Debbie > Debbie's Quotes

“Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.”
― Anne Lamott

“I am old, Gandalf. I don't look it, but I am beginning to feel it in my heart of hearts. Well-preserved indeed! Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can't be right. I need a change, or something.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“I want to be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“But in the end it's only a passing thing, this shadow; even darkness must pass.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“The Dark Lord has Nine. But we have One, mightier than they: the White Rider. He has passed through the fire and the abyss, and they shall fear him. We will go where he leads.”
― J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“Rest in your God-breathed worth. Stop holding your breath, hiding your gifts, ducking your head, dulling your roar, distracting your soul, stilling your hands, quieting your voice, and satiating your hunger with the lesser things of this world.”
― Sarah Bessey, Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women

“The lack of women among the twelve disciples isn't prescriptive or a precedent for exclusion of women any more than the choice of twelve Jewish men excludes Gentile men from leadership.”
― Sarah Bessey, Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women

“Anyone who gets to the end of their life with the exact same beliefs and opinions as they had at the beginning is doing it wrong.”
― Sarah Bessey, Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith

“Miracles sometimes look like a kapow! lightning-strike revelation; and sometimes miracles look like showing up for your counseling appointments.”
― Sarah Bessey, Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women

“I look forward to the day when women with leadership and insight, gifts and talents, callings and prophetic leanings are called out and celebrated as Deborah, instead of silenced as Jezebel.”
― Sarah Bessey, Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women

“Patriarchy is not God's dream for humanity.”
― Sarah Bessey, Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women

“If our theology doesn't shift and change over our lifetimes, then I have to wonder if we're paying attention.”
― Sarah Bessey, Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith

“There is no more hateful person than a Christian who thinks you’ve got your theology wrong.”
― Sarah Bessey, Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women

“Live counterculturally when the culture, baptized or secular, does not affirm truth, love, faith, mercy, and justice.”
― Sarah Bessey, Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women

“Sometimes our most holy calling is to listen, to bear witness.”
― Sarah Bessey, Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith

“God's ways are higher than our ways not because he is less compassionate than we are but because he is more compassionate than we can ever imagine.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions

“This is what God's kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes. And there's always room for more.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

“As my friend Ed puts it: “When you join a church you’re just picking which hot mess is your favorite.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

“It seems that a whole lot of people, both Christians and non-Christians, are under the impression that you can’t be a Christian and vote for a Democrat, you can’t be a Christian and believe in evolution, you can’t be a Christian and be gay, you can’t be a Christian and have questions about the Bible, you can’t be a Christian and be tolerant of other religions, you can’t be a Christian and be a feminist, you can’t be a Christian and drink or smoke, you can’t be a Christian and read the New York Times, you can’t be a Christian and support gay rights, you can’t be a Christian and get depressed, you can’t be a Christian and doubt. In fact, I am convinced that what drives most people away from Christianity is not the cost of discipleship but rather the cost of false fundamentals. False fundamentals make it impossible for faith to adapt to change. The longer the list of requirements and contingencies and prerequisites, the more vulnerable faith becomes to shifting environments and the more likely it is to fade slowly into extinction. When the gospel gets all entangled with extras, dangerous ultimatums threaten to take it down with them. The yoke gets too heavy and we stumble beneath it.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Faith Unraveled: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask Questions

“The gentle Rabbi reminds us that few things really matter and only one thing is necessary ... Martha found it in the gentle reminder to slow down, let go, and be careful of challenging another woman's choices, for you never know when she may be sitting at the feet of God.”
― Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood

“I’ve often said that those who say having a childlike faith means not asking questions haven’t met too many children.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again

“While Christians tend to turn to Scripture to end a conversation, Jews turn to Scripture to start a conversation.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again

“Jesus did not simply die to save us from our sins; Jesus lived to save us from our sins. His life and teachings show us the way to liberation. But you can't fit all that on a bumper sticker. So we try to boil it down to a formula. Four steps. The "Romans Road." John 3:16. And yet the gospel itself, in its eternal scope and scandalous particularity, defies reduction.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again

“The kingdom, Jesus taught, is right here--present yet hidden, immanent yet transcendent. It is at hand--among us and beyond us, now and not-yet. The kingdom of heaven, he said, belongs to the poor, the meek, the peacemakers, the merciful, and those who hunger and thirst for God. It advances not through power and might, but through missions of mercy, kindness, and humility. In this kingdom, many who are last will be first and many who are first will be last. The rich don't usually get it, Jesus said, but children always do. This is a kingdom whose savior arrives not on a warhorse, but a donkey, not through triumph and conquest, but through death and resurrection. This kingdom is the only kingdom that will last.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again

“Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago.”
― C.S. Lewis

“For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“He is your friend who pushes you nearer to God.”
― Abraham Kuyper

“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”
― Abraham Kuyper