601 Quotes About Redemption

The greatest sacrifice is to unreservedly give the whole of oneself to another, knowing full well that such a gift must be wholly rejected, blithely tossed aside and trampled underfoot as some worthless filth because (much like ourselves) the depravity of the recipient is such that they can only be saved through the death of the giver. And I don’t know of any human who would do that, but I know a God Who did.

I find it ingenious that God stepped into this world in the lowest of all places so that He can relate to poorest of all people. And while our wealth might smugly chide us into believing that we are not those people, the rancid impoverishment of our souls would tell us that we are exactly those people. And when we understand that, Christmas makes sense and we are no longer poor.

What I need is far too big for me to find, yet I am never too small to be found by it.

I believe in Christmas because God is the only Being I know Who is so utterly selfless as to do such a thing, and so incredibly ingenious as to figure out how to do it.

I don’t think that I want God to come ‘to’ me, for that suggests an encounter that I might enjoy. Rather, I think I want God to come ‘for’ me for that evidences the rescue that I need.

Christmas is opportunity while everything else in life is the hope of opportunity.

When we fall to the bottom of the hole that we’ve spent our lives digging, we will find that God was there waiting for us long before we showed up. And in one hand He’s holding all of the shovels that we used to dig it, and in the other He’s got a ladder.

Although I’m a bit tentative about it all, I would like to say that if my death saved your life I would gladly engage in such an exchange. But if I must make that exchange knowing that you are likely to reject it, and that you will turn on it and brutally ridicule it until the beauty of my sacrifice is altogether destroyed, I cannot imagine taking such an action. Yet, God does that every single day.

Do you fear taking on the task of changing the world because a task of this magnitude as held against the puny totality of who you are suggests that such a task is ridiculous beyond imagination? Well, imagine God standing beside you and then what can you imagine?