Lent (Day 16)

To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities - I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not - that one endures.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will To Power

Lent (Day 16)

Jesus warned people about worrying over their possessions. For Jesus, greed is not only love of money, but excessive anxiety about it.

Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods

Lent (Day 15)

No servant can serve two masters; either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

Jesus, Luke 16:13

Lent (Day 14)

In many cultures there is an ancient custom of giving a tenth of each year's income to some holy use. For Christians, to observe the forty days of Lent is to do the same thing with roughly a tenth of each year's days. After being baptized by John in the river Jordan, Jesus went off alone into the wilderness where he spent forty days asking himself the question what it meant to be Jesus. During Lent, Christians are supposed to ask one way or another what it means to be themselves...To hear yourself answer is to begin to hear something not only of who you are but of both what you are becoming and what you are failing to become. It can be a pretty depressing business all in all, but if sackcloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end of it.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling In The Dark

Lent (Day 13)

I think of [Lent] as an Outward Bound for the soul. No one has to sign up for it, but if you do then you give up the illusion that you are in control of your life.

Barbara Brown Taylor, Settling For Less