“Christian identity, however, is received, not achieved. . . . To ground your identity in your own efforts and accomplishments — even in the amount of love you have for Jesus — is to have an unstable, fragile identity.”- Timothy Keller “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that […]
“But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing. Forgiveness says, ‘Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly what it was before.’ But excusing says, ‘I see that you couldn’t help or […]
“Jesus urges us toward endurance, resilience. It’s available in him, but it won’t just happen. We must take hold of the strength that prevails. So — what’s your plan to make it through? You need a plan. . . . Resilience and victory aren’t going to come with a swipe on your home screen.”- John […]
The Beauty Chasers: Recapturing . . . Timothy D. Willard recently published The Beauty Chasers: Recapturing the Wonder of the Divine (Zondervan Reflective, 2022). A writer and independent scholar. Timothy lived in Oxford, England, for two years. There he studied beauty and northern aesthetics in the works of C. S. Lewis for his PhD. In […]
“Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience.”- C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm Timothy Willard concludes Chapter 16 of The Beauty Chasers as […]
“Beauty blooms in our connections with people as well as with our connections with nature. And the full bloom of togetherness springs from our continual connection with God.”- Timothy D. Willard “We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, […]
“The joy of the Lord is amplified in the presence of lament. As my close friend and colleague Russ Ramsey once said in a sermon, lament is a necessary skill in the art of rejoicing. Lament is a skill, and rejoicing is an art form. I like how that sounds. Don’t you?”- Scott Sauls Scott […]
“The world, as it is, is not our final home. No matter how hard we try to make it so, this present world refuses to be our paradise. We cannot make heaven happen for ourselves because heaven can only be given and received. When we accept and receive this truth, the revival of our hearts […]
“You brought me blessings out of a tragedy. / You turned my old song into a symphony. / And with Your spirit living inside of me, / I’m a new creation, I’m a new creation.”- Mac Powell “Put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”- Ephesians 4:24 […]
“Wrap all your trust around God, clinging to Him like a belt, to keep your whole life from falling down around your ankles, tangling you and drowning you in it all. . . . You are on the way of Jesus only when you need to cling to Jesus the whole way.”- Ann Voskamp “For […]
“We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”- C. S. Lewis “Return to me, for I have redeemed you.”- Isaiah 44:22 (ESV) In Chapter 2 (“The Art […]
“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden; it’s easier to say, ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say, ‘My heart is breaking.’ “- C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain “Stretched out my […]