Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove Quotes & Sayings

Since Moses was in Egypt land, Gods people have been struggling for justice while singing freedom songs. Theology can be clarifying. A good sermon has its place. But nothing is more essential for the life of faith in a community than liturgy that invites us to sing the freedom songs that are sung around the throne of God. Brother Ken Sehested is a song leader in that great cloud of witnesses. Receive his words as gift-and keep singing. — Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

I feel that my own life is especially sealed with this great sign ... because like Jonah himself I find myself traveling toward my destiny in the belly of a paradox. — Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Staying, we all know, is not the norm in our mobile culture. A great deal of money is spent each day to create desires in each of us that can never be fulfilled. I suspect that much of our restlessness is a return on this investment. — Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

It would seem that these super-religious ascetics would be extremely so. But the witness of everyone who visited them for counsel was the opposite. They were some of the — Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Leave some room in your theology for God to be bigger than you can explain — Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

We learn to dwell with God by learning the practices of hospitality, listening, forgiveness, and reconciliation - the daily tasks of life with other people. Stability in Christ is always stability in community — Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

We share good news, then, neither to show our neighbors why Christianity is "right" nor to save people from the corrupting influence of other religions, but to name the story that helps us tell the truth about ourselves. — Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

To climb ever closer to God is not to move away from our troubled and troubling neighbors, but closer to them. — Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

For the Christian tradition, the heart's true home is a life rooted in the love of God. Like Lao-tzu and Dorothy both, Christian wisdom about stability points us toward the true peace that is possible when our spirits are stilled and our feet are planted in a place we know to be holy ground. — Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

As participants in a mobile culture, our default is to move. God embraces our broken world, and I have no doubt that God can use our movement for good. But I am convinced that we lose something essential to our existence as creatures if we do not recognize our fundamental need for stability. Trees can be transplanted, often with magnificent results. But their default is to stay. — Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

You don't have to live in community long to realize that lives which are blessed and instructive are still flawed. The grace of the gospel isn't only that the Word was made flesh in Jesus, but also that the eternal Word is made present in weak and wonderful people. — Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Our most important work is love. — Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove