You're here, you're breathing, you are the recipient of an extraordinary act of generosity called life.
Rob BellLike a mirror, God appears to be more and more a reflection of whoever it is that happens to be talking about God at the moment.
Rob BellThis is why for thousands of years Christians have found the cross to be so central to life. It speaks to us of God's suffering, God's pain, God's broken heart. It's God making the first move and then waiting for our response.
Rob BellMany in the modern world fell for the myth that we're living in a static, fixed, flat reality of just material things.
Rob BellWhen we deny the spiritual dimension to our existence, we end up living like animals. And when we deny the physical, sexual dimension to our existence, we end up living like angels. And both ways are destructive, because God made us human.
Rob BellIn one of the accounts of Jesus's death we read that the curtain in the temple of God-the one that kept people out of the holiest place of God's presence-ripped.One New Testament writer said that this ripping was a picture of how, because of Jesus, we can have new, direct access to God.A beautiful idea.But the curtain ripping also means that God comes out, that God is no longer confined to the temple as God was previously.
Rob Bell