love

If anyone had a right to lecture people about their sin, it was the sinless son of God. If even he could meet sinners as equals, how much more should we Christians---all sinners ourselves---treat as equals the people we encounter in our lives?

One-way love is rare, though, and it always comes as a surprise. Fortunately, the glimpses we receive in relationships are only a foreshadowing of God's love for us. They are like little arrows that point to the very heart of the universe, what Dante called 'the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,' the love that received its fullest expression in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

It is not the balance in your check book that makes life count. It is the investment one makes in the lives of others.

Experiencing something of the grace of God should always cause our self-perceived ideas about 'Who He is' and 'How He works' to pop.

Grace is loving people for who they are, where they are. It's loving people *before* they change, not just *after* they change. And that grace is the difference between holy and holier-than-thou. Holiness, in its purest form, is irresistible. That's why sinners couldn't be kept away from Jesus. Hypocrisy has the opposite effect. It's as repulsive to the irreligious as the Pharisees' religiosity was to Jesus.

Anyway, this girl... she's the love of my life. She's smart and funny and unbelievably compassionate. She forgives people even when they don't deserve it. She-""Good lay?" Pace interrupts. "Oh yeah. The best.

Give Happiness, Patience, kindness, and Care, and the PAIN goes away.Then only LOVE remains...

Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more... And grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less... Grace means that God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love.

We live in an age so legalistic, we find it hard to imagine someone wanting to obey their Lord simply because they love their God.

Lament invoked love.Woe invoked wonder.Grief invoked grace.Cry invoked celebration.(Page 80)

If you are not there for other people, do not expect them to be there for you. In many a case one might conclude that this is part of God's sovereign justice. His grace, however, is that He Himself will always be there for you, no matter what.

We will not be measured by the world__ standards anymore. We will be measured by the plumb line of God__ Word. We will be people who live out our Christianity by walking faithfully in obedience to God. We will love mercy and justice. We will love others the way God loves us_ unconditionally, relentlessly, and with grace.

I__ not God, and I can__ always offer chances. I__ not sure if this won__ be your last.

Sometimes I think my whole life has been about holding on to you.

... you can love completely without complete understanding.""That I have known and preached." my father said.

My vision of the gathered church that had come to me... had been replaced by a vision of the gathered community. What I saw now was the community imperfect and irresolute but held together by the frayed and always fraying, incomplete and yet ever-holding bonds of the various sorts of affection. There had maybe never been anybody who had not been loved by somebody, who had been loved by somebody else, and so on and on... It was a community always disappointed in itself, disappointing its members, always trying to contain its divisions and gentle its meanness, always failing and yet always preserving a sort of will toward goodwill. I knew that, in the midst of all the ignorance and error, this was a membership; it was the membership of Port William and of no other place on earth. My vision gathered the community as it never has been and never will be gathered in this world of time, for the community must always be marred by members who are indifferent to it or against it, who are nonetheless its members and maybe nonetheless essential to it. And yet I saw them all as somehow perfected, beyond time, by one another's love, compassion, and forgiveness, as it is said we may be perfected by grace.

It is the tenderness that breaks our hearts. The loveliness that leaves us stranded on the shore, watching the boats sail away. It is the sweetness that makes us want to reach out and touch the soft skin of another person. And it is the grace that comes to us, undeserving though we may be.

Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.