* Life is tough. It takes up much of your time, all your weekends, and what do you get in the end of it? I think that the life cycle is all backward. You should die first, get that out of the way. Then you live twenty years in an old-age home. You get kicked out when you're too young. You get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You go to college; you party until you're ready for high school; you go to grade school; you become a little kid; you play. You have no responsibilities. You become a little baby; you go back into the womb; you spend your last nine months floating; and you finish up as a gleam in somebody's eye.
* Jesus Christ knew how to play as well as pray; how to laugh as well as cry; how to be serious about life abut not take Himself too seriously. Jesus Christ came to save us from our sin and to save us from becoming severe, unyielding, harsh, and terminally serious.
* As people heard Jesus tell these stories, they saw at once that they weren't about God, so there was nothing in them threatening their own sovereignty. They relaxed their defenses. They walked away perplexed, wondering what they meant, the stories lodged in their imagination. And then, like a time bomb, they would explode in their unprotected hearts. An abyss opened up at their very feet. He was talking about God; they had been invaded. - Eugene Peterson, Living the Message.
* Jesus understood He could protect the seriousness of the gospel by interspersing His life and message with a sense of playfulness.
* Just because we believe the gospel is a life-death matter doesn't mean we have to act as if we're dead.
* Play is an expression of God's presence in the world; one clear sign of God's absence in society is the absence of playfulness and laughter. Play is not an escape; it is the way to release the life-smothering grip of busyness, stress, and anxiety. (Playfulness is a modern expression of hope, a celebration of the flickering light of the gospel that plays with the dark by pouncing on the surrounding darkness like a cat toying with a mouse.)
* The nature of God is playful, that is why He hides. God is not only present when we can see Him, He is present when we can't, and joy comes from recognizing God in places we never thought He would be. God hides in difficulty, He hides in suffering, He hides in poverty, He hides in failure, and He hides in the stories of our lives. Whatever our circumstance, whatever the status of our lives, God is present - invisible, hiding, waiting for us to discover Him, waiting for us to learn from Him in the shadows as well as the light.
* "God loves you just as you are! Surrender to His love!"
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