Beginning with sin instead of creation is like trying to read a book by opening it in the middle: You don’t know the characters and can’t make sense of the plot.
When enough insane people scream in harmony that they really are healthy, they can actually start to believe themselves. Or put even more simply: people with overlapping delusions get along wonderfully.
But if everything was always smooth and perfect, you'd get too used to that, you know? You have to have a little bit of disorganization now and then. Otherwise, you'll never really enjoy it when things go right.
I realized how truly hard it was, really, to see someone you love change right before your eyes. Not only is it scary, it throws your balance off as well.
The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.
This lack of accurate, trustworthy information about the true cost of any given policy, product, service, or behavior is paralyzing all action.
I'm trying to speak--to write-the truth. I"m trying to be clear. I'm not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them.
A rock is harder than a feather, you can talk and jabber and make exceptions, but in the end, if you have to choose which one is gonna hit you on the head, you'll choose the feather every single time.
And this evening when I close my eyes against the darkness and think about her, I'll imagine iridescent wings fluttering, if only for a moment, against cloudless blue skies.
In other words, we are never freer than when we become most ourselves, most human, most just, most excellent, and the like.
God in his unending greatness and glory and man in his unending littleness, prepared for the worst but rarely for the best, prepared for the possible but rarely for the impossible.
Sin and grace, absence and presence, tragedy and comedy, they divide the world between them and where they meet head on, the Gospel happens.
Jesus came to give us life. We don't have to hang on a cross like he did. For him, it was a sacrifice. For us, it is a gift.
The first miracle Jesus performed was instant winemaking. No wonder people loved Him! He probably received a bunch of wedding invitations after that one.
God is calling you to change the world one life at a time and one small step at a time. Begin today where you are.
Much of your strength as a woman can come from the resolve to replenish and fill your own well and essence first, before taking care of others.
When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless of evidence. Let it be the most obvious fabrication and you will still believe whatever truth is in it, because you can not deny truth no matter how ...
Keep in mind the roots of violence: Lust, envy, anger, avarice, and vengeance...the taproot...the killer's ultimate and truest motivation...is the hatred of truth...the hatred of truth is a vice. From it comes pride and an enthusiasm for disorder.
My mother told me that truth is like my skin, a beautiful, protective covering, and the things that people say or do can be easily changed or discarded. She told me truth comes from the heart.
The truth is, we value your company, for want of any other. We have been left so much to our own devices—after a while one welcomes the uncertainty of being left to other people's.
It is the writer's duty to tell the terrible truth, and it is a reader's civic duty to learn this truth. To turn away, to close one's eyes and walk past is to insult the memory of those who have perished.
