M. Craig Barnes > Quotes

“But the bridge that crosses the great gulf runs from God to us, never from us to God. We do not travel through the cross to find God; instead, God has traveled through the cross to find us. The significance of this distinction is great.”
― M. Craig Barnes, Yearning: Living Between How It Is and How It Ought to Be

“Conversion is the lifelong process of turning away from our plans and turning toward God's maddening, disruptive, creativity.”
― M. Craig Barnes, When God Interrupts: Finding New Life Through Unwanted Change

“Frequently I will end a service of worship in our congregation by saying something like, "Every day this week you have to decide if you want to achieve your life or receive it. If you make achieving your goal, your constant companion will be complaint, because you will never achieve enough. If you make receiving the goal, your constant companion will be gratitude for all that God is achieving in your life." I'm not certain that there are such things as measures of our spirituality, but if there are, then gratitude is probably the best one. It indicates that we are paying attention.”
― M. Craig Barnes, The Pastor as Minor Poet: Texts and Subtexts in the Ministerial Life (The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Liturgical Studies

“In truth, doing does not determine being; rather, being determines doing. It is only after we have a firm understanding of who we are that we know what to do with life.”
― M. Craig Barnes, Yearning: Living Between How It Is and How It Ought to Be

“One of the reasons that people need pastors is precisely because God is always present but usually not apparent. It takes a poet to find that presence beneath the layers of strategy for coping with the feeling of its absence. Thus, the parish minister's soul becomes a crucible in which sacred visions are ground together with the common and at times profane experiences of human life. Out of this sacred mix, pastors find their deep poetry, not only for the pulpit, but also for making eternal sense out of the ordinary routines of the congregation.”
― M. Craig Barnes, The Pastor as Minor Poet: Texts and Subtexts in the Ministerial Life (The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Liturgical Studies

“While it is popular to ask, "What would Jesus do?" the better question was always "What is Jesus doing?" The first question assumes that the Savior is on the sidelines and that the burden of life and work is on our shoulders. But in that case the Savior is not really saving but is setting impossibly high standards that we attempt to imitate by doing what we assume he would do if he were in our situation. On the other hand, the question "What is Jesus doing?" is built on the conviction that he is alive, reigning, and at work in our lives. In other words, he is in our situation, and that changes everything about our mission. Rather than believing that the work of Christ is completed and that now it is our turn to try to imitate his life and work, we take on the identity of being witnesses who watch and testify to his continued work of salvation that is unfolding before our eyes.”
― M. Craig Barnes, The Pastor as Minor Poet: Texts and Subtexts in the Ministerial Life (The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Liturgical Studies

“It is striking that our fall from Paradise also revolved around food. There was only the fruit of one tree that we were not given by God. It was not blessed, and not provided as a means of communion with sacred love. To eat of this fruit, therefore, was to seek food for its own end. Adam and Eve's reach for it symbolizes our striving to make work, family, health, or money their own ends. This, then, is our original sin. That old doctrine of the church refers not just to our primal disobedience to God's command. It also means that by seeking the fruit of the garden for its own sake, we have pulled the spiritual out of it and made the world material. It's not only our original sin; it's our continued addiction.”
― M. Craig Barnes, The Pastor as Minor Poet: Texts and Subtexts in the Ministerial Life (The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Liturgical Studies

“We all lose dreams and cherished people, which could make life a continual experience in despair. But if we lean on the great two-thousand-year-old faith of the church, then life is a continual experience of the salvation of God, to whom we belong. In God’s hands nothing, and no one, is ever lost. Our only comfort. According”
― M. Craig Barnes, Body & Soul: Reclaiming the Heidelberg Catechism

“Furthermore, to say God's work is good enough is not to say that once we receive our lives we cannot improve them. We are clearly invited to work in the garden. In both Old and New Testaments we are given exhortations to be diligent with the lives we have. But there is a big difference between self-improvement and re-creation. Self-improvement is the humble perspective of good stewards, while re-creation is a desperate effort to surpass our created limitations.”
― M. Craig Barnes, Yearning: Living Between How It Is and How It Ought to Be

“Scripture teaches that God created all things ex nihilo—“out of nothing.” Therefore all things derive their existence from the Creator, even the dust of the ground that God used to create humanity. Apart from the Creator there is only nothingness, or non-being.5 So when human beings base our identities on anything other than God—a job, being in love, accumulating wealth—it results only in returning to nothing.”
― M. Craig Barnes, Body & Soul: Reclaiming the Heidelberg Catechism

“Martha asked me if I thought Communion could be received through the womb. I had to admit it was a new question for me (while
thinking to myself that it would make a great question for ordination exams). She said she'd received Communion the previous Sunday in church and took some comfort in believing that the symbols of Christ's body and blood had made their way to baby Sarah Louise, even before she was born. That's important, she said, because little Sarah would need all the signs of grace she could get before the measuring took over.”
― M. Craig Barnes, When God Interrupts: Finding New Life Through Unwanted Change

“Because God is with us in the human struggle, we are no longer destined to fruitlessly rearrange the circumstances of our lives. We no longer depend on another move, another relationship, or another weight-loss program to rescue us from nothingness, from that persistent ache in the pit of our souls. We can flourish because in Jesus Christ the Creator came to us and restored our dignity as God’s children.”
― M. Craig Barnes, Body & Soul: Reclaiming the Heidelberg Catechism