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ibro hasanovich
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To
understand how much a person is suffering look not at the cripple
or the beggar or the orphan but at Bob Pierce's face as he seeks to
help them.
- Journalist who followed Bob Pierce throughout Asia
If only two percent of the world were truly committed to changing the world - it could be done. -Albert Einstein
The measure of one's character is what you would do if you were never
found out. - Lord Macaulay
"Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely
invoke? Or, as I suspect, does anyone believe a word of it? The churches
are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing
up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It's madness to wear ladies'
straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash
helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they
should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may awake some day
and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can
never return."
-Annie Dillard
I would rather stumble a thousand times
Attempting to reach a goal,
Than to sit in a crowd
In my weather-proof shroud--
A shriveled and self-satisfied soul.
I would rather be doing and daring
All of my error-filled days,
Than watching, and waiting, and dying,
Smug in my perfect ways.
I would rather wonder and blunder,
Stumbling blindly ahead,
Than for safety's sake
Lest I make a mistake,
Be sure, be safe, be dead.
-Author Unknown
We have enjoyed ourselves in safe religion long enough.
We have had pleasant feelings, pleasant meetings, pleasant songs, pleasant projects.
There has been much human happiness, much clapping of hands, very much of heaven on earth.
But now we must go....
To go down among the perishing crowds is our calling.
What is strange and perplexing to me is that rescued people do not seem
to care about the perishing ones who are struggling and drowning before their eyes,
This unconcern could not have been due to ignorance, because they lived
in sight of it all and talked about it sometimes, and regularly went to
hear lectures in which the awful state of the poor drowning creatures awas described.
-William Booth, founder of Salvation Army
Anything that would hinder us from the closest walk possible with our Lord Jesus is not for us. -Amy Carmichael
Imagine the Lord at the table or in the room (and He is): How would our talk sound to Him?
All we need, all we want, is to have His ungrieved presence with us
always. -Amy Carmichael
To laugh is to risk appearing a fool
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental
To reach out to another is to risk involvement
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self
To live is to risk dying
To hope is to risk despair
To try is to risk failure
To love is to risk not being loved in return
But risk must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk
nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing...(becomes) nothing
He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but simply cannot learn, feel,
change, grow, love - live.
Live deliberately and suck the marrow out of life. Walt Whitman
I have come to give you life, and to give it to you abundantly. -Jesus
Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the
boredom and pain of it, no less than the excitement and gladness; touch,
taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the
last analysis, all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
-Frederick Buechner
Vocation: The place where the world's deepest hunger/pain/need
intersects with your greatest joy. -Frederick Buechner
It struck me as incomprehensible that I should be allowed to lead such a
happy life while I saw so many people around me wrestling with care and
suffering. I could not help thinking continually of others who were
denied that happiness by their material circumstances or their health. I
settled that I would devote myself from that time forward to the service
of humanity, for this settled the meaning for me of the saying of Jesus:
'Whosoever would save their life shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose
their life for My sake and the Gospels shall save it.' My relatives and
friends all joined in expostulating with me on the folly of my
enterprise. I was a man who was burying the talent entrusted to
him..... Work amongst 'savages' ought to be left to those who would not
thereby be compelled to leave gifts in science and art unused. In many
verbal duels which I had to fight, as a weary opponent, with people who
passed for Christians, it moved me strangely to see them so far from
perceiving that the effort to serve the love preached by Jesus may sweep
one into a new course of life, although they read in the New Testament
that it can do so, and found it there quite in order. I had assumed
that familiarity with the sayings of Jesus would produce a much better
appreciation of what to popular logic is nonrational, than my case
allowed me to assert. -Albert Schweitzer
The great enemy of morality has always been indifference. To remain
good means to remain wide awake. Our inmost moral being perishes when
we are too tired to share the life and experiences and sufferings of the
creatures around us. Woe to us if our sensitivity grows numb. The
tempter says, 'You must be able to detach yourself from what is
depressing around you. Teach yourself the necessary indifference....'
I tell you, don't let your hearts grow numb. Stay alert. It is your
soul which matters. Stop flinching from the challenge to learn
reverence for life and true empathy. If only you could be absorbed in
compassionate awareness. May this word pursue us. May it never let us
rest until we are laid into our graves. -Albert Schweitzer
When I am chained by ambition it is hard for me to see those who are
chained by poverty. -Henri Nouwen
There seems to be a mountain of obstacles preventing people from being
where their hearts want to be. The astonishing thing is that the battle
for survival has become so 'normal.' In this hectic, pressured,
competitive, exhausting context, who can really hear me? I even wonder
how long I myself can stay in touch with the voice of the Spirit when
the demons of this world make so much noise. I want so much to bring
people to new places, show them new perspectives, and point out to them
new ways. -Henri Nouwen
'Scotosis' allows church people to indulge in comfortable discussions
about the Kingdom of God all the while God makes clear to them that He
is with the poor, the sick, the hungry, and the dying. Scotosis means
an aberration which prevents the emergence into consciousness of
perspectives that would give rise to unwanted uncomfortable insights.
-Bernard Lonergan and Henri Nouwen
It costs so much to be a full human being that there are very few who
have the enlightenment or the courage, to pay the price.
One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to
the risk of living with both arms. One has to embrace the world like a
lover. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to
court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will
stubborn in conflict, but apt always to total acceptance of every
consequence of living and dying. -Morris L West, 'The Shoes of a Fisherman'
Certainly it is true there are millions who are dying, but that is the
poorest of all reasons to not help one of them. -Norman Cousins
Most of us won't have to repent of the great evil we've done, but of the
apathy we've shown to the conditions we're aware of.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
'Why does the God of justice and compassion permit evil to exist?' is
bound up with the problem of how man should aid God so that His justice
and compassion prevail. -Abraham Heschel
People ask God why He doesn't do something about the orphans, the homeless, the starving people of the world. Don't they realize God is asking them the same question?
Bui Doi
They're called bui doi-
the dust of life
Conceived in hell and born in strife
They are the living reminders
of all the good we failed to do
That's why we know deep in our hearts
That they are all our children too.
-From Bui Doi, 'Miss Saigon'
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves...for all who are
destitute. -Proverbs 31:8
Most of us unconsciously but willfully dilute the full reality of other
people. We walk around with our heads in the clouds, pass people on the
street as if they were telephone poles, look them straight in the eye
and hardly see them, and engage in conversations that are really
conversations with ourselves. This watering down of people is really a
dilution of God Himself, for if people are made in the image of God,
than there is nothing on earth so near to God as a human being.
We must allow the relentless tenderness of Jesus to invade the citadel
of self. -Brennan Manning
What you can do, I cannot do
What I can do, you cannot do
But together, you and I can do
Something beautiful for God
-Mother Teresa
Small things done with great love will change the world. -Mother Teresa
The physical survival of the human race depends on a radical change of
the human heart. -Erich Fromm
Preach the Gospel all the time. If necessary, use words. -Francis of Assisi
If you look for pleasure nerves in the human body, you will come away
disappointed; there are none. There are nerves for pain and cold and
heat and touch, but no nerve gives a sensation of pleasure. Pleasure
only appears as a by-product of cooperation from many cells. In order
for pleasure to be experienced, there must be self-sacrificing cells.
-Dr. Paul Brand
When the fact is faced that life is full of profound disappointments,
the only way to make it is to learn to love. And only those who are no
longer consumed with finding satisfaction now, are able to love. - Larry Crabb
God has called us to be lovers, and we frequently think that He meant us
to be saviours. We give of ourselves as long as our investments pay off,
but if the ones we love do not respond, we tend to despair and blame
ourselves and even resent those we pretend to love. Because we love
someone we want them to be free of addictions, of sin, of self- and that
is as it should be. But it might be that our love for them and our
desire for their well-being will not make them well. And, if that is the
case, their lack of response no more negates the reality of love than
their quickness to respond would confirm it. -Rich Mullins
When you love, give it everything you've got
And when you've reached your limit
Give it more and forget the pain of it
Because as you face your death
It is only the love you have given and received which will count.
All the rest: the accomplishments, the struggles, the fights...will be forgotten
If you have loved well
It will carry you to the end
And death will not come too soon
Have you realized your true business in this region of death? Having
eyes, oh that you could see! Having hearts, oh that you could feel! What
are you going to do with this graveyard. Will you content yourself with
strolling through it...leaving them quietly in their tombs as hopeless
as you found them?
God has sent you into this dark valley for nothing less than to raise
these doom-struck creatures from the dead. That is your mission. Go and
look at them. Go and compassionate them. Go and represent Jesus to them.
They require to see and hear God revealed before their very eyes in
visible and practical form before they will believe. And to reach these
crowds, God wants men and women to walk about the world so that people
shall see those so like Him in spirit and life and character as to make
crowds feel as though the very shadow of God has crossed their path.
Will you be a shadow of God? -General William Booth
Are there three ways of service for the feet of those who travel toward
eternity? One wide and broad for the wicked, another straight and narrow
for the martyrs, and the other a middle middling sort of silver-slipper
path, for those who would have the pearl without the price, the crown
without the cross?! -General William Booth
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