Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Quote to Note

Thanks to the helpful goading of some of you reading this, I'm back in the blog saddle again. This will be my first of weekly blogs on quotes that grabbed me by the throat, the funny bone, the heart, or maybe the knoggin. Some may be from books I'm reading, like the one that follows, or from the news, or from a friend, or from who knows where else. I hope they grab you too.

I ran across this week's quote to note in Wild Goose Chase by Mark Batterson. It's actually a quote from Peter Marshall, former chaplain of the US Senate and was originally printed in his book Mr. Jones, Meet the Master :

"I wonder what would happen if we all agreed to read one of the Gospels until we came to a place that told us to do something, then went out to do it, and only after we had done it, began reading again? There are aspects of the Gospel that are puzzling and difficult to understand. But our problems are not centered around the things we don't understand, but rather in the things we do understand, the things we could not possibly misunderstand. Our problem is not so much that we don't know what we should do. We know perfectly well, but we don't want to do it."

Can you envision how different our lives, our families, our communities would be if we started practicing--putting into action--what we know to be true? If we stopped using what we don't know as an excuse for passivity? I'd love to hear your stories over the coming weeks of what happens as you and I take Mr. Marshall's challenge.

1 comment:

Jennifer Grainger said...

Very nice thought for the evening-something to think about in this day and age. I will think about this one and let you know how things go. Thanks for the challenge!
Jennifer G.