Michael Philip

“The cross is a paradoxical religious symbol because it inverts the world’s value system with the news that hope comes by way of defeat, that suffering and death do not have the last word, that the last shall be first and the first last.”
― James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree

“without rest, we miss the rest of God: the rest he invites us to enter more fully so that we might know him more deeply. “Be still, and know that I am God.” Some knowing is never pursued, only received. And for that, you need to be still.”
― Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“The cross was God’s critique of power—white power—with powerless love, snatching victory out of defeat.”
― James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree