Ramsey Bible Quotes

The Bible says in Habakkuk 2:2, “Write the vision and make it plain.” The written goal is the breakfast of champions. You just can’t do big things without making your goals specific, measurable, yours, with a time limit, and in writing.

As the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the monarch is the defender of the faith—the official religion of the country, established by law and respected by sentiment. Yet when the Queen travels to Scotland, she becomes a member of the Church of Scotland, which governs itself and tolerates no supervision by the state. She doesn’t abandon the Anglican faith when she crosses the border, but rather doubles up, although no Anglican bishop ever comes to preach at Balmoral. Elizabeth II has always embraced what former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey called the “sacramental manner in which she views her own office.” She regards her faith as a duty, “not in the sense of a burden, but of glad service” to her subjects. Her faith is also part of the rhythm of her daily life. “She has a comfortable relationship with God,” said Carey. “She’s got a capacity because of her faith to take anything the world throws at her. Her faith comes from a theology of life that everything is ordered.” She worships unfailingly each Sunday, whether in a tiny chapel in the Laurentian mountains of Quebec or a wooden hut on Essequibo in Guyana after a two-hour boat ride. But “she doesn’t parade her faith,” said Canon John Andrew, who saw her frequently during the 1960s when he worked for Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey. On holidays she attends services at the parish church in Sandringham, and at Crathie outside the Balmoral gates. Her habit is to take Communion three or four times a year—at Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday, and the occasional special service—“an old-fashioned way of being an Anglican, something she was brought up to do,” said John Andrew. She enjoys plain, traditional hymns and short, straightforward sermons. George Carey regards her as “middle of the road. She treasures Anglicanism. She loves the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which is always used at Sandringham. She would disapprove of modern services, but wouldn’t make that view known. The Bible she prefers is the old King James version. She has a great love of the English language and enjoys the beauty of words. The scriptures are soaked into her.” The Queen has called the King James Bible “a masterpiece of English prose.

Ramsey admirably captured: “On the mount of Transfiguration a veil is withdrawn, and the glory which the disciples are allowed to see is not only the glory of a future event, but the glory of Him who is the Son of God.

Silence can soothe us and silence can scar us. I was raised for reverence, to sit still and silent in church, and to give people in leadership, especially men, unquestioning respect and honor for their God-given authority. I learned to raise my voice when grace amazed me, but relegate it into silence when harm alarmed me. Silence is the arbiter of scarcity, the force of coercion and control that those who hold the most power wield to maintain the status quo. If power can only be held in the hands of a few, then pleasing them is what buys us belonging. So we learn to fold our hands and cross our legs and put a smile across our faces to hide our heart’s frown, all the while absorbing the bad, bad news that God is actually a power who must be pleased and love is just a reality we receive when we are good enough. I was taught reverence for the sound of a preacher’s voice and the pages of my Bible, but I was never taught to reverence the sounds of my own body and soul. – KJ Ramsey

I was taught reverence for the sound of a preacher’s voice and the pages of my Bible, but I was never taught to reverence the sounds of my own body and soul. – KJ Ramsey

The earliest scriptures in the Bible describe the creative work of God and how it spanned over six days. As

When I was young, I thought my spiritual life would unfold as a plane ascending ever upward to some greater station of maturity with an ever-deepening faith. I would make mistakes and learn from them. I would gather information I lacked and move forward with an understanding of what to do and how to be. I would read my Bible and pray, and the God on the other side would come to life in greater definition and power. I thought the same would be true of my vocational life. I would find a role someplace where I was able to contribute, grow in experience and skill, and eventually rise to some level of mastery that would bring opportunity, satisfaction, and maybe, after thirty years, a gold watch. Spiritually and vocationally—if I was faithful, I thought—I would be able to look back and see a straight line, more or less, leading me from there to here. Ever upward, fairly clean. I also thought my spiritual and vocational journeys would run on parallel tracks—near each other, but separate. Then affliction hit—the kind that would require me to release my hold on this world. After that, loss—the kind that would take from me people and things I never expected to lose. And after that, grief that would circle back in the most unexpected ways at the most unexpected times until I began to realize that the God I had put my faith in when I was younger wasn’t who I thought he was. It wasn’t that I felt he wasn’t real or that he had somehow failed me. No, the unraveling I experienced seemed to prove to me more than ever just how real, good, and loving he was. But he wasn’t who I thought he was. He was more. So much more. When I was young, I thought my life would be about what I could accomplish—the good I could do in the world. But when affliction came, I felt like I was watching my vocational and spiritual life merge into one thing. Since then, I’ve come to believe they’ve always been one, never separate. Who I am to God is who I am. What comes out of this life is his business, but what I do will never be what makes me who I am. Because this is so, when suffering comes, it doesn’t have the power to unravel God’s design. Instead, the suffering becomes part of the fabric.

When I was young, I thought my spiritual life would unfold as a plane ascending ever upward to some greater station of maturity with an ever-deepening faith. I would make mistakes and learn from them. I would gather information I lacked and move forward with an understanding of what to do and how to be. I would read my Bible and pray, and the God on the other side would come to life in greater definition and power. I thought the same would be true of my vocational life. I would find a role someplace where I was able to contribute, grow in experience and skill, and eventually rise to some level of mastery that would bring opportunity, satisfaction, and maybe, after thirty years, a gold watch. Spiritually and vocationally—if I was faithful, I thought—I would be able to look back and see a straight line, more or less, leading me from there to here. Ever upward, fairly clean. I also thought my spiritual and vocational journeys would run on parallel tracks—near each other, but separate. Then affliction hit—the kind that would require me to release my hold on this world. After that, loss—the kind that would take from me people and things I never expected to lose. And after that, grief that would circle back in the most unexpected ways at the most unexpected times until I began to realize that the God I had put my faith in when I was younger wasn’t who I thought he was. It wasn’t that I felt he wasn’t real or that he had somehow failed me. No, the unraveling I experienced seemed to prove to me more than ever just how real, good, and loving he was. But he wasn’t who I thought he was. He was more. So much more.