When programs, methods, and money produce impressive results, there is an inclination to confuse human success with divine blessing. Christians can actually behave like practical humanists, living as if God were not necessary. When that happens, pass...
It is hard to hear God, but it is even harder not to hear God. The pain one brings upon oneself by living outside of evident reality is a greater and longer-lasting pain than the brief pain of facing it head on.
Do you ever wonder whether people would like you more or less if they could see inside you? But I always wonder about that. If people could see me the way I see myself—if they could live in my memories—would anyone, anyone, love me?
Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our souls, until, one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from the bitterness ...
Discourse is not life; its time is not your time; in it, you will not be reconciled to death; you may have killed God beneath the weight of all that you have said; but don't imagine that, with all that you are saying you will make a man that will liv...
A word is used "correctly" when the average hearer will be affected by it in the way intended. This is a psychological, not a literary, definition of "correctness". The literary definition would substitute, for the average hearer, a person of high ed...
Blessed be they whose lives do not taste of evil but if some god shakes your house ruin arrives ruin does not leave it comes tolling over the generations it comes rolling the black night salt up from the ocean floor and all your thrashed coasts groan
Man’s glory lies not, Lincoln thought, in ‘his goodness,’ for this is often nonexistent. He derives glory, instead, from his being made in the image of the Living God.
Man makes history; woman is history. The reproduction of the species is feminine: it runs steadily and quietly through all species, animal or human, through all short-lived cultures. It is primary, unchanging, everlasting, maternal, plantlike, and cu...
The key to living a purposeful life lies in identifying how best you can be a vehicle for God's divine love and light.
Probably our lives are full of symbols which only an unacknowledged sense perceives. Spiritual events assume a material guise, in accordance with some creative principle, but do not insist on recognition. ("Absolute Evil")
Hazard has conditioned us to live in hazard. All our pleasures are dependant upon it. Even though I arrange for a pleasure; and look forward to it, my eventual enjoyment of it is still a matter of hazard. Wherever time passes, there is hazard. You ma...
You wanted to live inside the lines where the ordinariness of everything would protect you from the dragons that lay at the edge of the map ready to blow fire in your face if you strayed off course, to the edge of the known world.
Sometimes I look around my living room, and the most real thing in the room is the television. It’s bright and vivid, and the rest of my life looks drab. So I turn the damn thing off. That does it every time. Get my life back.
Ascend, may you find so resistance Just know that you made such a difference All you leave behind will live to the end The cycle of suffering goes on But memories of you stay strong Some day I too will fly and find you again
Please be a traveler, not a tourist. Try new things, meet new people, and look beyond what’s right in front of you. Those are the keys to understanding this amazing world we live in.
One day," she told us, "you'll have to leave here and go out into the big world out there and earn your living like everyone else. To do that you need to learn. The more you learn now, the more interesting your life will be.
I've lived the literal meaning of the "land of the free" and "hone of the brave." It's not corny for me. I feel it in my heart. I feel it in my chest. Even at a ball game, when someone talks during the anthem or doesn't take off his hat, it pisses me...
Even though our journey as parents of a medically fragile child began with emotional turmoil, it has since become a purposeful odyssey that brings meaning and depth to our lives. This is the road we were born to travel.
The impetus to grow and live intensely is so powerful in me I cannot resist it. I will work, I will love my husband, but I will fulfill myself.
Bakersville was never going to be the same. She'd been to other small towns where the residents all thought serial killers looked like monsters, that no member of their community could hide such dark desires. Once upon a time, she'd lived in one. And...
