Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. --Dietrich Bonhoeffer [from Oscar Ragus]
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Eckhart: knowing Him everywhere

A man may go into the field and say his prayer and be aware
of God, or he may be in Church and be aware of God; but if he
is more aware of Him because he is in a quiet place, that is
his own deficiency and not due to God, Who is alike present in
all things and places, and is willing to give Himself
everywhere so far as lies in Him... He knows God rightly who
knows Him everywhere.
... Meister Eckhart (1260?-1327?)

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Obedience:
Whoever strives to withdraw from obedience, withdraws from
grace.
... Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471)
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Practical Atheism:
It is not enough to hold that God did great things for our
fathers: not enough to pride ourselves on the inheritance of
victories of faith: not enough to build the sepulchres of those
who were martyred by men unwilling, in their day of trial as we
may be in our own, to hear new voices of a living God. Our
duty is to see whether God is with us; whether we expect great
things from Him; whether we do not practically place Him far
off, forgetting that, if He is, He is about us, speaking to us
words that have not been heard before, guiding us to paths on
which earlier generations have not been able to enter. There
is -- most terrible thought! -- a practical atheism, orthodox
in language, reverent in bearing, which can enter a Christian
church and charm the conscience to rest with shadowy
traditions; an atheism which grows incessantly within us if we
separate what cannot be separated with impunity, the secular
from the divine, the past and the future from the present,
earth from heaven, the things of Caesar from the things of God.
... Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901)


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ends or means:

Doubt, rather than faith, is high among the causes of the
religious boom. And the church's response to this current
situation will reveal, better than anything else, our faith in
God -- or our faithlessness. If we churchmen interpret such
pervasive doubt as a threat, then we will do as the church has
done so often in the past: we will substitute the church for
God, and make our church-centered activities into an ersatz
kingdom of God. Our faithlessness will be evident in the easy
paraphrase of the hard truth of the gospel, and in the lapse
from the critical loyalty that God requires of us, into the
vague and corrupting sentimentalism that has so marred American
Protestantism. Or the church can interpret the present
religious situation as a promise, as God's recall of His people
to a new reformation. Our faithfulness to God-in-Christ will
be manifest in the willingness to be honest with ourselves and
with the gospel. Then we may view the church, not as an end in
itself, but as the point of departure into the world for which
the Son of God died. Which will it be?
... Carl R. Smith & Robert W. Lynn, "Experiment in Suburbia"

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little things:
If you will study the history of Christ's ministry from
Baptism to Ascension, you will discover that it is mostly made
up of little words, little deeds, little prayers, little
sympathies, adding themselves together in unwearied succession.
The Gospel is full of divine attempts to help and heal, in the
body, mind and heart, individual men. The completed beauty of
Christ's life is only the added beauty of little inconspicuous
acts of beauty -- talking with the woman at the well; going far
up into the North country to talk with the Syrophenician woman;
showing the young ruler the stealthy ambition laid away in his
heart, that kept him out of the kingdom of Heaven; shedding a
tear at the grave of Lazarus; teaching a little knot of
followers how to pray; preaching the Gospel one Sunday
afternoon to two disciples going out to Emmaus; kindling a fire
and broiling fish, that His disciples might have a breakfast
waiting for them when they came ashore after a night of
fishing, cold, tired, discouraged. All of these things, you
see, let us in so easily into the real quality and tone of
God's interests, so specific, so narrowed down, so enlisted in
what is small, so engrossed in what is minute.
... Charles Henry Parkhurst (1842-1933)

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Love of the Lord:

The commandment of God is, that we love Our Lord in all our
heart, in all our soul, in all our thought. In all our heart;
that is, in all our understanding without erring. In all our
soul; that is, in all our will without gainsaying. In all our
thought; that is, that we think on Him without forgetting. In
this manner is very love and true, that is work of man's will.
For love is a willful stirring of our thoughts unto God, so
that it receive nothing that is against the love of Jesus
Christ, and therewith that it be lasting in sweetness of
devotion; and that is the perfection of this life.
... Richard Rolle (1290?-1349), The Commandments

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on sharing God's word:

The preacher and the writer may seem to have an... easy
task. At first sight, it may seem that they have only to
proclaim and declare; but in fact, if their words are to enter
men's hearts and bear fruit, they must be the right words,
shaped cunningly to pass men's defenses and explode silently
and effectually within their minds. This means, in practice,
turning a face of flint toward the easy cliche, the well-worn
religious cant and phraseology -- dear, no doubt, to the
faithful, but utterly meaningless to those outside the fold.
It means learning how people are thinking and how they are
feeling; it means learning with patience, imagination and
ingenuity the way to pierce apathy or blank lack of
understanding. I sometimes wonder what hours of prayer and
thought lie behind the apparently simple and spontaneous
parables of the Gospel.
... J. B. Phillips (1906-1982), Making Men Whole [1952]

