These quotes are taken from Eugene Peterson's book, Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places...
"But love is one of the slipperiest words in the language. There is no other word in our society more messed up, misunderstood, perverted, and misused as the word "love."
"But love is one of the slipperiest words in the language. There is no other word in our society more messed up, misunderstood, perverted, and misused as the word "love."
Complicating things further, it is a word
terribly vulnerable to cliché, more often than not flattened into
non-meaning by chatter and gossip.
It is all me-directed. It is all self. The largeness of love is reduced to the mouse hole of ego.
It is often used by the same person and in the same conversation in self-contradicting ways - seriously and frivolously, soberly and sentimentally, thoughtfully and teasingly.
It is all me-directed. It is all self. The largeness of love is reduced to the mouse hole of ego.
It is often used by the same person and in the same conversation in self-contradicting ways - seriously and frivolously, soberly and sentimentally, thoughtfully and teasingly.
It is used in the worship of a
holy God and as a euphemism for loveless sex.
It is used to reveal heart intimacies and commitments and as a cover for telling every sort and variety of lie.
It is used to reveal heart intimacies and commitments and as a cover for telling every sort and variety of lie.
An incalculable amount of violence, both emotional
and physical, occurs in relationships begun in love.
In no other human experience do we fail so frequently, get hurt so badly, suffer so excruciatingly and get deceived so cruelly as in love.
Still, we continue to long for love, dream of it, attempt it.
In no other human experience do we fail so frequently, get hurt so badly, suffer so excruciatingly and get deceived so cruelly as in love.
Still, we continue to long for love, dream of it, attempt it.
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Walker Percy titled
one of his novels Love in the Ruins, an epitaph far too many in our
community can claim for their own.
So when the men and women of the
Christian community are given the responsibility for telling one another
that God loves them, that he commanded every one of us to love one
another, and when we assume responsibility for giving guidance and
instruction in the life of love, we know we have no easy task.
In fact,
it is difficult to imagine a more formidable, seemingly impossible,
task.
Because of the enormous importance this has for the way we live,
it is important to get it right.
We need to listen attentively to every conversation, read discerningly every book, if we hope ever to discern the truth and implications of the love word."
We need to listen attentively to every conversation, read discerningly every book, if we hope ever to discern the truth and implications of the love word."
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