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THE GOSPEL message says: "You don't live in a mechanistic world ruled by necessity; you don't live in a random world ruled by chance; you live in a world ruled by the God of Exodus and Easter. He will do things in you that neither you nor your friends would have supposed possible."
Eugene H. Peterson, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work

I AM GROWING accustomed to the grace of gradual illumination, so it is a delight and no real surprise when I see God's messages to me in the scattered rainbows on my wall at sunrise.
Luci Shaw in Weavings

GOD'S WORD is designed to make us Christians, not scientists, and to lead us to eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. It was not God's intention to reveal in Scripture what human beings could discover by their own investigations and experiments.
John R. W. Stott, Christian Basics

SILENCE is one of the deepest disciplines of the Spirit simply because it puts the stopper on all self-justification. One of the fruits of silence is the freedom to let God be our justifier. We don't need to straighten others out.
Richard J. Foster, Seeking the Kingdom

A REALIST is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been purified. A skeptic is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been burned.
Warren W. Wiersbe in Leadership

JESUS CHRIST is God's missionary par excellence, and he involves his followers in his mission.
C. Rene Padilla in Missiology

YOU COULD SPEAK of Jesus' rising as the most hopeful (hope-full) thing that has ever happened—and you would be right!
J. I. Packer, Your Father Loves You

PEOPLE DO NOT drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.
D. A. Carson, For the Love of God

I DON'T WANT to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political Right. The hard Right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.
Billy Graham in Parade (1981)

ALTHOUGH the threads of my life have often seemed knotted, I know, by faith, that on the other side of the embroidery there is a crown.
Corrie ten Boom, My Heart Sings

Copyright © 2006 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Past Reflections columns include:

Spiritual Classics (Sept. 18, 2006)

Proverbs (Aug. 15, 2006)

Summer (June 27, 2006)

Philosophers' Potpourri (June 9, 2006)

Ponder These Things (May 17, 2006)

Holy Week (April 4, 2006)

Evening Prayer (March 10, 2006)

Morning Prayers (Feb. 6, 2006)

Hope (Jan. 16, 2006)

Christmas (Dec. 19, 2005)

Poetry (Dec. 12, 2005)

Grace that Surprises (Oct. 3, 2005)

Friendship (August 31, 2005)

Wisdom That Sticks (August 8, 2005)

His Body, His Blood (June 08, 2005)

On Baptism (April 25, 2005)

Discovering God (April 07, 2005)

Welcoming the Stranger (Feb. 22, 2005)

The Church and Mission (Feb. 02, 2005)

The Church (Jan. 11, 2005)

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October 2006, Vol. 50, No. 10