The Ragamuffin Gospel

Jury duty, it turns out, is good for one thing. It forced me to finally finish The Ragamuffin Gospel. My goodness, I started this book in April! It has taken me four months to finish it. *ashamed*

In my defense, I've been working since May. And we all know how low my energy level is when I work :P

Do you remember how I used to share all these passages with you from the book? Sadly, I only have a few passages that I bookmarked this time around. Blame it on the low energy level. I felt very strongly about these passages--they forced me to look at myself with a critical eye and, I have to say, I did not like what I saw. I still don't. I need to change, with God's help. Except... like the second passage I will share with you, I have been putting it off. And, like the third passage, I am a procrastinator. What does that say about me and my spiritual life?

Anyway, enough about me. Here are the passages I wanted to share with you. Hopefully you get something from reading these passages.

"The call asks, do you really accept the message that God is head over heels in love with you? I believe that this question is at the core of our ability to mature and grow spiritually. If in our hearts we really don't believe that God loves us as we are, if we are still tainted by the lie that we can do something to make God love us more, we are rejecting the message of the cross." (pg. 159)

"There is one barrier to love that deserves special mention because it is so crucial to the second call of Jesus Christ--fear. Most of us spend considerable time putting off the things we should be doing or we would like to do or we want to do--but are afraid to do. We are afraid of failure. We don't like it, we shun it, we avoid it because of our inordinate desire to be thought well of by others. So we come up with a thousand brilliant excuses for doing nothing. We put things off, waste the energies of life and love that are within us." (pg. 169)

"Procrastination is perhaps the worst, the most damaging failure of all. We who believe in Jesus, who hope in vindication, who proclaim the love of the heavenly Father, waste our time trying to avoid the things that are most important. How much faith, how much hope, how much love does the perpetual procrastinator really have?" (pg. 170)

I hope you have enjoyed my posts about The Ragamuffin Gospel. I'm not sure when I will start my next book, or even which one it will be (out of the large stack currently sitting on my bookshelf). But please stay tuned for when I do start it :)