Zach > Zach's Quotes

“The question of this book is simple: What is the best use of my smartphone in the flourishing of my life? To that end, my aim is to avoid both extremes: the utopian optimism of the technophiliac and the dystopian pessimistic of the technophobe.”
― Tony Reinke, 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You

“Our lives are consolidated on our phones: our calendars, our cameras, our pictures, our work, our news, our weather, our email, our shopping - all of it can be managed with state-of-the-art apps in powerful little devices we carry everywhere. Even the GPS app on my phone, which guided me to a new coffee shop today, possesses thirty thousand times the processing speed of the seventy-pound onboard navigational computer that guided Apollo 11 to the surface of the moon.”
― Tony Reinke, 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You

“But if there's nothing scary, there's nothing to be brave about," said Henry, "And a knight must be brave.”
― Jennifer Trafton, Henry and the Chalk Dragon

“The sad truth is that many of us are addicted to our phones because we crave immediate approval and affirmation. The fear we feel in our hearts when we are engaged online is the impulse that drives our "highly selective self-representations." We want to be loved and accepted by others, so we wash away our scars and defects. When we put this scrubbed-down representation of ourselves online, we tabulate the human approval in a commodity index of likes and shares. We post an image, then watch the immediate response. We refresh. We watch the stats climb-or stall. We gauge the immediate responses from friends, family members, and strangers. Did what we posted gain the immediate approval of others? We know within minutes. Even the promise of religious approval and the affirmations of other Christians is a gravitational pull that draws us toward our phones.”
― Tony Reinke, 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You

“When pondering elevation gain and mountains along the Appalachian Trail, most people think of the high peaks of New England: the Green Mountains of Vermont, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and the Mahoosuc Range in Main. However, the highest mountains are actually in the South. In fact, seven of the ten highest peaks on the AT are south of Virginia, and four of them are in Great Smoky Mountains National Park; three of those are over six thousand feet.”
― Scott Jurek, North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail

“AT legend has it that Pennsylvania hiking clubs and trail crews are proud of their state's nickname of Rocksylvania and don't remove rocks from the trail. In fact, some people claim they actually dump wheelbarrows full of rocks onto the trail.”
― Scott Jurek, North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail

“You are never too old to set another goal, or to dream a new dream.”
― Les Brown, Live Your Dreams: Les Brown's Formula and Action Planner for Achieving Success and Happiness

“Eric Liddell, the Olympic runner who was portrayed in the movie Chariots of Fire, famously said, "I feel like God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast! And when I run I feel His pleasure." I started thinking that my ability to hike was a gift and a divine responsibility. The farther I walked, the weaker I felt, the more I relied on my faith, and the more I felt God's presence.”
― Jennifer Pharr Davis, The Pursuit of Endurance: Harnessing the Record-Breaking Power of Strength and Resilience

“We live in a world where there are twenty cities with populations over ten million people. The entire population of the American colonies was 2,500,000. Philadelphia, the largest American city, had all of thirty thousand people, a small town by our standards. The same week the Continental Congress voted for independence, the British landed 32,000 troops on Staten Island. In other words, they landed a military force larger than the entire population of our largest city. When the delegates signed their names to that Declaration, pledging "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor," those weren't just words. Each was signing his own death warrant. They were declaring themselves traitors.”
― David McCullough, The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For

“Keep in mind that when we were founded by those Americans of the eighteenth century, none had had any prior experience in revolutions or nation making. They were, as we would say, winging it. They were idealistic and they were young. We see their faces in the old paintings done later in their lives or looking at us from the paper money in our wallets, and we see the awkward teeth and the powdered hair, and we think of them as elder statesmen. But George Washington, when he took command of the Continental Army at Cambridge in 1775, was forty-three, and he was the oldest of them. Jefferson was thirty-three when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. John Adams was forty. Benjamin Rush - one of the most interesting of them all - was thirty when he signed the Declaration. They were young people, feeling their way, improvising, trying to do what would work. They had no money, no navy, no real army. There wasn't a bank in the entire country. It was a country of just 2,500,000 people, 500,000 of whom were held in slavery. And think of this: Few nations in the world know when they were born. We know exactly when we began and why we began and who did it.”
― David McCullough, The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For

