Yesterday I was looking through some quotes I had gathered for some small booklets that I have in the past put together to sell at our bazaar.  As I read them, I thought to myself: “I’ve got some good quotes here!”  Here’s a favorite from Philip Yancey:

Not long ago I received in the mail a postcard from a friend that had on it only six words, “I am the one Jesus loves.” . . . When I called him, he told me the slogan came from the author and speaker Brennan Manning.  At a seminar, Manning referred to Jesus’ closest friend on earth, the disciple named John, identified in the Gospels as “the one Jesus loved.”  Manning said, “If John were to be asked, ‘What is your primary identity in life?’ he would not reply, ‘I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels,’ but rather, ‘I am the one Jesus loves.’”  What would it mean, I ask myself, if I too came to the place where I saw my primary identity in life as “the one Jesus loves”?   (Philip Yancey)