One trains the eye of confession most closely on what is hurting. If sin is present it will be aching. Confession begins where the raw anguish of conscience is rubbing against the primordial awareness of God's holiness.
Joy begins with our convictions about spiritual truths we're willing to bet our lives on, and truths that are lodged so deeply within us that they produce a settled assurance about God.
We are Morgensterns," he added, a dark ache in his voice. " The bright stars of morning. The children of Lucifer, the most beautiful of all God's angels. We are so much lovelier when we fall." He paused. "Look at me , Clary. Look at me.
yelling while eating was like swallowing anger. It’s simply not good for us. It leaves us unhappy and unsatisfied, as if the meal didn’t count or wasn’t good, and an hour later we’re back looking for something to make us feel better.
If theft is advantageous to everyone who succeeds at it, and adultery is a good strategy, at least for males, for increasing presence in the gene pool, why do we feel they are wrong? Shouldn't the only morality that evolution produces be the kind Bil...
[...] We have to realize that this wound [of loneliness] is inherent in the human condition and that what we have to do is walk with it instead of fleeing from it. We cannot accept it until we discover that we are loved by God just as we are, and tha...
And yet, will we ever come to an end of discussion and talk if we think we must always reply to replies? For replies come from those who either cannot understand what is said to them, or are so stubborn and contentious that they refuse to give in eve...
Quietly, Miss Alice was demonstrating this God of love and beauty too — in small ways and in large. For a few, the concept that life did not have to be all starkness and misery was slowly taking root. Tentatively, timidly – -constantly encouraged...
Warren Cox, God knew, was no prize; a commercial person, a sales person, the kind of man who said things like "x numbers of dollars". At lunch today, laboriously trying to explain some business procedure, he had said "x number of dollars" three times...
With every sunrise, we get to choose ... who we are, what we believe, and how we will live the life the gods have given us. We can’t always choose our circumstances. No. The Fates do that. But we can always choose who we will be and how we will be ...
For those who think religious people live in a constant state of fear and quaking, compare Ps 111:10 to Ps 112:7. There, you will find that the person who fears God will not fear anyone, or anything else. This is not living in fear. By choosing one f...
The gods made our bodies as well as our souls, is it not so? They give us voices, so we might worship them with song. They give us hands, so we might build them temples. And they give us desire, so we might mate and worship them in that way.
To an unbelieving person nothing renders service or work for good. He himself is in servitude to all things, and all things turned out for evil to him, because he uses all things in impious way for his own advantage, and not for the glory of God.
At times there's something so precise and mathematically chilling about nationalism. Build a dam to take away water AWAY from 40 million people. Build a dam to pretend to BRING water to 40 million people. Who are these gods that govern us? Is there n...
God’s power and love don’t fade, nor does His presence, but we cannot tap into it as fully when we don’t have praise and worship toward Him in our heart
Being by his faith replaced afresh in paradise and created anew, he (the believer)does not need works for his justification, but that he may not be idle, but that he may exercise his own body and preserve it. His works are to be done freely, with the...
I don't trust Catholics," I said, "because they take advantage of you." "And Protestants?" he asked with a laugh. "I loathe the way they fumble around with their consciences." "And atheists?" He was still laughing. "They bore me because all they ever...
(...) photography opened up quite a little Pandora's box, kiddies. (...) Once we no longer had to depend on drawing and painting to record our existence — once they became an option — they mutated . . . into a form of expression. And Art for its ...
Let those parents that desire Holy Children learn to make them possessors of Heaven and Earth betimes; to remove silly objects from before them, to magnify nothing but what is great indeed, and to talk of God to them, and of His works and ways. befor...
It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a hab...
There is no health in those who are displeased by an element in Your creation, just as there was none in me when I was displeased by many things You had made. Because my soul didn't dare to say that my God displeased me, it refused to attribute to Yo...
