Sermon quotes on meaning
Augustine of Hippo
Because God has made us for Himself, our hearts are restless until they rest in Him.
William Barclay
There are two great days in a person’s life … the day we are born and the day we discover why.
Bono
Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it’s to have any meaning in this world – and stop being its apologist.
Brené Brown
Connection gives purpose and meaning to our lives.
Albert Einstein
What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion.
T. S. Eliot
When the Stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city? Do you huddle close together because you love each other?” What will you answer? “We all dwell together To make money from each other”? or “This is a community”? Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger. Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.
Alexander MacLaren
The mystery of the universe, and the meaning of God’s world, are shrouded in hopeless obscurity, until we learn to feel that all laws suppose a lawgiver, and that all working involves a Divine energy.
Friedrich Nietzsche
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
Eugene Peterson
Classically, there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence–religious meaning–apart from God as revealed through the cross of Jesus: through the ecstasy of alcohol and drugs, through the ecstasy of recreational sex, through the ecstasy of crowds. Church leaders frequently warn against the drugs and the sex, but at least, in America, almost never against the crowds.
Rick Warren
Without a purpose, life is motion without meaning, activity without direction, and events without reason.
Kathleen Norris
It is a quotidian mystery that dailiness can lead to such despair and yet also be at the core of our salvation. . . . We want life to have meaning, we want fulfillment, healing and even ecstasy, but the human paradox is that we find these things by starting where we are. . . . We must look for blessings to come from unlikely, everyday places.
The Quotidian Mysteries
D. Elton Trueblood
A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.
Richard Dawkins (For Contrast)
We humans have purpose on the brain…show us almost any object or process, and it is hard for us to resist the “Why question…It is an almost universal delusion…the old temptation comes back with a vengeance when tragedy strikes… “Why oh why, did this cancer/earthquake/hurricane have to strike my child?”
River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, Basic Books, 1996, pp.132-133
T.S. Eliot
We had the experiences but missed the meaning.
“The Dry Salvages,” in The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909–1950 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 133.
Susan Wolf
A person’s life can be meaningful only if she cares fairly deeply about some things, only if she is gripped, excited, interested, engaged.
Meaning in Life and Why it Matters, Princeton University Press, 2012.
Edmund J. Bourne
For some people, a lack of purpose and meaning in life can provide fertile ground for the development of panic attacks and phobias.
The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook, 5th ed., New Harbinger, 2010, 448.
Mike Bickle
Our lives only have meaning as we understand them with respect to obedience to Christ Jesus who is seated at the Father’s right hand. If we lose our focus on Him, then we lose our connection with reality, purpose, and order. If we lose our vision of the throne of God as the center of everything we live for, then we lose our equilibrium and stability. We lose our reason for enduring hardships. We lose our motivation to bless our enemies. We lose the real reason why God gives us good things.
1993
Matt Haig
Continually looking for the meaning of life is like looking for the meaning of toast. It is sometimes better just to eat the toast.
Jon Tyson
Like me, you may struggle deeply with what it means to live well. We are all seeking to take these scattered moments of meaning and weave them together into a beautiful whole.
Sebastian Junger
Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It’s time for that to end.
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging (Twelve, 2016).
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