Jesus said several times, “Come, follow me.” His was a program of “do what I do,” rather than “do what I say.” His innate brilliance would have permitted him to put on a dazzling display, but that would have left his followers far behind....
Writing is a habit, an addiction, as powerful and overmastering an urge as putting a bottle to your lips or a spike in your arm. Call it the impulse to make something out of nothing, call it an obsessive-compulsive disorder, call it logorrhea. Have y...
Every single person is vulnerable to unexpected defeat in this inmost emotional self. At every moment, behind the most efficient seeming adult exterior, the whole world of the person's childhood is being carefully held like a glass of water bulging a...
I have been asked what I mean by “word of honor.” I will tell you. Place me behind prison walls—walls of stone ever so high, ever so thick, reaching ever so far into the ground—there is a possibility that in some way or another I might be abl...
I have indeed lived and worked to my taste either in art or science. What more could a man desire? Knowledge has always been my goal. There is much that I shall leave behind undone…but something at least I was privileged to leave for the world to u...
Lowell’s best friend was the heroically moustached art director of a tobacco magazine that published in the same building where Lowell worked at plumbing. His name was Harry Balmer, and despite the evidence of his moustache he was nervous, compulsi...
A true genius is my brother, for his ability to measure and adapt his imagination to knowledge is unbounded. He can turn laziness into tactics. He can drop tactics for strategy without anyone or anything realizing it. He can comprehend grand principl...
Just then Trafton walked up to the four of us. "I can see this is a little gang on campus" said Trafton "How do I join?" "Dial 1800 - not on your life and see how that works out for you," said Lisabelle Tafton smiled at her "I know that behind that h...
If you have to be told how you should feel then those feelings are not strong enough to make you feel alive; they become rules that don’t fit your life script. Not every person will place the same importance as you do on one of the six human needs:...
Our lives, as short as they may be, are a test. And one of the biggest tests we can endure is how we respond to those moments when we don’t feel the presence of God in our lives. I believe deeply that one of God’s greatest gifts is to teach us th...
When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: "Why do I care if my high school's team wins the football game? I don't know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me... why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense." But th...
Her thoughts pulsated through him, frantic, desperate, pleading for him to stay behind. “I won’t—can’t,” he murmured. “If you’re going, so am I.” She exhaled a laborious sigh and flung her arms around his neck; her warm breath fanned ...
Joseph, you’re out of clean towels.” Lucia poked her head into the living room, the rest of her hidden behind the wall. Her red hair dripped water onto my wooden floors. “She’s in the buff.” Jenna guffawed. Gabriella rolled her eyes, beamin...
There is something in human pride that can stand big troubles, but we need the supernatural grace and power of God to stand by us in the little things. The tiniest detail in which we obey has all the omnipotent power of the grace of God behind it. Wh...
There was something stubborn in me that didn't want to lose weight to attract a man. If the right man came along, he'd be able to see my virtues magically. Once he kissed me, the frog would turn into a prince. I had become a trick question, a heavy d...
I shall not vote for Sen. Obama and it will not be because he—like me and like all of us—carries African genes. And I shall not be voting for Mrs. Clinton, who has the gall to inform me after a career of overweening entitlement that there is 'a d...
Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we wer...
If you want to leave a legacy...leave it now, every day of your life, not just after you are gone or only as a result of a narrowly defined way of contributing. With every thought, word, and deed you leave something behind. You get to choose whether ...
…deceitful!” she decided with a little bounce of fury that briefly ballooned the silk of her trousers. “There! You deceitful …” “Gillia…” “…misleading, dishonest, insincere…” “Those are all the same words, Gill—” “Ooh!...
The notion that we've made vast moral progress and are now a less violent species is belied by our awesome powers of destruction, our military might, police forces as well-armed as soldiers. Without the threat of such violent force behind it, all law...
Don't creationists ever wonder about the fact that the paleontologists found ape-like skulls with the 'human leg and foot bones,' rather than the other way around, i.e., human skulls with 'ape leg and foot bones?' . . . Come on, creationists, think a...
