The divine conspiracy - ch. 3 quotes

Still working my way through Dallas Willard's 'The Divine Conspiracy.' It is a good book, it's just not my *kind* of book. It's hard for me to read because he's a bit wordy for me; the chapters are too freaking long; he likes to drag things out... Just not my style. But it's good. So here are some random things I picked out of chapter 3.

p. 61, a quote by Gustave Martlett from 'The Risen Christ and the Eucharist World':

While man is at home with animals and the stars, he is also the cosmic neighbor of the Absolute.

p. 61, the first sentence of the chapter, by Willard:

Jesus' good news about the kingdom can be an effective guide for our lives only if we share his view of the world in which we live.

p. 80, in talking about the centrality of the will or heart (I liked this, and thought about it long and hard):

Little children quickly learn to make things and to give them to those they love. If their souls are not crushed by life, as so many unfortunately are, they will continue to do this throughout their lives and at death will wish to leave to others things they have produced or secured by their own efforts.

p. 81... this is some really deep and meaningful stuff (to me) and thoughts are continued onto 82:

The heart, or will, simply is spirit in human beings. It is the human spirit, and the only thing in us that God will accept as the basis of our relationship to him. It is the spiritual plane of our natural existence, the place of truth before God, from where alone our whole lives can become eternal.

p. 87... some thoughts on death:

...Consciousness continues while we are asleep, and like-wise when we "sleep in Jesus" (1 Thess. 4:14; Acts 7:60). The difference is simply a matter of what we are conscious of. In fact, at "physical" death we BECOME conscious and enjoy a richness of experience we have never known before.

The American evangelist Dwight Moody remarked toward the end of his life, "One day soon you will hear that I am dead. Do not believe it. I will then be alive as never before." When the two guards came to take Dietrich Bonhoeffer to the gallows, he briefly took a friend aside to say, "This is the end, but for me it is the beginning of life."

Good stuff. I am going to make a separate post from pp. 94-95 about Jesus, because it's long, and especially good.