A Quote by James K. A. Smith

In short, liturgies make us certain kinds of people, and what defines us is what we love. — © James K. A. Smith
In short, liturgies make us certain kinds of people, and what defines us is what we love.

Quote Author

James K. A. Smith
Born: 1970
Affliction comes to us all, not to make us sad, but sober; not to make us sorry, but to make us wise; not to make us despondent, but by its darkness to refresh us as the night refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us
Dreams are what guide us, art is what defines us, math is what makes it all possible, and love is what lights our way.
Robots do not love. God created us with the capacity to love. Love is based upon one's right to choose to love. We cannot force others to love us. We can make them serve us or obey us. But true love is founded upon one's freedom to choose to respond.
Let the Black man go - stop lying to us that you love us. And if you really love us, let us go and give us some of this territory that we can call our own; and give us the billions of dollars that we can get started with land and with tractors and the things that will make us an independent nation.
How tragic it is that so often we stop everything just as we reach the starting line. We must move past the narcissistic preoccupation with getting the love we think 'works' for us. The point of love is to make us grow, not to make us immediately happy. Many of us have forsworn the chance for the deepest love in reaching out for the easier one.
We all lose sometimes. We fail to get what we want. Friends and loved ones leave. We make a decision we regret. We try our hardest and come up short. It's not the losing that defines us. It's how we lose. It's what we do afterward.
The very shape of our dreams defines us. We learn about the world and try out our thoughts and visions in them. Our dreams goad us and drive us and summon and sustain us and when we are old they comfort us. Magic is a kind of dream, and love is a dream, and hope is a dream. Without our dreams, there is no sweetness, no purpose to life.
As adult women, we're better able to protect ourselves emotionally. We understand we don't need to spend time with people who don't make us feel good. We recognise that some people have bad energy and we know we don't want that in our lives. Instead, we choose to spend time with people who love us and treat us well and make us happy. There's no doubt that shows on your face.
The function of the church for both young and old is not to give us on Sundays certain kinds of experiences different from experiences of the every day. The function of the church is rather to teach us how to put religious and ethical qualities into all kinds of experiences.
There are two kinds of love: we love wise and kind and beautiful people because we need them, but we love (or try to love) stupid and disagreeable people because they need us. This second kind is the more divine because that is how God loves us: not because we are lovable but because He is love, not because He needs to receive but He delights to give.
What defines us as Christians is not most profoundly that we have come to know him but that he took note of us and made us his own.
Let us ask God to make us true in our love, to make us sacrificial beings, for it seems to me that sacrifice is only love put into action.
Love can heal. Love can renew. Love can make us safe. Love can inspire us with its power. Love can bring us closer to God.
Life has its share of fears and failures. Sometimes things fall short. Sometimes people fail us, or economies or businesses or governments fail us. But one thing in time or eternity does not fail us-the pure love of Christ.
We look about in puzzlement at our world, with a sense of unease and disquiet. We think of ourselves as scholars in arcane liturgies, single men trapped in worlds beyond our devising. The truth is far simpler: there are things in the darkness beneath us that wish us harm.
God allows and at times causes us to go through the kinds of circumstances that strip away all falsehood and leave us with our real selves. God's ultimate intent is not to leave us faithless, but to leave us faith-full. There are few things as exhilarating as going through the fire and finding that you had the resilience to make it through. All of us wonder at times whether we have what it takes. God wants to bring us to a place where we have no doubt of the work He has done within us.
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