the irresistible revolution: part lll

quotes from the irresistible revolution, chapter three.

you can read part l and part ll here and here.

"from my desk at college, it looked like some time back
we had stopped living christianity and just started studying it." (71)
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"we pretend to be unable to understand [the Bible] because we know
very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act
accordingly. take any words in the New Testament and forget everything
except pledging yourself to act accordingly. my God, you will say, if i
do that my whole life will be ruined." (soren kierkgaard, 71)
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"i went looking for a christian. i looked around hoping to find
someone else who might be asking, what if Jesus meant the stuff
he said? and i kept coming across dead people...
it was hard to miss that these dead people might have lived a little
longer had it not been for reading this little Book." (72)
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"we are called not to be successful, but faithful"
(mother teresa, 78)
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"what we are doing may seem insignificant, but it is more
important that we do it." (78)
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"we can do no greaty things, just samll things with great love,
it is not how much you do, but how much love you put
into doing it" (mother teresa, 78)
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"i also heard many a volunteer scolded for not putting enough
gravy on the rice, since the plate was being served to Jesus himself." (78)
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"as you walk into [the morgue in the home for the dying in calcutta],
a sign on the wall read,s "i'm on my way to heaven" and when
you turn around to walk out, another sign says "thanks
for helping me get there". i could truly say, "where, oh death,
is your victory? where, oh death, is your sting?" (1 cor. 15:5) (79)
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" was finally seeing a church that was storming the gates
of hell itself to save people from its horrors" (79)
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"the true atheist is the one who denies God's image in the
'least of these' (dorthry day, 79)
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"we are the flesh and blood of Jesus alive in the world
through the Holy Spirit-God's hands, feet, ears." (79)
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"namaste means "i honor the Holy One who lives in you" (80)
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"one of the lepers explained to me that oftentimes
lepers don't even know the words thank you because they
have never needed to say them." (81)
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"what would the world look like if we truly believed,
as the apostle paul figured out, that we no longer live, by only
Jesus lives in us (gal. 2:20)? (84)
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"Jesus healed the sick, but they eventually caught some other
disease. He fed the thousands, and the nest day they were hungry
again. but we remember his love. it wasn't that Jesus healed a leper
but that he touched a leper, because no one touched lepers.
and the incredible thing about that love is that it now lives inside of us." (85)
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"beyond the miracles, what has lasting significance is love" (86)
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"i remember praying the leper colony each morning with the brothers,
"Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
and perhaps for the first, time those were no longer empty words
that i hoped would come true someday. they became
words we are not only to expect to come true but also to enact." (87)
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"a new community marked by interdependence and sacrificial love" (87)
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after mother teresa died, i was in an interview with some reporter
who asked me if mother teresa's sprit will live on. i said, "to
be honest, mother teresa died a long time ago, when she gave her
life to Jesus. the joy and omcpassion and love that the world
finds so magnetic are only Jesus, and that is eternal." (88-89)
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"i knew we could not end poverty until we took a careful
look at wealth." (89)
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"i was returning to a land of lepers, a land of people who had
forgotten how to feel, to laugh, to cry, a land haunted by numbness." (89)