words

• “You must be humble because you have no reason not to be humble.” – Paulo Freire (for teachers)

• “Above all teachers must love their students, in spite of everything. I don’t mean a kind of soft or sweet love, but on the contrary a very affirmative love, a love which accepts, a love for students which pushes us to go beyond, to make us more and more responsible for our task.” Paulo Freire

• “When we try to be neutral, like Pilate, we support the dominating ideology.” – Paulo Freire

• “Reading is not walking on the words; it’s grasping the soul of them.” – Paulo Freire

• “One of the educator’s tasks is to make his students puzzled.” – J. Passmore

• “There was no certainty in seeing.” John Steinbeck, The Pearl (19)

• “The news came to the doctor where he sat with a woman whose illness was age, though neither she nor the doctor would admit it.” – Steinbeck, The Pearl (28)

• “For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talent the species has and one that has made it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have.” – The Pearl, 32

• “He was trapped as his people were always trapped, and would be until…they could be sure that the things in the books were really in the books.” The Pearl, 39

• “There is a great deal to be seen in the tilt of a hat on a man.” – The Pearl, 58

• “Poetry speaks to adolescents in ways that other genres do not.” – Kimberly Hill Campbell, Less is More (150)

• “Poetry is music for the human voice. And until you actually speak it or someone speaks it, it has not come into its own.” – Maya Angelou

• “I had the Holy Spirit but the Holy Spirit didn’t have me.” – Joyce Meyers

• “Perhaps they are not mute at all, it is just a lack of range in his hearing.” [a boy looking at insects] – In the Skin of a Lion

• “People are not projects.” – Schuurman, World Religions prof at Redeemer

“In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan
Earth stood hard as iron
Water like a stone.”
-- quoted in In the Skin of a Lion 

• “Our lives are like water spilled out on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.” 2 Samuel 14:14

• “But let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for His mercy is great. Do not let me fall into human hands.” – 2 Samuel 24:14

• “…for I cannot present offerings to the Lord that have cost me nothing.” King David, 2 Samuel 24:24

• “The question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but that we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. We bound ourselves to the fickle, changing, and dying as if they were a rock.” – The Maytrees by Annie Dillard

• “Prayer is a guide to perfection, and prayer delivers us from every vice, and gives us every virtue, for the one way to become perfect is to walk in the presence of God.” – Madame Guyon

• “Nothing is so easily obtained as the possession and enjoyment of God…He is more desirous to give Himself into us, than we can be to receive Him.” – Madame Guyon

• “Go then to prayer, not that ye may enjoy spiritual delights but that ye may be either full or empty, just as it pleaseth God: this will preserve you in an evenness of spirit, in desertion as well as in consolation, and prevent your being surprised at the aridity or the apparent repulses of God.” – Madame Guyon “A Short and Easy Method of Prayer”

• “I am my lover’s, and my lover is mine.” – Song of Songs 6:3

• “For love is as strong as death . . . Love flashes like fire, the brightest kind of flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can rivers drown it.” – Song of Songs 8:6-7

“Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
 no hands but yours, no feet but yours;
 Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion looks
 Out on the world
Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good.
 And yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now.”
 -       St. Theresa of Avila

• “I thought that had I now a thousand gallons of blood in my body, I could spill it all for the sake of the Lord Jesus.” – Hopeful, The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan

• “The Gospel is not a truth among other truths. Rather, it sets a question mark against all truths.” – Karl Barth

• “In this man Jesus there is forgiveness for your sins. Everyone who believes in him is freed from all guilt and declared right with God.” – Acts 13:38-39

• “…nature gave the word glory a meaning for me.” – CS Lewis, quoted in Desiring God

• “If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad.” – CS Lewis, quoted in One Thousand Gifts (Voskamp)

• “Love is the overflow of joy in God which gladly meets the needs of others.” – John Piper, Desiring God 

• “The contentment of a Christian . . . is a profoundly dissatisfied contentment.” – Piper

• “We do not believe Jesus when he says there is more blessedness, more joy, more lasting pleasure in a life devoted to helping others than there is in a life devoted to our material comfort. And therefore the very longing for contentment which ought to drive us to simplicity of life and labors of love contents itself instead with the broken cisterns of prosperity and comfort.” – Piper

• “…there are rare and wonderful species of joy that flourish only in the rainy atmosphere of suffering.” – Piper

• “Remember the love of God that wants the best for you, remember the wisdom of God that knows what’s best for you, and remember the power of God to accomplish it.” – William Barclay

• “Morning by morning He wakens me and opens my understanding to His will.” – Isaiah 50:4

• “A carnal person is married to Jesus but still in love with the world.” – AJ Thomas, Deep Water pastor

• “A carnal person sees faith as a box, and they try to get closest to the edge. A holy person sees it as a target and wants to get closer to the bull’s eye.” – AJ

• “If you have a rehearsed reason why it’s okay for you to do something, you probably shouldn’t be doing it.” – AJ

• “Instead of asking, ‘Can I justify it?’ ask, ‘Will it sanctify me?’” – AJ