Mark Buchanan

“There is too wide a gap, for most of us, between what we say and what we mean. Between our words and our thoughts. The first thing the Prophet Isaiah said when he saw the living and exalted God was, “Woe is me, I am ruined. For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5). Isaiah was one of the most godly men who ever walked the earth. But seeing God, he sees also, abrupt and stark and grief-making, his own duplicity. Then God does what only God can do: he sears his lips clean (Isaiah 6:6-7). And herein lies our hope: truly seeing God, we truly see ourselves, in all our woe-begotten duplicity; but crying out to God, we are truly and greatly helped.”

“Sometimes doubting is not a lack of faith, but an expression of it. Sometimes to doubt is to merely insist that God be taken seriously not frivolously, to insist that our faith is placed in and upheld by something other than seeming conjuring tricks.”

“One of the most convicting things I have recently come to realize about Jesus is that He was never, not once, in a hurry.”

“Silence is the room we create for the searching of God, where we hear His voice and follow.”

“Author wonders whether God's proclamation of His natural mastery when appearing to Job might be about restoring a sense of wonder to world-weary man as much as humbling him.”

“Prayer makes no sense apart from waiting.”

“Love can’t cover over the sins we cover up…If you want God and others to cover over your sin, stop covering it up.”

“But grace and effort are not opposites. Grace and earning are opposites.”

“Ironic that those most holy are least likely to see themselves that way.”