Evangelicals sometimes expect too much or, to put it more precisely, we look for a kind of change God hasn't promised. It's possible to expect too little, but under-expectation is usually a cynical reaction to dashed hopes for too much. We manage to ...
Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agised as in that hour left my lips: for never may...
My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for...
How do you feel?” she asked, trying to fluff his pillow. “Other than terrible, I mean.” He moved his head slightly to the side. It seemed to be a sickly interpretation of a shrug. “Of course you’re feeling terrible,” she clarified, “but...
The blessing hands of Christ are like a roof that protects us. But at the same time, they are a gesture of opening up, tearing the world open so that heaven my enter in, may become "present" within it.
He drew from under the table a sheet of strangely scented yellow-Chinese paper, the brushes, and slab of India ink. In cleanest, severest outline he had traced the Great Wheel with its six spokes, whose centre is the conjoined Hog, Snake, and Dove (I...
…the most devastating thing Finney could have said. Not that Peter was hated by his father. But that he’d been loved all along. He’d interpreted kindness as cruelty, generosity as meanness, support as tethers. How horrible to have been offered ...
He was a Marine, for heaven's sake! He knew how to kill a man with his bare hands. He'd been shot and stabbed and nearly died. He'd faced down evil in its purest form; met the Grim Reaper and spit in his eye. None of that had prepared him for this - ...
Part of the treasure in heaven that Jesus talks about is the feeling of purpose and satisfaction a person has when they know they are performing the will of God. Those who put themselves and money first often complain about life feeling empty and mea...
Life's like a puzzle. Everyone is given one piece. Sometimes you connect with someone or something that has an interlocking part. As time goes by, you’ll see that picture taking form, and you’ll be amazed how beautiful it is. God will never tell ...
It is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and substance out of whatever realities there are around us, and which were meant by Heaven to be the spirit’s joy and nutriment. To the untrue man, the whole universe ...
If there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness, did lay siege to it, Making it momentary as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And...
I want my heart to be the thin place. I don't want to board a plane to feel the kiss of heaven. I want to carry it with me wherever I go. I want my fragile, hurting heart, to recognize fleeting kairos, eternal moments as they pass. I want to be my ow...
Lizzy, Will thought. Lizzy P. 'You n me gonna be buddies, darlin'. He stretched one hand to Elly's hair, and circled Donald Wade's rump with his free arm and touched Thomas's leg, on the far side of Elly. And he smiled at Lizzy P. and thought, Heaven...
Once, I asked my mom why stars shine. She said they were night-lights, so the angels could find their way around in Heaven. But when I asked my dad, he started talking about gas, and somehow I put it all together and figured that the food God served ...
They don't live here. They live in Heaven.' Where's that?' I don't know,' I said. 'Enos says it's right here, on this side of the wall, but I never saw an angel over here. Kuba says it's in Russia. Olek says Washington America.' What's Washington Ame...
When you see that earthly powers are not listening to you, that you are under siege in this city for four years and shot at without the international community doing anything to help, what should you do? Die?’ he asked me in the course of our conve...
Pain anguish and suffering in human life are always in proportion to the strength with which a man is endowed. We will not pretend to say that Heaven always apportions to a man's capability of endurance the anguish with which he afflicts him...Suffer...
Would to Heaven we had never approached them at all, but had run back at top speed out of that blasphemous tunnel with the greasily smooth floors and the degenerate murals aping and mocking the things they had superseded-run back, before we had seen ...
Jake ignored him and went on. “If I ever do hook up with anybody again - and I sincerely doubt that I will, so wipe that hopeful look off your face - it will be with someone who thinks that being with somebody who mows lawns is her idea of heaven o...
I would I were in the kingdom of heaven if it be as you and Mr. Graham take it for!" said Clementina. "You must be in it, my lady, or you couldn't wish it to be such as it is." "Can one be in it and yet seem to himself to be out of it. Malcolm?" "So ...
