Sublime

“For a good man to realize that it is better to be whole than to be good is to enter on a strait and narrow path compared to which his previous rectitude was flowery license.”

“Coming alive over getting ahead.”

the Preacher is speaking to just about everyone who ever goes to church.

As the missionary Frank Laubach said it, “I must talk about God, or I cannot keep Him in my mind. I must give Him away in order to have Him.”

The way that this modern moral order takes shape around chosen identity makes it complicated for pastors. If the church or the pastor tries too hard to shape a person’s life, it will be a violation of the modern moral order.

went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

But this prodding would no longer come from a set-apart holy man, consecrated by enchanted oil or a Yale degree. Rather, Henry’s prodding was done as “one of us.” Henry threw off any sense that he was a class above or beyond, as so many clergy embodied.

The gospel is good news for sick people and is disturbing for those who think they’ve got it all together.

I delight to come to my bearings—not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may—not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by.