The Power of Powerlessness

Continuing the series of quotes this month with the prayer that they will help awaken desire to grow and change in our understanding of God in Christ Jesus:

Doug Frank (A Gentler God): 
"In the most brutal episodes of human history, God has been present - not in power, the kind that we understand or reach for, but as the humble whisper of love into the hearts both of the butchers and the butchered...If God cannot straightforwardly micromanage human events so as to rescue the abused child, the tortured prisoner, the cancer victim, neither can God rescue God's very own self incarnated in Jesus...There is a kind of power in God's whispers. But it is the power of powerlessness. It changes things, but invisibly, unpredictably, unaccountably and, from our point of view, unreliably. It is not the kind of power we imagine, or wish, God to have."

Kenneth Bailey (The Cross and the Prodigal):
Luke 15:1-3 "The Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying, 'This man receives sinners and eats with them.' In this verse we have (the word) prosdechomai which means 'to welcome into fellowship.' ...The crowning blow was that Jesus ate with them. In the eyes of his opponents Jesus was defiled by such contact. But there was more! To eat with another person in the Mideast is a sacramental act signifying acceptance on a very deep level."

T.A.Sparks:
"A true knowledge of the Lord Jesus will reverse a good many of our ideas, and a good many of our procedures."