Quotes about Reality

There is plenty of courage among us for the abstract but not for the concrete.

Some things just have to be believed to be seen.

We human beings instinctively regard the seen world as the "real" world and the unseen world as the "unreal" world, but the Bible calls for almost the opposite.

the promise of pleasures so alluring that we may devote our lives to their pursuit, and then the haunting realization that these pleasures ultimately do not satisfy.

They [Old Testament] taught me about Life with God: not how it is supposed to work, but how it actually does work.

There is only one way for any of us to resolve the tension between the high ideals of the gospel and the grim reality of ourselves: to accept that we will never measure up, but that we do not have to. We are judged by the righteousness of the Christ who lives within, not our own.

If I take Easter as the starting point, the one incontrovertible fact about how God treats those whom he loves, then human history becomes the contradiction and Easter a preview of ultimate reality.

Prayer is the act of seeing reality from God's point of view.

Jeremiah affected me more than any other book. The image of a wounded lover in Jeremiah is an awesome one that I cannot comprehend. Why would the God who created all that exists willingly become subject to such humiliation from creation? I was haunted by the reality of a God who lets our response matter that much.

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you," he said.

we should live in such a way that our lives wouldn't make much sense if the gospel were not true.

It is not the same as optimism or wishful thinking, for these imply a denial of reality.