Brian Mackey

“God in his love has chosen to reveal himself. We understand God to be self-sufficient and not in need of our gifts and service. God is not "served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things" (Acts 17:25). He has chosen to speak to us because he desires to be in relationship with us-he desires to make friends with us.”
― James C. Wilhoit, Discovering Lectio Divina: Bringing Scripture into Ordinary Life

“Gregory’s words remain a sharp and timely rebuke to the continuing temptation to practice theology as though we could separate the exercise of our mind from the development of our character.”
― Christopher A. Hall, Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers

“Another way of looking at our experience of difficulty in the text of Scripture is to receive our struggle as an inviting challenge from God. Thomas Merton suggested,
For most people, the understanding of the Bible is, and should be, a struggle: not merely to find meanings that can be looked up in books of reference, but to come to terms personally with the stark scandal and contradiction in the Bible itself. It should not be our aim merely to explain these contradictions away, but rather to use them as ways to enter into the strange and paradoxical world of meanings and experiences that are beyond us and yet often extremely and mysteriously relevant to us.”
― James C. Wilhoit, Discovering Lectio Divina: Bringing Scripture into Ordinary Life

“When Moses heard the voice of God, he shook with terror and hid his face in the folds of his robe. Why? Because he was about to receive a couple of chapters of the book of Exodus? No! He was awestruck because the voice he heard made real and immediate the presence of the Holy One of Israel. In the words, Moses met God. And so can we.”
― Chris Webb, The Fire of the Word: Meeting God on Holy Ground