When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… To be alive is to be vulnerable.
Vulnerability
Ray Pritchard
If you have the courage to let Christ into every room of your life, He will come in and redecorate your life so it is more beautiful that you ever imagined possible. But you’ll never know until you start opening those doors.
C. S. Lewis
There is no safe investment. 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, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
Gayle D. Erwin
The body of Christ, especially in well-functioning, small, intimate groups, is the most healing body in the world; yet we do not treat it as such. We wouldn’t think of relating to a medical doctor with the same reserve as we have in the healing body of Christ. Would we say to a doctor, “I have this unspoken illness?” Of course not! But we often use this term, unspoken request, in sharing our needs with the body. Would we try to deceive a doctor into thinking our hurt is nonexistent or in a different place than it actually is? Of course not! Would we say, “I am here for a friend – examine me and diagnose him?” Of course not! Yet we treat the church with such distrust and fear. We choose to hide.