When we can see the image of God where we don't want to see the image of God, then we see with eyes not our own.
Interpretation
Seeing divinity in unexpected places expands our perspective and empathy.
This quote suggests that true understanding and connection with the divine can be found in the most unlikely situations or people, challenging our biases and preconceived notions. When we learn to perceive the divine presence in all aspects of life, including those we initially reject, we open ourselves to a wider, more compassionate view of the world that transcends our personal limitations.
In practice
This quote can be used in a sermon to encourage people to find God in all aspects of life.
My scientist friends have come up with things like 'principles of uncertainty' and dark holes. They're willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that we are people of 'faith'! How strange that the very word 'faith' has come to mean its exact opposite.
The gift of darkness draws you to know God’s presence beyond what thought, imagination, or sensory feeling can comprehend.
I cannot illustrate huge differences between male and female spiritualities except in their starting points, style and fascinations along the way. This is significant, however, and has huge pastoral implications: men must be challenged in the world of doing; women must be challenged in the world of relating.
Much of the Christian religion has largely become “holding on” instead of letting go. But God, it seems to me, does the holding on (to us!), and we must learn the letting go (of everything else).
We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.
I've had the good fortune of teaching and preaching across much of the globe, while also struggling to make sense of my experience in my own tiny world.
Both Alton Sterling and Philando Castile had guns on them, which is part of their Second Amendment right. It is a part of a culture that is largely protected by special-interest groups like the N.R.A., but the right to bear arms, it seems, only exists for white people.
A people and their religion must be judged by social standards based on social ethics. No other standard would have any meaning if religion is held to be necessary good for the well-being of the people.
What a child does not know and does not want to know of race and color and class, he learns soon enough as he grows to see each man flipped inexorably into some predestined groove like a penny or a sovereign in a banker's rack.
I am good to people who are good. I am also good to people who are not good. Because Virtue is goodness.
Speak the truth do not become angered and give when asked, even be it a little. By these three conditions one goes to the presence of the gods.
After all, if freedom of speech means anything, it means a willingness to stand and let people say things with which we disagree, and which do weary us considerably.
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