Richard A. Swenson > Quotes

“We have more 'things per person' than any other nation in history. Closets are full, storage space is used up, and cars can't fit into garages. Having first imprisoned us with debt. Possessions then take over our houses and occupy our time. This begins to sound like an invasion. Everything I own owns me. Why would I want more?”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“We do not rest because our work is done; we rest because God commanded it and created us to have a need for it."-”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“All people have within their grasp much to be thankful for. Gratitude fills. Grumbling drains. The choice is ours.”
― Richard Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“We must have some room to breathe. We need freedom to think and permission to heal. Our relationships are being starved to death by velocity. No one has the time to listen, let alone love. Our children lay wounded on the ground, run over by our high-speed good intentions. Is God now pro-exhaustion? Doesn’t He lead people beside the still waters anymore? Who plundered those wide-open spaces of the past, and how can we get them back? There are no fallow lands for our emotions to lie down and rest in.”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“Extroverts usually don't understand introverts and try to push them into situations where they simply don't wish to be.”
― Richard Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“Marginless is the disease of the new millennium; margin is its cure.”
― Richard Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“Love is the only medicine I know of which, when used according to directions, heals completely yet takes one's life away.”
― Richard Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“The Sabbath rest is a rest He calls us to, but the surrendered rest He offers to us. The Sabbath rest we enter out of obedience; the surrendered rest we enter out of our need. The Sabbath rest arises from the good and perfect law of God; the surrendered rest arises from the good and perfect grace of God. The Sabbath rest is remembrance; the surrendered rest is meekness. Both provide soothing, God-ordained healing.”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“If progress is so wonderful, why do we drink and drug to forget our problems? Why are we divorcing and suing at such rates? Why are people killing themselves-and others-in such numbers?”
― Richard Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“The answer lies in meekness. In this passage, Christ calls Himself “gentle and humble”—meek. He came not to judge but to die. He came not to shout and defend the honor of the Father but to die. He came not to fight but to die. No persecution could disturb Him for He came to suffer. Yet all the time He was suffering, He knew He was winning. We, too, can suffer and win. We can live with love even when others hate—all the time knowing that love wins. We can respond with grace when others fight, knowing that grace wins. When we come to Him and surrender, accepting His yoke, we accept full vulnerability to the onslaught of the world. Yet, at the same time, we are assured that nothing can separate us from the victorious love of Christ. This rest is a self-weakening unto God-strength. It is a self-emptying unto God-fullness. It is the rest of full surrender.”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“While the progress we boast of is found within the material and cognitive environments, most of the pain we suffer is found within the social, emotional, and spiritual.”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“Godliness is an attitude whereby what we want is to please God.”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“He looked on what He had made and delighted in it, and He has commanded us to do the same.”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“In the same way, activities and commitments often have a way of adding themselves to our lives. Even though it is much harder to stop something than to start it, periodically, get out the clippers and prune away.”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“Rx: 6 Separate Time from Technology”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“Each of us needs to seek his or her own level of involvement and not let the standard be mandated by the often exorbitant expectations of others. Some around us who are much more involved than we are may not understand why we choose to hold back. Others might be much less involved than we are—we assume they don’t care. We must understand that everyone has a different tolerance for overload and a different threshold level when breakdown begins to occur. It is important for us to set people free to seek their own level.”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“What is on our carts? Possessions? Things that consume both our time and money? Things that are temporal, perishable, here today and gone tomorrow? May we have the grace to unclutter our carts to make room for that which matters most.”
― Richard A. Swenson, A Minute of Margin: Restoring Balance to Busy Lives - 180 Daily Reflections

“Rx: 15 Plan for Free Time”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“We once again practice economics "as if people mattered." We once again agree that things do not own us and are not even very important. We once again assert that jobs are only jobs, that cars are only organized piles of metal, that houses will one day fall down-hut that people are important beyond description.”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“We live in a world that promotes distance, builds fences, buys locks, and doesn’t talk on elevators. But God, in Christ, says, “Come.”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“Rx: 11 Enjoy Anticipation, Relish the Memories”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“Rx: 14 Create Buffer Zones”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“it is good to go on strike occasionally. Try”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“just as we need to eat and sleep, so we also need to breathe.”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“It is hard to justify our inner pains when we don’t have a vocabulary to use.”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“Love is extravagant in the price it is willing to pay, the time it is
willing to give, the hardships it is willing to endure, and the
strength it is willing to spend. JONI EARECKSON TADA,”
― Richard A. Swenson, A Minute of Margin: Restoring Balance to Busy Lives - 180 Daily Reflections

“Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“People are submitting themselves to time-devouring technology.
We’re a nerve-racked society where people have difficulty sitting
back and thinking of the purpose of what they do.
TODD GITLIN, BERKELEY SOCIOLOGIST”
― Richard A. Swenson, A Minute of Margin: Restoring Balance to Busy Lives - 180 Daily Reflections

“Rx: 2 Learn to Say No”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

“Rx: 8 Thank God”
― Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives