Sermon quotes on perspective
Marcus Aurelius
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
G.K. Chesterton
One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
Steven Covey
We see the world, not as it is, but as we are-or as we’re conditioned to see it…we must look at the lens through which we see the world, as well as the world we se and that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world.
Seven Habits of Highly Effective Leaders
Annie Dillard
My eyes account for less than one percent of the weight of my head,” she observes with sweet resignation; “I’m bony and dense; I see what I expect.”).
R.M. Harrington
Men box God into the contents of personal experiences, and then seek to define his attributes by his limited exposure to eternity.
Paul Harvey
In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been
times like these.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim
The marginalized and downtrodden receive special insights. They are the ones who can see the pain and the injustice that are killing the world. It is to these voices that we must turn
Embracing the Other
C.S. Lewis
We are what we believe we are.
John Piper
God made man small and the universe big to say something about himself.
Dallas Willard
And his way is truly the way of the heart, or spirit. If we would walk with him, we must walk with him at that interior level. There are very few who really do understand this about him. He saves us by realistic restoration of our heart to God and then by dwelling there with his Father through the distinctively divine Spirit. The heart thus renovated and inhabited is the only real hope of humanity on earth.
Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ
N.T. Wright
History is always a matter of trying to think into the minds of people who think differently from ourselves.
Paul: A Biography
Alexander Pope
All looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.
Oscar Romero
It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. . . . We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.
Fredrick Langbridge
Because of this we have hope:
Two men look out through the same bars
One sees mud, one sees stars.
Sherwood G. Lingenfelter and Marvin K. Mayers
The key for successful personal relationships and ministry is to understand and accept others as having a viewpoint as worthy of consideration as our own.
Source Unknown
If you can’t get out of it, get into it.
Nicholas Wolterstorff
I shall look at the world through tears. Perhaps I shall see things that dry-eyed I could not see.
Lament for a Son
George Carlin
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
Mark Batterson
If you let your circumstances define the way you see God, you are a prisoner of perspective. Or worse, a prisoner of your past mistakes! But if you let God define the way you see your circumstances, you are a prisoner of hope.
Double Blessing: Don’t Settle for Less Than You’re Called to Bless, Multnomah, 2019.
William Burns
If a man have Christ in his heart, heaven before his eyes, and only as much of temporal blessing as is just needful to carry him safely through life, then pain and sorrow have little to shoot at.
William James
My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items I notice shape my mind.
Gregory Spencer
I believe we all need to reframe our stories, at least parts of them, in order to heal, to discard lies, to move from partial truths to richer, fuller explanations, to see our lives as God sees them.
Reframing the Soul: How Words Transform Our Faith, Leafwood Publishers, 2018.
Ursula K. Le Guin
“If you see a thing whole-it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives…But up close a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life is a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired… You need distance… The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.”
The Dispossessed
Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller)
“This building has to be at least…. three times bigger than this!”
Zoolander, 2001.
N.T. Wright
The New Testament insists that we put Jesus at the centre of the picture and work outwards from there.
God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath, Zondervan, 2020.
George Bernard Shaw
Keep yourself clean and bright, for you are the window through which you must see the world.
Source Unknown
Who will tell you the truth? An enemy who hates you bitterly, and a friend who loves you dearly.
Still Looking for inspiration?
Consider checking out our illustrations page on Perspective.