Lisa Samson Quotes

You should never use propaganda to teach kids the truth.

God wasn't giving me a megaphone. He was telling me to shut up. To be still and know.

I've met the folk that have the perfect garlands and sprays and wreaths, the folk that live in Williamsburg-style houses. And I've met the folk that live at the edge of town in two-bedroom ranch houses that have Frosty the Snowman, lights playing tag around the roof, and a Rudolph stuck askew somewhere on the lawn. I'd rather sit in the home of the atter with and errant couch spring poking my derriere because, truthfully, they're glad to have me, and they never look at my shoes and wonder where I'd been before I got there.

I've never heard anyone come back from downtown Baltimore waxing poetic about the authenticity of poverty.

Jesus, do you always show up like this, at the craziest of times and in the oddest of places? I sure hope so.

From two niches (to use Barber's word), North and South, we've splintered into hundreds of thousands, a nation of tribes connected not by kinship or even creed. We're merely tethered together by the Internet, by our brand loyalties and shared consumer obsessions.

I guess this thing we call faith is a climb. I always wanted to think of it as a big slide straight into the arms of God who waits at the bottom to catch us. But instead, He's a God who's on top of things - & like any mountain you climb, the closer we get to Him, the steeper the terrain.

Now I find that what life was making of me, what God was making of me, was not an arrow to trace a path through the sky, but the hub of a wheel. I am the intersection, I am the connection between them all, and the purpose I've been given isn't mine alone. It's for all of us to share. What I needed wasn't something I could take. What I needed was something I could give.

Movie Jesus is a whole lot different from Bible Jesus

There's enough grief in this world without always getting into whose fault it is.

Although I doubt He [Jesus] said "believeth" as He was Jewish and not a fancy-pants English fellow.

The point is, the way to speak to the universal is through the particular. The broad message might appear to speak to everyone, but really it speaks to no one deeply. When you focus on the particular, even though it seems counterintuitive, by communicating just one thing to just one person, you say everything to everyone.

Personally, I like to imagine the Godhead dancing it a rhythm of its own, something even grander than a waltz, touching, tasting, smelling, seeing, and hearing, creating wonder after wonder, and when it's finished, looking upon the handiwork and saying, This is great!

Confession: I don't want everybody to be beautiful, not in that unlined, creaseless, symmetrical way. Android beauty, like it comes out of a test tube. Beauty without blemish or mark. Not only do I not identify with such people, I don't believe in them either. I don't even find them attractive. This is what makes watching television so hard: they don't cast actors anymore, only models. When they make a movie of my life, they'd better cast a character actor in the lead. Don't try to tell me I'm not a character.

My breath caught in wonder and surprise and I remembered that during the darkest of hours, God is.

What are we doing? Have we really drifted so far off course? We have it all, don't we? We get along, live comfortably. But what's it all really for in the long run?

But the true miracle of the resurrection wasn't so much the raising. Is something like that too hard for the God who made the universe? The true miracle is in the forgiving. And though we are bruised and burned, blind and broken, we are forgiven.

If I was an eccentric old spinster in a Merchant Ivory movie, I'd want to share my lovely cottage with Holly and that's the truth. I'd do the cooking and leave the decorating to her, and we'd be inseparable.