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devotions:

Devotion signifies a life given, or devoted, to God. He
therefore is the devout man, who lives no longer to his own
will, or the way and spirit of the world, but to the sole will
of God, who considers God in everything, who serves God in
everything, who makes all the parts of his common life, parts
of piety, by doing everything in the name of God, and under
such rules as are conformable to His glory.
... William Law (1686-1761),
A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life [1728]

**********************************

on the Bible's authority:

Christ is the Master; the Scriptures are only the servant.
The true way to test all the Books is to see whether they work
the will of Christ or not. No Book which does not preach
Christ can be apostolic, though Peter or Paul were its author.
And no Book which does preach Christ can fail to be apostolic,
although Judas, Ananias, Pilate, or Herod were its author.
... Martin Luther (1483-1546),
Introduction to the New Testament

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Right spirit:

There is a great difference between a lofty spirit and a
right spirit. A lofty spirit excites admiration by its
profoundness; but only a right spirit achieves salvation and
happiness by its stability and integrity. Do not conform your
ideas to those of the world. Scorn the "intellectual" as much
as the world esteems it. What men consider intellectual is a
certain facility to produce brilliant thoughts. Nothing is
more vain. We make an idol of our intellect as a woman who
believes herself beautiful worships her face. We take pride in
our own thoughts. We must reject not only human cleverness,
but also human prudence, which seems so important and so
profitable. Then we may enter -- like little children, with
candor and innocence of worldly ways -- into the simplicity of
faith; and with humility and a horror of sin we may enter into
the holy passion of the cross.
... François Fénelon (1651-1715), Meditation
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worship:

To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of
God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the
heart to the love of God, and to devote the will to the purpose
of God.
... William Temple (1881-1944)

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prayers:

We sometimes fear to bring our troubles to God, because
they must seem small to Him who sitteth on the circle of the
earth. But if they are large enough to vex and endanger our
welfare, they are large enough to touch His heart of love. For
love does not measure by a merchant's scales, not with a
surveyor's chain. It hath a delicacy... unknown in any
handling of material substance.
... R. A. Torrey (1856-1928)

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trivial matters:

Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other
people's, if we are always criticizing trivial actions -- which
often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly
through our ignorance of their motives.
... St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

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ultimate disaster:

The only ultimate disaster that can befall us, I have come
to realize, is to feel ourselves at home here on earth.
... Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990
***********************************

simplicity:

The Lord called me by the way of simplicity and humility,
and this way He hath shown me in truth for me and those who
will believe and imitate me. And therefore I would that ye
name not to me any rule, neither of St. Augustine, nor St.
Benedict, nor of Bernard, nor any way or form of living, but
that which was mercifully shown and given me by the Lord.
... St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226),
The Mirror of Perfection [c. 1280]

************************************

love and nails:

Nails were not enough to hold God-and-man nailed and
fastened on the Cross, had not love held Him there.
... Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)

***************************************

belongingness:

In conversion you are not attached primarily to an order,
nor to an institution, nor a movement, nor a set of beliefs,
nor a code of action -- you are attached primarily to a Person,
and secondarily to these other things... You are not called to
get to heaven, to do good, or to be good -- you are called to
belong to Jesus Christ. The doing good, the being good, and
the getting to heaven, are the by-products of that belonging.
The center of conversion is the belonging of a person to a
Person.
... E. Stanley Jones (1884-1973), Conversion [1959]

******************************************

prayer:

Accustom yourself gradually to carry Prayer into all your
daily occupation -- speak, act, work in peace, as if you were
in prayer, as indeed you ought to be.
... François Fénelon (1651-1715)

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love:

Immature love says: I love you because I need you. Mature love
says: I need you because I love you.

Erich Fromm
(1900-1980, American Psychologist)

***************************************

winning friend:
If you want to win a man to your cause, first convince him that
you are his sincere friend.

Abraham Lincoln
(1809-1865, Sixteenth President of the USA)

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forgiviness:
If you want to see the brave, look at those who can forgive.

Bhagavad-Gita
(c. BC 400-, Sanskrit Poem Incorporated Into the Mahabharata)

*****************************************

finishing:

If you must begin then go all the way, because if you begin and
quit, the unfinished business you have left behind begins to haunt you
all the time.

Chogyam Trungpa

**************************************

patience:

If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will avoid one
hundred days of sorrow.

Chinese Proverb

*****************************************

If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own
natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to
love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more
tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our
neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the
injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures.

Carl Jung
(1875-1961, Swiss Psychiatrist)