Quotes about Redemption

When I look through God's eyes at my lost self and discover God's joy at my coming home, then my life may become less anguished and more trusting.

Thus, our brokenness can become a gateway to new life.

Jesus' whole life and mission involve accepting powerlessness and revealing in this powerlessness the limitlessness of God's love.

When the younger son was no longer considered a human being by the people around him, he felt the profundity of his isolation, the deepest loneliness one can experience. He was truly lost, and it was this complete lostness that brought him to his senses.

God is the father who watches and waits for his children, runs out to meet them, embraces them, pleads with them, begs and urges them to come home.

Jesus, the Son of God, is the man of sorrows, but also the man of complete joy.

Jesus wants to make it clear that the God of whom he speaks is a God of compassion who joyously welcomes repentant sinners into his house.

We can allow ourselves to be found by God and healed by his love through the concrete and daily practice of trust and gratitude. Trust and gratitude are the disciplines for the conversion of the elder son. By telling myself that I am not important enough to be found, I amplify my self-complaint. I must totally disown my self-rejecting voice and claim the truth that God does indeed want to embrace me as much as he does my wayward brothers and sisters.

It is through the way of the cross that Jesus gives glory to God, receives glory from God, and makes God's glory known to us. The glory of the resurrection can never be separated from the glory of the cross. The risen Lord always shows us his wounds.

The story of the prodigal son is the story of a God who goes searching for me and who doesn't rest until he has found me.

This is the mystery that Jesus himself became the prodigal son for our sake. There is no journey to God outside of the journey that Jesus made. Since his Son had become all in all, He has brought them all back. Rembrandt's painting is the whole of humanity returning to God, the summary of the history of our salvation.

Jesus, the man of sorrows, and we, the people of sorrow, hang there between heaven and earth, crying out, "God, our God, why have you forsaken us?