Easter
Quotes - Jesus doesn't want what you can do for Him
“The
beauty of the cross and our crucified Lord cannot be easily fathomed by human
mind or by barely reading scriptures in bits, but by careful reading of entire
scripture in the spirit which will in turn engulf one with wisdom and love.”
―
Henrietta Newton Martin
“Spend
every moment in "Hope" and "Love" for God for he has risen
and brought us courage.”
―
Phil Mitchell, A Bright New Morning: An American Story
“Perfect
majesty that deliberately chose to be born into abject poverty, walk a road of
perpetual poverty, and be unjustly executed in the raw nakedness of poverty is
utterly ludicrous unless I realize that this is the single and sole way that
God can reach me in the suffocating poverty that I myself have created.”
―
Craig D. Lounsbrough
“Jesus
doesn't want what you can do for Him. He wants you.....all of you.....the good
and the bad.”
―
Wade Grassedonio, Jesus and the Bunny: The story of how a lovable little bunny
became the Easter Bunny
“Starting
over is an acceptance of a past we can’t change, an unrelenting conviction that
the future can be different, and the stubborn wisdom to use the past to make
the future what the past was not.”
―
Craig D. Lounsbrough
“Would
you like some warm Spring pie?
Then,
take a cup of clear blue sky.
Stir
in buzzes from a bee,
Add
the laughter of a tree.
A
dash of sunlight should suffice
To
give the dew a hint of spice.
Mix
with berries, plump and sweet.
Top
with fluffy clouds, and eat!”
―
Paul Kortepeter, Holly Pond Hill: A Child's Book of Easter
“I
am wholly deserving of all the consequences that I will in fact never receive
simply because God unashamedly stepped in front of me on the cross,
unflinchingly spread His arms so as to completely shield me from the
retribution that was mine to bear, and repeatedly took the blows. And I stand
entirely unwounded, utterly lost in the fact that the while His body was
pummeled and bloodied to death by that which was meant for me and me alone, I
have not a scratch.”
―
Craig D. Lounsbrough
“A
sunset is nothing more and nothing less than the backside of a sunrise.”
―
Craig D. Lounsbrough
“An
end is only a beginning in disguise.”
―
Craig D. Lounsbrough, An Intimate Collision: Encounters with Life and Jesus
“He
cannot do anything deliberate now. The strain of his whole weight on his
outstretched arms hurts too much. The pain fills him up, displaces thought, as
much for him as it has for everyone else who has ever been stuck to one of
these horrible contrivances, or for anyone else who dies in pain from any of
the world’s grim arsenal of possibilities. And yet he goes on taking in. It is
not what he does, it is what he is. He is all open door: to sorrow, suffering,
guilt, despair, horror, everything that cannot be escaped, and he does not even
try to escape it, he turns to meet it, and claims it all as his own. This is
mine now, he is saying; and he embraces it with all that is left in him, each
dark act, each dripping memory, as if it were something precious, as if it were
itself the loved child tottering homeward on the road. But there is so much of
it. So many injured children; so many locked rooms; so much lonely anger; so
many bombs in public places; so much vicious zeal; so many bored teenagers at
roadblocks; so many drunk girls at parties someone thought they could have a
little fun with; so many jokes that go too far; so much ruining greed; so much
sick ingenuity; so much burned skin. The world he claims, claims him. It burns
and stings, it splinters and gouges, it locks him round and drags him down…
All
day long, the next day, the city is quiet. The air above the city lacks the
usual thousand little trails of smoke from cookfires. Hymns rise from the
temple. Families are indoors. The soldiers are back in barracks. The Chief
Priest grows hoarse with singing. The governor plays chess with his secretary
and dictates letters. The free bread the temple distributed to the poor has
gone stale by midday, but tastes all right dipped in water or broth. Death has
interrupted life only as much as it ever does. We die one at a time and
disappear, but the life of the living continues. The earth turns. The sun makes
its way towards the western horizon no slower or faster than it usually does.
Early
Sunday morning, one of the friends comes back with rags and a jug of water and
a box of the grave spices that are supposed to cut down on the smell. She’s
braced for the task. But when she comes to the grave she finds that the linen’s
been thrown into the corner and the body is gone. Evidently anonymous burial
isn’t quite anonymous enough, after all. She sits outside in the sun. The
insects have woken up, here at the edge of the desert, and a bee is nosing
about in a lily like silk thinly tucked over itself, but much more perishable.
It won’t last long. She takes no notice of the feet that appear at the edge of
her vision. That’s enough now, she thinks. That’s more than enough.
Don’t
be afraid, says Yeshua. Far more can be mended than you know.
She
is weeping. The executee helps her to stand up.”
―
Francis Spufford, Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still
Make Surprising Emotional Sense
“Despite
our earnest efforts, we couldn't climb all the way up to God. So what did God
do? In an amazing act of condescension, on Good Friday, God climbed down to us,
became one with us. The story of divine condescension begins on Christmas and
ends on Good Friday. We thought, if there is to be business between us and God,
we must somehow get up to God. Then God came down, down to the level of the
cross, all the way down to the depths of hell. He who knew not sin took on our
sin so that we might be free of it. God still stoops, in your life and mine,
condescends. “Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?” he asked his
disciples, before his way up Golgotha. Our answer is an obvious, “No!” His cup
is not only the cup of crucifixion and death, it is the bloody, bloody cup that
one must drink if one is going to get mixed up in us. Any God who would wander
into the human condition, any God who has this thirst to pursue us, had better
not be too put off by pain, for that's the way we tend to treat our saviors.
Any God who tries to love us had better be ready to die for it. As Chesterton
writes, “Any man who preaches real love is bound to beget hate … Real love has
always ended in bloodshed.”
―
William H. Willimon, Thank God It's Friday: Encountering the Seven Last Words
from the Cross
