Before you head off into your weekend, here are three quick hitting quotes from my recent reading. I hope they are as helpful and challenging to you as they have been for me.
Have a great weekend!
#1
“I know a lot of people have very strong and definite plans that they’ve worked out on all kinds of things, but we’re subject to a tremendous number of outside influences and the vast majority of them cannot be predicted. So my idea is to stay flexible.” – Henry Singleton
Flexibility is easier said than done. It takes humility to stay flexible. Humility to say, “I was wrong” when things don’t work out the way we planned. Humility to admit that our plans are simply attempts to get moving because without them we would stay put. And it takes humility to admit that we may not be in control of our lives as we would like or as we project to others. But it’s worth it. Every time.
#2
It is the nature of the mind to live in the confines of its ideas until you encounter something never imagined some, great profusion of the heart that suddenly enlarges reality and tasks you with being wholly alive. – An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days
The mind needs to be challenged for our lives to grow. Some do that through reading. Other people do that through listening. Some do that through seeing an example lived out before them. All of this takes community. Community looks like a person willing to share what is on their heart, to offer their experience, or to share what they have learned is vital. The rest of us to be attentive and ready for community to work.
When is the last time you changed your mind? The last time you had an “a-ha” that changed how you lived? These are great questions to ask regularly for they get at the heart of our willingness to grow.
Who are you listening to? What are you reading? Who do you surround yourself with? All of these are great questions when it comes to identifying who we have given permission to speak into our lives.
#3
“The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God’s love. The great message that we have to carry, as ministers of God’s Word and followers of Jesus, is that God loves us not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love and has chosen us to proclaim that love as the true source of all human life – In the Name of Jesus by Henri J.M. Nouwen
If there is a message needed by humanity in these days it is that God loves us not because of what we do but because of who we are. Let me add one further step. God will take us as we are but never leave us that way.
todd nelson 
One response to “top3 for April 4, 2025”
A friend of mine once told me, “if you want to make God laugh, tell Him you have plans!”