J. Ellsworth Kalas > Quotes

“But what time do they leave for original thinking? Or for examining one’s own soul? And to what degree do these matters frustrate the brain’s ability to focus, as Paul put it, on the good, the beautiful, and the true, rather than be controlled by the transient, the trivial and the traumatic? And”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, Preaching in an Age of Distraction

“As he watched his flocks by Mount Horeb, he saw a bush that was blazing without being consumed. He said, “Let me check out this amazing sight and find out why the bush isn’t burning up.” And then, the telling sentence: “When the LORD saw that he was coming to look, God called to him out of the bush” (Ex 3:3-4). I think it”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, Preaching in an Age of Distraction

“If we think effectively and productively about growing older, the odds are good that we’ll never have to grow old.”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, I Love Growing Older, But I'll Never Grow Old

“true biblical living is the greatest gift the church can give to its time.”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, Being United Methodist: What It Means, Why It Matters

“I have no right to argue with you because I haven’t walked in your shoes, nor do I have your feet.”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, I Love Growing Older, But I'll Never Grow Old

“Haggai preached to a people with whom we might secretly sympathize: they were so preoccupied with paneling their own homes that they forgot that the house of the Lord was in ruins. All of which is to say, distraction comes easily, in many forms, and it happens to the nicest people.”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, Preaching in an Age of Distraction

“Whatever the national or world scene and whatever the economy or the tide of war and peace, each of us has to live out our own lives.”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, I Love Growing Older, But I'll Never Grow Old

“Which leads me to what I want to say in these several pages: I love growing older. But I don’t want to grow old. Growing older is a process. Growing old is a conclusion. Growing older means that you’re going somewhere, and that in God’s kindness and in your cooperating with God you are taking more of life’s conquests every day. Growing old means that you’ve reached somewhere and that’s it. Older is a journey. Old is a destination. Mind you, I believe in a destination, but my idea of a destination for life is heaven. I want everything prior to heaven to be part of my preparation for that destination. If I settle for old as my destination, I will rob myself of some of the best years of preparation for the big exit, the grand eternal journey. When”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, I Love Growing Older, But I'll Never Grow Old

“They were, indeed, giants in the land in those days—because, of course, giants get their prominence partly by comparison with one’s own height. Gulliver, after all, wasn’t a giant until he came to the world of the Lilliputians. I”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, I Love Growing Older, But I'll Never Grow Old

“If our past fences us in with resentment and with desires for revenge, we are old before our time because the past holds us captive. If I can’t forgive someone who has hurt me in the past, even if the hurting was mean and intentional, I am letting them control me years later. It is enough that someone hurt me when I was five or fifteen or fifty. Why let them continue to hurt me today? Why should I allow their”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, I Love Growing Older, But I'll Never Grow Old

“Why should I allow their deeds to control me still, decades later?”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, I Love Growing Older, But I'll Never Grow Old

“Some of us need to be as sympathetic and understanding of our own failures of the past as we seek now to be understanding of others. We need to remember that we were a work in progress then—as we are still, I hope—and that we had our unique problems and shortcomings that made it difficult for us to be as fine as we wish now we had been. It isn’t fair to impose a sixty-year-old’s judgment on a twelve-year-old’s frame. The”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, I Love Growing Older, But I'll Never Grow Old

“To love Christ is to deal with the incongruity of One who is hailed as the Lion of Judah but who appears as a slain Lamb.”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, Preaching from the Soul: Insistent Observations on the Sacred Art

“You can’t possibly enjoy growing older unless you make peace with where you are right now.”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, I Love Growing Older, But I'll Never Grow Old

“the first rule of art is exclusion: knowing what to leave out.”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, Preaching from the Soul: Insistent Observations on the Sacred Art

“It’s easier to gossip than to think, easier to rant than to reason, easier to be confirmed in our prejudices than to listen to another person’s point of view. And”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, Preaching in an Age of Distraction

“In Samuel’s day the people were distracted by the form of government they saw in their neighboring nations and decided that they, too, should have a king. In generation after generation the perceived prosperity of such neighbors distracted Israel from the Lord God, making them wonder if Baal might be better. Thus envy lent its power to distraction.”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, Preaching in an Age of Distraction

“But I want to be sure they know the difference between fluff and substance, between cleverness and excellence. Now and again I see a restaurant try to lift itself to success by reinventing its ambiance, introducing a new menu and rearranging its tables when quite clearly what it needs is better food. Often churches and preachers follow the same course. No wonder such efforts end in disappointment.”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, Preaching in an Age of Distraction

“One of the ways to grow older without growing old is to become a beneficiary of your past rather than its victim or its prisoner.”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, I Love Growing Older, But I'll Never Grow Old

“If we persist in hating in a universe that was made to operate on love, we can expect that it will at last cut us down.”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, Parables from the Back Side Vol. 1: Student Guide