The new owner plowed with the cow throughout the week, but when her took her out to the field on Shabbat, she kneeled under the yoke and refused to do any work. He hit her with his whip, but she would not budge from her place.
So he came back to the Jew and said to him, “Take back your cow! All week I worked with her, but today I took her out to the field and she refuses to do anything… ”
The Jew said to the cow’s purchaser: “Come with me, and I will get her to plow.” When they arrived to the field the cow lay, the Jew spoke into her ear. “Oh Cow, Cow! When you were in my domain, you rested on Shabbat. But now that my sins have caused me to sell you to this gentile, please, stand up and do the will of your master!”
Immediately the cow stood, prepared to work. Said the gentile to the Jew: “I’m not letting you go until you tell me what you did and what you said to her. Have you bewitched her?” The Jew told him what he said to the cow.
When this man heard this, he was shaken and amazed. He said to himself: “If this creature, which has neither language or intelligence, recognizes her Creator, should not I, whom G‑d created in His image and likeness and imbued me with intelligence and understanding?”
So he went and converted to Judaism and merited to study Torah. He became known as Yochanan ben Torta (“Yochanan son of the Cow”)"
“Not that I have already attained this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ has taken hold of me.”
| — | Philippians 3:12 |
“If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.”
| — | G.K. Chesterton |
“God creates out of nothing, therefore until a man is nothing, God can make nothing out of him.”
| — | Martin Luther |
“Others try to make me a fixed star, but I am a irregular planet.”
| — | Martin Luther |
“We grow small trying to be great.”
| — | E. Stanley Jones |
“Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the mind of those who possess it.”
| — | William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Catham and British prime minister from 1766 to 1778 UK House of Lords 1770 |
“But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher and you are all brothers. And call no one your ‘father’ on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
| — | Matt 23:8-12 |
“If the God you believe in hates all the same people you do, then you know you’ve created God in your own image.”
| — | Anne Lamott - from Traveling Mercies |
You are not big enough to accuse the whole age effectively, but let us say you are in dissent. You are in no position to issue commands, but you can speak words of hope. Shall this be the substance of your message? Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God.”
| — | Thomas Merton |
“No one is so terribly deceived as he who does not himself suspect it.”
| — | Soren Kierkegaard |
“The Dali Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered ‘Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices his money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; he lives as of he is never going to die, then he dies having never really lived.’”
“Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool”
“I used to ask God to help me. Then I asked if I might help him. I ended up asking him to do his work through me.”
| — | Hudson Taylor |
“The greatest deception men suffer from is their own opinions.”
| — | Leonardo DaVinci |
“The angels laugh at old Karl. They laugh at him because he tries to grasp the truth about God in a book of Dogmatics. They laugh at the fact that volume follows volume and each is thicker than the previous one. As they laugh, they say to one another, “Look! Here he comes now with his little pushcart full of volumes of the Dogmatics!” - and they laugh about the men who write so much about Karl Barth instead of writing about the things he is trying to write about. Truly, the angels laugh.”
| — | Karl Barth (Cited in G. Casalis, Portrait of Karl Barth, p. 3). |