“God is calling all of us not just to see that people have dignity, but to act accordingly. Not just to know, but to do.”
― Daniel Darling, The Dignity Revolution: Reclaiming God's Rich Vision for Humanity

“Racism focuses on the “otherness” more than on the “man.” It is elevating “my people” above “the other people.” It is the sin of individual pride writ across a larger canvas. It ascribes greater value to one group of image-bearers than another; it divides up groups of image-bearers according to the way they look or the history they have experienced or the culture they have created, as though these things are more fundamental to who we are and who “they” are than being made in God’s image. Racism is often driven by a fear of the “other,” but is rooted in an evil that usurps God as Creator and denies the humanity of our neighbors.”
― Daniel Darling, The Dignity Revolution

“Much of today’s decline of Christian influence can be traced, not to secularism, but to the failure of significant sections of the church in the era of slavery and segregation. The salt of our witness lost its savor on the altar of racism. Still today, if we speak up about marriage or religious liberty but not about race, why should we think anyone should listen? If we are courageous concerning justice for those who are made in the image of God and live in the womb, but silent about justice for those who have been and still are systemically stripped of the dignity that is theirs as image-bearers as they live in our societies, then we should not be surprised to be charged with double standards.”
― Daniel Darling, The Dignity Revolution

“We are all, each of us, imbued with creativity by a Creator. We have minds and abilities with immense potential for making beautiful things and for making sense of the world around us. Each of us does have something to add, but it doesn’t always have to be in the form of a new created work. Sometimes what we contribute is just our thankfulness and understanding. Sometimes the most significant thing we can do for culture is simply to seek it out passionately and thoughtfully, to receive it well, and to support the further creation and appreciation of it. Sometimes the best thing we can do is to consume a piece of culture in moderation, or not at all.”
― Brett McCracken, Gray Matters: Navigating the Space between Legalism and Liberty

“The classic Old Testament example of these two ways to run from God is right here in the book of Jonah. Jonah takes turns acting as both the “younger brother” and the “older brother.” In the first two chapters of the book, Jonah disobeys and runs away from the Lord and yet ultimately repents and asks for God’s grace, just as the younger brother leaves home but returns repentant. In the last two chapters, however, Jonah obeys God’s command to go and preach to Nineveh. In both cases, however, he’s trying to get control of the agenda.11 When God accepts the repentance of the Ninevites, just like the older brother in Luke 15, Jonah bristles with self-righteous anger at God’s graciousness and mercy to sinners.12 And that is the problem facing Jonah, namely, the mystery of God’s mercy. It is a theological problem, but it is at the same time a heart problem. Unless Jonah can see his own sin, and see himself as living wholly by the mercy of God, he will never understand how God can be merciful to evil people and still be just and faithful. The story of Jonah, with all its twists and turns, is about how God takes Jonah, sometimes by the hand, other times by the scruff of the neck, to show him these things.”
― Timothy J. Keller, The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God's Mercy

“Jesus is the prophet Jonah should have been. Yet, of course, he is infinitely more than that. Jesus did not merely weep for us; he died for us. Jonah went outside the city, hoping to witness its condemnation, but Jesus Christ went outside the city to die on a cross to accomplish its salvation.”
― Timothy J. Keller, The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God's Mercy

“In literature, plays, and cinema, substitutionary sacrifice is always the most riveting and moving plot point. In the movie The Last of the Mohicans, British major Duncan Heyward asks his Indian captors if he might die in the flames so that Cora, whom he loves, and Nathaniel can go free. When, as he is being dragged away, Duncan cries, “My compliments, sir! Take her and get out!” we are electrified by his unflinching willingness to die to save others, one of whom has been his rival. He dies with his arms bound and stretched out, as if he were on a cross. In Ernest Gordon’s memoir of being a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, he recounts how at the end of a day of forced labor the guards counted the shovels, and one was apparently missing. A furious guard threatened the British POWs that unless the guilty person confessed, he would kill them all. He cocked his gun to start shooting them one by one. At that moment, one prisoner stepped forward calmly and said, “I did it.” He stood quietly at attention, and “he did not open his mouth” (Isaiah 53: 7) as he was beaten to death. When they all got back to the camp and counted the shovels again, it turned out that they were all there. The man had sacrificed himself to save them all. In the first Harry Potter novel, the evil Lord Voldemort can’t touch Harry without being burned. Later Dumbledore explains it to him. “Your mother died to save you. . . . Love as powerful [as that] . . . leaves its own mark. . . . [T]o have been loved so deeply . . . will give us some protection forever.” Why do these stories move us? It’s because we know from the mundane corners of life to the most dramatic that all life-changing love is substitutionary sacrifice. We know that anybody who has ever done anything that really made a difference in our lives made a sacrifice, stepped in and gave something or paid something or bore something so we would not have to.”
― Timothy J. Keller, The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God's Mercy

“Jonah undertook what we could call an urban mission. He went to a city that was one of the largest in the world at that time. When God is arguing about why he should be deeply concerned for Nineveh, he cites its population figure as a reason for the city’s significance to him and uses the term adam—the word for humankind: “120,000 of humanity.” It is as if God was saying, “I care about human beings, and so how much more should I be concerned to reach a place where so much humanity is amassed?” This simple logic is powerful. Many people simply do not like cities, but if we care about people, and if we believe that the deepest human need is to be reconciled to God, then all Christians must be concerned for and supportive of urban Christian ministry in one way or another. If anything, God’s appeal to sheer size as an indicator of spiritual need comes home to us today with greater force.”
― Timothy J. Keller, The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God's Mercy

“The famed quote, "If Andrew Jackson can be president anyone can" was refashioned as "If Harry Truman can be president, so can my next-door neighbor.”
― A.J. Baime, The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World

“The lament of Good Friday was answered three days later with the empty tomb. The greatest injustice in history became the greatest display of divine mercy. Tragedy became triumph. Lament was the voice in between.”
― Mark Vroegop, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament

“Lament is the language that helps you believe catastrophe can become eucatastrophe. It vocalizes the pain of the moment while believing that help is on the way. Lament gives us hope because it gives us a glimpse of truth.”
― Mark Vroegop, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament

“The eyes of faith are not always bright. At times they can see only dim shadows, like rough shapes reflected in a worn and dusty mirror. Yet even then, especially then, the faithful are called to trust in the promises of old and to believe that the time and place of their birth are no accident. For faith sees not only that history is meaningful, that it is going someplace, but also understands its own limited role within that history.”
― Louis Markos

“That's how the grace of God in Christ is. He comes the first time, the second time, the third time, as many times as it takes to bring us in repentance back to Himself. God's grace is more stubborn than our sin.”
― Sammy Rhodes, Broken and Beloved: How Jesus Loves Us into Wholeness

“The beautiful thing about Jesus is that He meets us in the ordinariness of life. He meets us where we are, not where we should be. He meets us in the loneliness of our Friday nights as we polish off another season on Netflix. He meets us in the lingering marital fights that push past the weekend into Monday, Tuesday morning. He meets us in the awkwardness that is our families and the difficulty that can be our children. He meets us, too, in the very places we most hate ourselves and wish we could be anyone else. Jesus pursues us, reaches out for us, not in the extraordinary moments of life, but the most ordinary ones, like a simple breakfast with tired, hungry friends on the beach.”
― Sammy Rhodes, Broken and Beloved: How Jesus Loves Us into Wholeness

