“Though the light has come into the world people have preferred darkness to light because their deeds were evil. And indeed, everybody who does wrong hates the light and avoids it, to prevent his actions from being shown up; but whoever does the truth comes out into the light, so that what he is doing may plainly appear as done in God” (Henri Nouwen, You are the Beloved).

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“The Resurrection unhinges the assumption that this world is something we leave behind. Instead, Easter promises that what God does in the resurrection of Jesus is God’s intention for the entire creation. The Resurrection contradicts the assumption that Christ resides on an ethereal cloud in a distant heaven. Rather, we find him on the dusty road that leads to the real stuff of our ordinary world. If our eyes are open to see him, we can find him everywhere!” (James A. Harnish, Easter Earthquake)

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“Brothers and sisters, if we don’t believe that every crucifixion—war, poverty, torture, hunger—can somehow be redeemed, who of us would not be angry, cynical, hopeless? No wonder Western culture seems so skeptical today. It all doesn’t mean anything, it’s not going anywhere, because we weren’t given a wider and cosmic vision of Jesus’ resurrection. Easter is not just the final chapter of Jesus’ life, but the final chapter of history. Death does not have the last word” (Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, April 21, 2019)

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“The Greek word traditionally translated “desert” or “wilderness” is erémos, and it doesn’t mean hot and dry. It means uninhabited, lonely, with no human population. The erémos is a desolate location, whatever may be the reason for its desolation. The word can even be applied to people, in the sense of being without friends or supporters, or simply solitary. In a word, it means deserted. . . .

[In] a sense everyone who has chosen the life of commitment to God has chosen the desert. Even if we have not entered a convent or a hermitage, once we have decided to love God ‘with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind, and with all our strength’ (see Mark 12:30), we have subordinated everything that we have and are to the will of God. The glad realization that God is worthy of an all-embracing sacrifice brings with it the sobering reality that we will be called upon to make that sacrifice … enter the desert way.

The truth is that we must simply learn to live in the desert, must try to remain oriented toward God as we go on through the misery. The divine presence is not the way out of the desert, it is the way through the desert. Remain attentive to God, stay utterly dependent on God – this is the lesson of the desert” (David Rensberger, adapted from the Upper Room Blog,  Adapted from Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life, May/June 2001.)

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“There are two ways to be fooled.  One is to believe what isn’t true.  The other is to refuse to believe what is true” (Soren Kierkegaard).

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“At times our evangelical fervor has come at the cost of spiritual formation. For this reason,  we can end up with a church full of believers, but followers of Jesus can be hard to come by” (Shane Claiborne quoted by Richard Rohr in Daily Meditation, Jan. 22,  2019).