Red Letters

"How different would our world be if Christians were really living as little Christs?"  ~CS Lewis

"Most of my life, I have prayed that these sorts of transformations would occur almost magically. That I would wake up one day and be a totally different person. That all of my desires would be godly. That I would have a natural inclination to deny myself, pick up my cross, and follow Jesus. That I would suddenly just love my enemy. But it did't happen like that. Transformation did occur when I would hear the words of Jesus and obey them, no matter how I felt."

"Why don't we act? Why don't we choose to make a difference? One reason is because we're afraid. We spend most of our time trying to protect what we have, fearing what would happen if that went away. When we do this, we become shackled to our possessions. We can't reach far enough to offer compassion because our arms are too busy holding all that we own."

"He (Jesus) came to die for the world, the whole world. Yeah, everyone. Jesus came to die for the terrorist who wants to blow up the building where you work. He came to die for Osama bin Laden. He came to die for the pervert, the child molester, and the convicted rapist.  Consider Jesus' last act of compassion before breathing his final breath: He forgave a thief who was dying on the cross next to him. This was not a wrongly convicted man of high standing, but a dirty, rotten, rightly convicted thief. I suspect the man lived a horrible life. Certainly he didn't deserve to be forgiven. And of course, that's the crux of the gospel message. I don't deserve to be forgiven either."

"At the end of the day I'm left with the responsibility to do something. To reach out with compassion to the neighbor across the street and the neighbor across the ocean."

~Red Letters by David Platt, from chapters 1-2