Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.
- James F. Byrnes

How many of us live that way?  Come on be honest. I know I fight it. That need to feel secure juxtaposed with the call of the Lord to let go…

“One thing I have come to embrace is this: we have to let it go.  The more comfortable we are with mystery in our journey, the more rest we will know along the way.  The Christian life is full of paradox (as if you hadn’t noticed).  Listen to how Paul describes his experience of the quest: ‘Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything’ (2 Cor. 6:10 NIV) How true is this.  If we will remain open to sorrow, we can know joy.  Somehow being empty allows us to make others rich.  And if we are willing to let go; we’ll discover something most suprising—-that all is ours.  That is why reaching to possess is one danger of which the heart alive must be wary.  Those who have given up caring aren’t tempted by this.  But once we know what we want, we must learn the grace of release”.

from The Journey of Desire, John Eldredge

“the great sin of white north-american middle-class protestantism is shallow hopelessness, ‘cheap hope.’ we cannot be said to have a gospel because we refuse to know enough of the bad news to prepare our collective soul for the good. our insistence upon being and remaining positive and optomistic is what prevents us from exploring deeply the meaning of hope, biblically understood. we want to have easter sunday without good friday- or better, we desire a friday so ‘good’ that it is no longer for us a sybolic mode of identification with the suffering world.” [douglas j. hall, confessing the faith- 1998.]