Morning

But what is truly strange is that I never liked mornings when I could have them with real sunrises and real dew on real roses and real paperboys wrecking real bicycles on the sidewalk outside my window. How I could ever have remained asleep and voluntarily missed a sunrise, I can't explain.

 

-N. D. Wilson, Leepike Ridge, 141.

Inconvenience

Anything worth doing will take time and cost you something...Many people in our community protect themselves from inconvenience as though inconvenience is deadly. We have decided that we are not inconvenienced by inconvenience.

-Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, 126.

Fellowship

Real fellowship requires stepping outside of you.

-Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, 116.

Sexual Sin

What good Christians don't realize is that sexual sin is not recreational sex gone overboard. Sexual sin is predatory. It won't be "healed" by redeeming the context or the genders. Sexual sin must simply be killed. What is left of your sexuality after this annihilation is up to God. But healing, to the sexual sinner, is death: nothing more and nothing less...Christians act as though marriage redeems sin. Marriage does not redeem sin. Only Jesus himself can do that.

-Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, 83.

Missing the Point

I came to believe that my job was not to critique and "receive" a sermon, but to dig into it, to seize its power, to participate with its message, and to steal its fruit...The easily offended are missing the point.

-Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, 72.

Good Teachers

Good teachers make it possible for people to change their positions without shame.

-Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, 14.