We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have ...
Finally, Lutheran and Reformed traditions distinguish (without separating) three uses of the law: the first (pedagogical), to expose our guilt and corruption, driving us to Christ; the second, a civil use to restrain public vice; and the third, to gu...
Again, it is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than t...
The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness ...
With the evolution of Us came the evolution of Them. The original Them was anyone who wasn’t blood related — Them was pretty much everyone. Over time, as the number of people in Us got bigger, Them got smaller. Them now might mean anyone in any o...
Our categories are important. We cannot organize a social life, a political movement, or our individual identities and desires without them. The fact that categories invariably leak and can never contain all the relevant "existing things" does not re...
{Recalling Professor 's remarks (1895) to a group of his graduate students about to go out with their degrees into the world beyond the university:} He talked to us for an hour on what was ahead of us; cautioned us against giving up the desire to pus...
Pleasure, in itself harmless, may become mischievous, by endearing to us a state which we know to be transient and probatory, and withdrawing our thoughts from that of which every hour brings us nearer to the beginning, and of which no length of time...
God does not believe for us, but through His Spirit He creates spiritual life in us so that we can believe. Faith is the gift of God. It's part of the whole salvation package that God gives to us through the work of Christ for us and the work of the ...
Truth has power. And if we all gravitate toward similar ideas maybe we do so because those ideas are true... written deep within us. And when we hear the truth, even if we don't understand it, we feel the truth, even if we don't understand it, we fee...
Why would you tell us the truth? If Christina really wasn’t here, you’d tell us she was, to stall us from finding her. If James taught us one thing, it’s how to detect a lie. You just want us to leave so you can get her to talk. By the way, goo...
But the healing place is within you. Healing is a gift you were granted at birth, just as you were granted others. Use your gifts, child. Use the beauty, the courage, the hope and the love that is in you. Call upon your strength. Use compassion and f...
God hijacks and bends evil to work peace and healing. If God were only a God of justice, He could punish evil but do no more. Only a God of grace can use our evil to work His good. God’s grace is so much bigger than our sin . Sometimes He’ll let ...
And when we give each other Christmas gifts in His name, let us remember that He has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans--and all that lives and move upon them. He has given us all gree...
There is always someone who cares for us and loves us. We may not always be aware of that yet we are very much needed and truly loved by the Universe. Everything that exists is needed, because what is not needed is not created. This is the way the Un...
Because she is in God’s hands.’ But if so, she was in God’s hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here. Do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body? And if so, why? If God’s goodness is inconsist...
May He give us all the courage that we need to go the way He shepherds us. That when He calls we may go unfrightened. If He bids us come to Him across the waters, that unfrightened we may go. And if He bids us climb a hill, may we not notice that it ...
Praying Gives God his rightful place in our life- By giving our problems to him and realizing he is the burden bearer. He protects us with his loving care. He delights in helping those who reflect his image. His love grips us with his peace through u...
Corporal Upham: [Wade lying down, shivering with pain and anguish, after being shot through the stomach] Tell us what to do... tell us how to fix you. Captain Miller: What can we do Wade? Tell us what to do. Medic Wade: [Wade still shivering] I could...
God reminds us again and again that things between He and us are forever fixed. They are the rendezvous points where God declares to us concretely that the debt has been paid, the ledger put away, and that everything we need, in Christ we already pos...
I was always fascinated by the decision-making process and the managerial process and just business in general.