Intolerance

 D.A. Carson’s book The Intolerance of Tolerance:
This shift from “accepting the existence of different views” to “acceptance of different views,” from recognizing other people’s right to have different beliefs or practices to accepting the differing views of other people, is subtle in form, but massive in substance. To accept that a different or opposing position exists and deserves the right to exist is one thing; to accept the position itself means that one is no longer opposing it. The new tolerance suggests that actually accepting another’s position means believing that position to be true, or at least as true as your own.

Choosing What to Read

"While you may be devoting your time to be “well read” among the gigantic list of dead people there is, in addition, at least one book coming out every week that you really should read. I occasionally have a desire to give up. Throw my arms up in the air and simply transfer all my hard fought reading time over to Netflix. To stop reading and start binging on endless seasons of Netflix offerings. My disease, however, prevents me from giving up. I find I’m a better father, husband, friend and leader when I keep my nose consistently in good books.
Harry S. Truman is known for saying, “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” Why all this focus on reading? Well, in an age of non-stop book releases it is more challenging than ever to know what books to read. You can devote 8 hours a day to reading worthless books and you will never run out."
Tim Kimberely (http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2014/04/the-intolerance-of-tolerance/)

I read another quote this week, something like, for every book you choose to read....10,000 other go unread.

To Love Is To Be Vulnerable

C. S. Lewis on love:

To love at all is to be vulnerable.
Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.
But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell.

- The Four Loves, 169.

I think I've blogged the first sentence of this quote before but the 2nd part is really thought provoking.  Hell is the absence of love....

I'm not Religious

I hope that people don't remember me as a "religious person."  I almost consider that as an insult.  Rather, I want them to say, she was kind, joyful, patient, loving, good, faithful, full of peace, gentle, and self-controlled....well, she was like Jesus!  That would be the highest compliment.

http://www.faithgateway.com/why-i-think-jesus-hates-religion-and-you-should-too-part1/?fb_action_ids=10201816242948665&fb_action_types=og.comments#.U1p3dKL-qmA

The Extraordinary Is Found in the Ordinary

"Running hard after an extraordinary life turns out to be chasing a lie.
The realest extraordinary is always found in the ordinary.
The extra everyone’s looking for —- it’s found in ordinary."  Ann Voskamp
http://www.aholyexperience.com/2014/03/what-weve-got-to-tell-kids-about-living-extraordinary/

Hospitality

"Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place." -- Henri Nouwen

 There is a price to hospitality:

"But for those extending the gift of welcome, there is always a cost. To practice hospitality in all of its generous glory, there will always be sacrifice.
The sacrifice of resources - the actual cost of more people gathered around the table or snuggled under your roof or invited to go along on the long trip.
The sacrifice of pride - the opening the door when you really wished you had just fifteen more minutes to tidy up; the offer to stay the night when there isn't a proper guest room, just an air mattress on the floor covered with heirloom quilts; the invitation to dinner when the menu is more ground beef than prime rib.
The sacrifice of time - and this is the costliest of all, isn't it? The rearranging of schedule, the disruption of familiar routine, the priority of planning for someone else instead of yourself.
But it is this choosing of Other over Self that makes the offer of hospitality incredibly meaningful to those to whom it is offered. We all know that no matter how effortless the giver of the gift of welcome makes it appear, true hospitality always involves effort, and it is that thoughtful intention toward us that makes the experience so incredibly dear.
To offer hospitality, you don't have to be fancy. You don't have to go big or go all out. You simply have to be willing to make yourself available to greet someone at the door, to help them shrug off their heavy burdens if only for a little while so that they can sit down, fully free to be themselves, fully free to be fully seen, while you make just a little bit of a fuss over them.
In doing so, you offer to the fellow battle-scarred weary traveler a safe place to rest, if only for a little while. "Come in! Sit down! I've been waiting   just for you."     Megan Tietz
(http://www.sortacrunchy.net/sortacrunchy/2014/03/waiting-tables-day-twelve-the-sacrifice-of-hospitality-and-why-it-matters-so-much.html)

Change

“How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change. And how ironic that the difficult times we fear might ruin us are the very ones that can break us open and help us blossom into who we were meant to be.” ~Elizabeth Lesser