Ryan Bailey
“Although we are weeping Lord, help us keep sowing The seeds of Your Kingdom, For the day You will reap them Your sheaves we will carry, Lord, please do not tarry All those who sow weeping will go out with songs of joy.” -Psalm 126 (Molly Parden – Bifrost Arts) I am often struck by how little the heroes of our faith were…
“Many people are good at talking about what they are doing, but in fact do little. Others do a lot but don’t talk about it; they are the ones who make a community live.” -Jean Vanier In last week’s blog I talked about the tension we all feel as we exhaust ourselves by filling our schedules, while…
“Community is only being created when [its members] have recognized that the greatness of man is to accept his insignificance, his human condition and his earth, and to thank God for having put in a finite body the seeds of eternity which are visible in small and daily gestures of love and forgiveness.” -Jean Vanier Have…
“The mystery of one man is too immense and too profound to be explained by another man.” -Henri Nouwen This past week, I’ve been thinking a lot about stories. I believe we are made for stories and we respond on a deeper level to stories than we would to straight facts and figures. The stories…
“Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all other creatures to the feast of Creation.” -Wendell Berry I’m reading through Acts this month. I’m always looking for new ways to refresh my views of community building and intentional living. I can’t imagine…
“As soon as we are alone,…inner chaos opens up in us. This chaos can be so disturbing and so confusing that we can hardly wait to get busy again…We often use the outer distractions to shield ourselves from the interior noises. This makes the discipline of solitude all the more important.” -Henri Nouwen This week if I…
“Criticism of others is thus an oblique form of self-commendation. We think we make the picture hang straight on our wall by telling our neighbors that all his pictures are crooked.” -Fulton J. Sheen Have you ever had one of those moments where you bomb in front of a lot of people? For some of…
“Jesus does not offer to make bad people good but to make dead people alive.” -Ravi Zacharias This quote was in a chapter of Ravi Zacharias’ book The Grand Weaver that I’ve been reading the past few weeks. I’ve been mulling over these words, trying to let them settle to the deeper parts of my soul (I’ve been…
“Our love of being right is best understood as our fear of being wrong.” -Kathryn Schulz This past week I had a really hard conversation with a close friend. It was uncomfortable, I immediately wished we were not having it, and I had to fight my tendency to back track and smooth things over. If you…
“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.” David Foster Wallace “Hey, I need you to hold me accountable…” Every week in high school, a small group of guys from my church would meet in the basement of our friend’s house with our youth leader.…