1) "If we constantly focus only on the stones in our mortal path, we willalmost surely miss the beautiful flower or cool stream provided by theloving Father who outlined our journey. Each day can bring more joythan sorrow when our mortal and spiritual eyes are open to God'sgoodness. Joy in the gospel is not something that begins only in thenext life. It is our privilege now, this very day. We must never allowour burdens to obscure our blessings. There will always be moreblessings than burdens--even if some days it doesn't seem so. Jesussaid, ""I am come that they might have life, and that they might have itmore abundantly."" Enjoy those blessings right now. They are yours andalways will be.",Jeffrey R. Holland

2) "It’s sarcasm, Josh.”“Sarcasm?”“It’s from the Greek, sarkasmos. To bite the lips. It means that you aren’t really saying what you mean, but people will get your point. I invented it, Bartholomew named it.”“Well, if the village idiot named it, I’m sure it’s a good thing.”“There you go, you got it.”“Got what?”“Sarcasm.”“No, I meant it.”“Sure you did.”“Is that sarcasm?”“Irony, I think.”“What’s the difference?”“I haven’t the slightest idea.”“So you’re being ironic now, right?”“No, I really don’t know.”“Maybe you should ask the idiot.”“Now you’ve got it.”“What?”“Sarcasm.","Christopher Moore, Lamb: The gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal"

3) "Joshua's ministry was three years of preaching, sometimes three times a day, and although there were some high and low points, I could never remember the sermons word for word, but here's the gist of almost every sermon I ever heard Joshua give.You should be nice to people, even creeps.And if you:a) believed that Joshua was the Son of God (and)b) he had come to save you from sin (and)c) acknowledged the Holy Spirit within you (became as a little child, he would say) (and)d) didn't blaspheme the Holy Ghost (see c)then you would:e) live foreverf) someplace niceg) probably heavanHowever, if you:h) sinned (and/or)i) were a hypocrite (and/or)j) valued things over people (and)k) didn't do a, b, c, and d,then you were:l) fucked","Christopher Moore, Lamb: The gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal"

4) "I've tried to get the angel to watch MTV so I can learn the vocabulary of your music, but even with the gift of tongues, I'm having trouble learning to speak hip-hop. Why is it that one can busta rhyme or busta move anywhere but you must busta cap in someone's ass? Is ""ho"" always feminine, and ""muthafucka"" always masculine, while ""bitch"" can be either? How many peeps in a posse, how much booty before baby got back, do you have to be all that to get all up in that, and do I need to be dope and phat to be da bomb or can I just be ""stupid""? I'll not be singing over any dead mothers until I understand.","Christopher Moore, Lamb: The gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal"

5) "Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences progress in even greater extent and depth, and the human mind widen itself as much as it desires: beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity, as it shines forth in the gospels, it will not go.",Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

6) "If you believe what you like in the gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.",Augustine of Hippo

7) "And whatever my life had been up to that day, it was another life after that. And that is the gospel truth.","Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture"

8) "It is obvious that the concept of truth has become suspect. Of course it is correct that is has been much abused. Intolerance and cruelty have occurred in the name of truth. To that extent people are afraid when someone says, ""This is the truth"", or even ""I have the truth"". We never have it, at best is has us. No one will dispute that one must be careful and cautious in claiming the truth. But simply to dismiss it as unattainable is really destructive.(...) We must have the courage to dare to say: Yes, man must seek the truth; he is capable of truth. It goes without saying that truth requires criteria for verification and falsification. It must always be accompanied by tolerance, also. But then truth also points out to us those constant values which have made mankind great. That is why the humility to recognize the truth and to accept it as a standard has to be relearned and practiced again. The truth comes to rule, not through violence, but rather through its own power; this is the central theme of John's gospel: When brought before Pilate, Jesus professes that he himself is The Truth and the witness to the truth. He does not defend the truth with legions but rather makes it visible through his Passion and thereby also implements it.","Pope Benedict XVI, Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times - A Conversation with Peter Seewald"

9) "There were three things sought by invaders who crossed oceans to discover America. Those were gold, gospel, glory. There are four things sought by aliens who crossed heavens to discover planet earth. Those are gold, gospel, glory, gene.","Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut"

10) "The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. He took his woes to God. 'They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner.''What are you complaining about?' said God. 'They won't let Me in either.","Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out"

