love

i have heard the voice of God in the last couple of days, and he's talking about the same thing each time: love. just returning from biola's ra retreat, i am amazed at how simple/deep the love of God is, and i'm only scratching the surface. a lot of conversations and reading and praying and meetings were centered around the idea, none of which were connected together. here's a quote that explains how God's love is really and truly all we need.

"When you know yourself as fully loved, you will be able to give according to other's capacity to receive and you will be able to receive according to the other's capacity to give. You will be grateful for what is given to you without clinging to it, and joyful for what you can give without bragging about it. You will be a free person, free to love."- Henry Nouwen

"i've found a love, greater than life itself. i've found a hope, stronger, and nothing compares."

I've got Lewis on the Brain

"Christ died for men preciesly because men are not worth dying for, to make them worth it."

"Until you have given up yourself to Him, you will not have a real self."

"Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we shouldnever have hfound out that it has no meaning..."

" He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or party or class, is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically beliongs to God: himself..."

The road to hell is the gradual one-the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."

quoted

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them."

-thomas merton

quoted

The world of posers is shaken by a real man. They'll do whatever it takes to get you back in line – threaten you, bribe you, seduce you, undermine you. Let people feel the weight of who you are and let them deal with it.
John Eldredge