Quotes about Renewal

This death-and-life mystery, this mechanism, this process is built into the very fabric of creation. The cells in our bodies are dying at a rate of millions a second, only to be replaced at a similar rate of millions a second. Our skin is constantly flaking off and our body is continually replacing the skin cells with new ones; we have entirely new skin every week or so.

Sabbath leaks. It spills over. It changes how you live the other six days. When you intentionally slow down, you instantly see how fast you've been moving the rest of the time.

Sabbath is when you spend a day remembering that efficiency and production are not God's highest goals for your life. Joy is.

Sabbath forces you to listen to your life. Sabbath is a day when you are fully present to your pain, your stress, your worry, your fear. Sabbath is when you let whatever you've pushed down rise to the surface. Sabbath is a day when things that are broken get fixed, when things within you that have torn are mended.

Can you see why Jesus often began his teachings by saying "Repent!"? You know what repent means? It means to change your thinking, to see things in a new way, to have your mind renewed—all

heaven has the potential to be a kind of starting over. Learning how to be human all over again. Imagine living with no fear.

That's what Spirit does, it brings about new creation. And what was true thirteen billion years ago is true now.

When we talk about heaven, then, or eternal life, or the afterlife—any of that—it's important that we begin with the categories and claims that people were familiar with in Jesus's first-century Jewish world. They did not talk about a future life somewhere else, because they anticipated a coming day when the world would be restored, renewed, and redeemed and there would be peace on earth.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate wilfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely to go better.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Nature's first green is gold

You are always new to me.