11) "One of the most amazing and perplexing features of mainstream Christianity is that seminarians who learn the historical-critical method in their Bible classes appear to forget all about it when it comes time for them to be pastors. They are taught critical approaches to Scripture, they learn about the discrepancies and contradictions, they discover all sorts of historical errors and mistakes, they come to realize that it is difficult to know whether Moses existed or what Jesus actually said and did, they find that there are other books that were at one time considered canonical but that ultimately did not become part of Scripture (for example, other gospels and Apocalypses), they come to recognize that a good number of the books of the Bible are pseudonymous (for example, written in the name of an apostle by someone else), that in fact we don't have the original copies of any of the biblical books but only copies made centuries later, all of which have been altered. They learn all of this, and yet when they enter church ministry they appear to put it back on the shelf. For reasons I will explore in the conclusion, pastors are, as a rule, reluctant to teach what they learned about the Bible in seminary.","Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible & Why We Don't Know About Them"

12) "It is He Who sent down to thee, in truth, the Book (Quran), confirming what went before it; and He sent down the Law (of Moses) and the gospel (of Jesus) before this, as a guide to mankind, and He sent down the criterion (Quran) (of judgment between right and wrong). - Holy Quran 3:3","Anonymous, The Qur'an / القرآن الكريم"

13) "Jesus Christ came not to condemn you but to save you, knowing your name, knowing all about you, knowing your weight right now, knowing your age, knowing what you do, knowing where you live, knowing what you ate for supper and what you will eat for breakfast, where you will sleep tonight, how much your clothing cost, who your parents were. He knows you individually as though there were not another person in the entire world. He died for you as certainly as if you had been the only lost one. He knows the worst about you and is the One who loves you the most. If you are out of the fold and away from God, put your name in the words of John 3:16 and say, “Lord, it is I. I’m the cause and reason why Thou didst on earth come to die.” That kind of positive, personal faith and a personal Redeemer is what saves you. If you will just rush in there, you do not have to know all the theology and all the right words. You can say, “I am the one He came to die for.” Write it down in your heart and say, “Jesus, this is me—Thee and me,” as though there were no others. Have that kind of personalized belief in a personal Lord and Savior.","A.W. Tozer, And He Dwelt Among Us: Teachings from the gospel of John"

14) "I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.","Anonymous, Holy Bible: The New King James Version"

15) "I take literally the statement in the gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that divine love, incarnate and indwelling in the world, summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation and atonement with God.","Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays"

16) "Imagine that Jesus is calling you today. He extends a second invitation to accept His Father's love. And maybe you answer, ""Oh, I know that. It's old hat.""And God answers, 'No, that's what you don't know. You don't know how much I love you. The moment you think you understand is the moment you do not understand. I am God, not man. You tell others about Me - your words are glib. My words are written in the blood of My only Son. The next time you preach about My love with such obnoxious familiarity, I may come and blow your whole prayer meeting apart.Did you know that every time you tell Me you love Me, I say thank you?","Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out"

17) "The Word we study has to be the Word we pray. My personal experience of the relentless tenderness of God came not from exegetes, theologians, and spiritual writers, but from sitting still in the presence of the living Word and beseeching Him to help me understand with my head and heart His written Word. Sheer scholarship alone cannot reveal to us the gospel of grace. We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of *knowing* Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.","Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out"

18) "For those who feel their lives are a grave disappointment to God, it requires enormous trust and reckless, raging confidence to accept that the love of Jesus Christ knows no shadow of alteration or change. When Jesus said, ""Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy burdened,"" He assumed we would grow weary, discouraged, and disheartened along the way. These words are a touching testimony to the genuine humanness of Jesus. He had no romantic notion of the cost of discipleship. He knew that following Him was as unsentimental as duty, as demanding as love.","Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out"

19) "For Ragamuffins, God's name is Mercy. We see our darkness as a prized possession because it drives us into the heart of God. Without mercy our darkness would plunge us into despair - for some, self-destruction. Time alone with God reveals the unfathomable depths of the poverty of the spirit. We are so poor that even our poverty is not our own: It belongs to the mysterium tremendum of a loving God.","Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out"

20) "Creation discloses a power that baffles our minds and beggars our speech. We are enamored and enchanted by God's power. We stutter and stammer about God's holiness. We tremble before God's majesty... and yet, we grow squeamish and skittish before God's love.","Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out"

21) We must go out into a desert of some kind (your backyard will do) and come into a personal experience of the awesome love of God.,"Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out"