"...professionalism without compassion will turn forgiveness into a gimmick, and the kingdom to come into a blindfold."
"Hospitality becomes community as it creates a unity based on the shared confession of our basic brokenness and on a shared hope."
"...Prayer is not a pious decoration of life but the breath of human existence."
"His appearance in our midst has made it undeniably clear that changing the human heart and changing human society are not separate tasks, but are as interconnected as the two beams of the cross."
"It is not the task of the Christian leader to go around nervously trying to redeem people, to save them at the last minute, to put them on the right track. For we are redeemed once and for all. The Christian leader is called to help others affirm this great news, and to make visible in daily events the fact that behind the dirty curtain of our painful symptoms there is something great to be seen: the face of Him in whose image we are shaped."
"The Christian way of life does not take away our loneliness; it protects and cherishes it as a precious gift."
"...it is the call of God which forms the people of God."
"A Christian community is therefore a healing community not because wounds are cured and pains are alleviated, but because wounds and pains become openings or occasions for a new vision."
"...ministry can indeed be a witness to the living truth that the wound, which causes us to suffer now, will be revealed to us later as the place where God intimated his new creation."
Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer
