Daniel Hernández

“Ultimately, all are commissioned. All are called. All belong to the holy order of God’s beloved. The hands that pass the peace can pass a meal to the man on the street. The hands that cup together to receive Christ in the bread will extend to receive Christ in the immigrant, the refugee, the lonely, or the sick. Hands plant, and uproot, and cook, and caress. They repair, and rewire, and change diapers, and dress wounds. Hands tickle giggling children and wipe away tears. Hands rub heaving bellies of big, ugly dogs. Hands sanctify all sorts of ordinary things and make them holy. Through touch, God gave us the power to injure or to heal, to wage war or to wash feet. Let us not forget the gravity of that. Let us not forget the call.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

“There is no Road to Damascus moment, no flash of light; rather it is the story of a young man whose spiritual life was increasingly in conflict with the world around him. This is an early expression of Calvin as a stranger in a foreign land.”
― Bruce Gordon, Calvin

“Rather than original sin—a moral depravity and incapacity passed on from generation to generation—we have a death-infected world created by a primal act of disobedience. Thus the Orthodox don’t speak of original sin but of an ancestral sin, a primal event where death was introduced into the world. The condition we inherit from Adam and Eve is less moral than mortal.”
― Richard Beck, The Slavery of Death

“Oddly, as I look back on Jesus' time from the present perspective, it is the very ordinariness of the disciples that gives me hope. Jesus does not seem to choose his followers on the basis of native talent or perfectibility or potential for greatness. When he lived on earth he surrounded himself with ordinary people who misunderstood him, failed to exercise much spiritual power, and sometimes behaved like churlish schoolchildren. Three followers in particular (the brothers James and John, and Peter) Jesus singled out for his strongest reprimands—yet two of these would become the most prominent leaders of the early Christians. I cannot avoid the impression that Jesus prefers working with unpromising recruits. Once, after he had sent out seventy-two disciples on a training mission, Jesus rejoiced at the successes they reported back. No passage in the Gospels shows him more exuberant. “At that time139 Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said,‘ I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.”
― Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew