"Being a writer and being a pastor are virtually the same thing for me:  an entrance into chaos." -- Eugene Peterson

"No matter how much you have grown, God is not content for you to remain as you are; and no matter how little you have grown, He has not given up on you. He wants to liberate you more and more from any inner chains that bind you and deform you -- chains of hostility or resentment, of self-blame or regrets, of anxiety or fear, chains of inferior or superior feelings." -- Warren and Ruth Myers in 'Discovering God's Will'

"Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important, wonderful. If you want to be recognized, wonderful. If you want to be great, wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That’s your new definition of greatness. And this morning, the thing that I like about it, by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great. Because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. And you can be that servant."

 -- Martin Luther King, Jr., "Drum Major Instinct," Sermon, Atlanta, Feb. 4, 1968.

“This table reaches from that upper room in Jerusalem all the way through the cathedrals in Europe and America, to the place where you will next take the sacrament. This table is revered in mud hut churches in Africa, where people speak the sacred words in languages you and I have never heard. It has often been set up, in crude fashion, in the darkest pits of confinement, where people imprisoned for their faith in Christ have saved a fragment of bread and a spoonful of water just so they can say: ‘His body. His blood.’ And they do it with a triumph that shakes the dungeon walls ... So I ponder that once, long ago, there was a table, where 13 men sat ... But who could have imagined that night that where 13 men sat at the table, hundreds of millions would sit at the same table, two millennia later, everywhere on this planet. And someone will say, ‘The body of our Lord. The blood of Christ shed for you.’ And in that moment, eternity will break in upon human souls. At a common piece of furniture called a table, you and I will eat a crumb of bread, we will drink from a cup, and for that moment, all of the company of heaven will observe in splendid awe. Such a table!  Such a table!”
-- J. Elsworth Kalas, "New Testament Stories from the Back Side”

“I’m not tense. I’m just terribly alert.” -- Courtesy of the wording on Rita Zerkle's T-shirt, as she described it to me in church on Dec. 12, 2010.  :-)

"Whether you like swashbuckling wizardry, fierce dragon battles, modern military hardware or sword-slashing zombie mayhem, Flank Hawk has it all." -- Terry W. Ervin II, author of "Flank Hawk" and member of St. Paris United Methodist Church.

"Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights." -- Habbakuk 3:17-19