Ron Hall, Denver Moore photo

Ron Hall, Denver Moore

While my daddy was fightin´ the big war in the Pacific, my grandmother delivered me in the farmhouse kitchen near Blooming Grove, Texas, in September 1945. This was back in those days when country girls knew about birthin´ babies and lucky for me, because my granddaddy and the town doctor were on the bucket brigade of a barn fire that night. I grew up in the bed of my granddad's Chevy pickup till it was time to go to school.


“You never know whose eyes God is watchin you through. It might not be your teacher, your preacher, or your Sunday school teacher. More likely it's gon' be that bum on the street.”
Ron Hall, Denver Moore
Read more
“Most people want to be circled by safety, not by the unexpected. The unexpected can take you out. But the unexpected can also take you over and change your life. Put a heart in your body where a stone used to be.”
Ron Hall, Denver Moore
Read more
“Everybody's lookin for God everywhere on the outside. He ain't in no book, and He ain't in no preacher, and He ain't in nothin or no one on the outside. You got to go inside 'cause that's where God is- in the deepest place inside you. And ain't nobody gon' make God tell you nothin. Ain't nobody gon' have no wisdome 'bout nothin if they thinks they can read 'bout it or hear about it from some man or woman. That got to come from revelation. That got to come from the Holy Spirit inside us, and that ain't somethin that can be bargained for. You can't achieve revelation. You can't work for what's free.”
Ron Hall, Denver Moore
Read more
“I ain't sayin it ain't all right to study the Bible. You got to study the Bible to know the rules of life. But I notice a lotta folks doin more lookin at the Bible than doin what it says.”
Ron Hall, Denver Moore
Read more
“To love a man enough to help him, you have to forfeit the warm, self-righteous glow that comes from judging.”
Ron Hall, Denver Moore
Read more
“Art teaches something we all need to learn, especially about people who are different from ourselves: "To see things the way they truly are, sometimes you have to look more deeply.”
Ron Hall, Denver Moore
Read more
“I thank God today she found the courage in her heart to love me enough so that someday I could tell you that even a black ex-con from Angola that stabbed a man could maybe someday do some good in the world if he gets a chance.”
Ron Hall, Denver Moore
Read more
“Sometimes you can only understand why things happen when you see them in the rearview mirror.”
Ron Hall, Denver Moore
Read more
“If all the Christians- I mean all of 'em- got outta the pews on Sundays and into the streets, we'd shut the city down.We'd shut down hunger.We'd shut down loneliness.We'd shut down the notion that there is any such of a thing as a person that don't deserve a kind word and a second chance.”
Ron Hall, Denver Moore
Read more
“If the devil ain't messin with you, he's already got you. If you is waitin to clean up your own life before you get out and help somebody else, you may as well take off your shoes and crawl back in the bed 'cause it ain't never gon' happen. Jesus don't need no help from no perfect saints. If He did, He wouldn't a' gone up yonder and left us down here in charge.”
Ron Hall, Denver Moore
Read more
“Even though I'm almost seventy years old, I got a lot to learn, too. I used to spend a lotta time worryin that I was different from other people, even from other homeless folks. Then, after I met Miss Debbie and Mr. Ron, I worried that I was so different from them that we wadn't ever gon' have no kind a' future. But I found out everybody's different--the same kind of different as me. We're all just regular folks walkin down the road God done set in front of us. The truth about it is, whether we rich or poor or somethin in between, this earth ain't no final restin place. So in a way, we is all homeless--just workin our way toward home.”
Ron Hall, Denver Moore
Read more