“What are the “proud and lofty” things of contemporary cultures? To what do nations and peoples point in showing off their “honor” and “glory”? It would be interesting, for example, to count how many times those very words – “honor” and “glory” and their variants and equivalents – are used in our own day at national festivals and political rallies. The variants are seemingly endless. “National honor.” “Our honor is at stake.” “We are gathered today to honor those who...” “Our glorious heritage.” “Our glorious flag.” “What a glorious nation we live in!”
People boast about the nations of which they are citizens. They also boast about ethnic identities, religious affiliations, race, gender, and clan. They point in pride to natural wonders they claim as their own possessions – “This land was made for you and me.” They show off their military might, their economic clout, their material abundance.
The Lord of hosts has a day against all of these things: against nations who brag about being “Number One,” against racist pride, against the idealizing of “human potential,” against our self-actualization manifestos, against our reliance on missiles and bombers, against art and technology, against philosophy textbooks and country music records, against Russian vodka and South African diamonds, against trade centers and computer banks, against throne-rooms and presidential memorabilia. In short, God will stand in judgment of all idolatrous and prideful attachments to military, technological, commercial, and cultural might. He will destroy all of those rebellious projects that glorify oppression, exploitation, and the accumulation of possessions. It is in such projects that we can discern today our own ships of Tarshish and cedars from Lebanon.”
― Richard Mouw

“Jesus doesn’t tell us to tolerate our enemies. He says to love them. And thank God that Jesus does not merely tolerate us—he embraces us across difference and welcomes us into his arms.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference

“The ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes requires humility, and the impetus for doing so requires patience rooted in hope and tolerance grounded in love. This is increasingly difficult at a time in which, as Sherry Turkle argues, social media and other technology significantly reduce our ability to exercise empathy.11 Indeed, we have seen a sharp decline in our ability to sympathize, understand, and talk face-to-face with those who have different views and beliefs. If our culture cannot form people who can speak with both conviction and empathy across deep differences, then it becomes even more important for the church to use its theological and spiritual resources to produce such people. The Christian calling is to be shaped and reshaped into people whose every thought and action is characterized by faith, hope, and love—and who then speak and act in the world with humility, patience, and tolerance.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference

“In addition, we learn from the Hebrew Scriptures that the people of God were often in exile, forcibly removed from their homeland. While in exile, they were permitted to grieve and lament that they were not yet home—that the world in which they found themselves did not acknowledge their God and was not designed to support their way of life. But they were not to give up their way of life or cease to acknowledge their God. Rather, they were called to remain and live distinctively as God’s holy people (as evidenced by such things as their worship, their ways of eating and dressing, and their love of God and neighbor). But neither were God’s exiled people called by God to turn the nations in which they lived into Israel. They were not, for example, to try to establish Babylon as God’s holy nation or to think that its laws or ways of life would reflect their convictions. Nor were they to abandon the places in which they found themselves. God did not call them to be so secluded as his holy people that they lacked concern for the cities where they were living or the peoples around them.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference

“We are members of families, employees of businesses, and citizens of countries whose goals and aspirations are frequently sub-Christian. When those differences are unjust or evil, we need to distinguish ourselves from them. But where possible, we should gather near, identify common ground, and draw lines as sparingly as possible. Salt should not remain in the saltshaker. A lamp should not be placed under a bushel. Christians should not fail to affirm the good, true, and beautiful wherever we see it, even if it emerges from sources with whom we would otherwise disagree. We need to travel together, even in our differences. Living in the world means seeking common ground with people and pursuits that are not always gospel-centered. For the adventurer, this is welcome news, because it allows us to ask different questions. What might God be doing in this situation? With what struggles can I empathize? What bridges can be built? Where might the kingdom of God be manifesting?”
― Timothy J. Keller, Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference

“A herald’s words do not actually save anyone. Rather, a herald’s job is to be a messenger, to proclaim someone and something else. Heralds are stock characters—archetypes—in literature. In J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Hagrid is the herald; his arrival announces that reality is nothing like Harry thought and a new story is about to begin. In “Cinderella,” the herald carried an invitation to the ball. In ancient Greek mythology, Hermes was the herald of the gods. In ancient Rome, a herald would come into town to announce a new king or a new law or an important event—a royal wedding, a battle won, an enemy defeated. Heralds announce a new reality. Writers seek to proclaim truthfully what is and what can be. Christian writers are heralds; we understand our task as heralding the new reality of the kingdom of God—the wedding feast of the Lamb, a battle won through resurrection, death defeated. We herald that another reality has crashed into our own. We announce the end of the story. We whisper, speak, shout—in sentence and verse—that all things are wrecked and all things will be made new.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference