Heart That Works

“Everything else follows from this responsibility to those who have come before us. It is the root of flourishing humanity.”
― Miroslav Volf, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most

“One of my favorite lines from an inaugural address is this—I wonder if you remember who said it? “How can we love our country and not love our countrymen? And loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they’re sick, and provide opportunities to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory.” It was said by Ronald Reagan.”
― David McCullough, The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For

“Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action. Grace, you know, does not just have to do with forgiveness of sins alone.”
― Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus's Essential Teachings on Discipleship

“Thus, the invitation remains, despite its hazards: like Jesus, like Mary, and like everyone else who’s ever walked this planet, every adult woman or man will find herself or himself, this side of eternity, inside families, communities, churches, friendships, and work circles that are filled with tensions of every kind. The natural temptation, always, is to simply give back in kind, jealousy for jealousy, gossip for gossip, anger for anger. But the invitation that comes to us from the Gospels, the invitation to move from being a good person to becoming a great person, is the invitation to step forward and help carry and purify this tension, to help take it away by transforming it inside ourselves, by pondering as Mary pondered.”
― Ronald Rolheiser, Sacred Fire: A Vision for a Deeper Human and Christian Maturity