I got this in an e-mail from Gary Zustiak of CIY with the quotes. Great reminder!"Bottom line—ministry is not about staging or lighting or MySpace or contemporary worship or dynamic programming—important as those things all are. Ministry is about loving students, loving them with the love of Christ. Sometimes we forget that in the details and pressures of each day’s responsibilities. However, in loving students, sometimes you get your heart broke. There are no guarantees. That is just the way it is. When that happens you might read the following quotes and be encouraged."
--Zus
"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could." --Louise Erdich The Painted Drum January 10th, 2006
"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket -- safe, dark, motionless, airless -- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, and irredeemable. The only place outside of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love is hell." --C. S. Lewis
What will you risk for the sake of loving someone else with the love of Christ?
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