We in the revivalist tradition have viewed grace only in terms of privatized, individualized spirituality. Give people enough Jesus to save their souls, move them to an emotional decision, help them get their hearts right and acquire a more responsib...
You must purge yourself before finding faults in others. When you see a mistake in somebody else, try to find if you are making the same mistake. This is the way to take judgment and to turn it into improvement. Do not look at others' bodies with env...
I decided I would not go to court to have my mother declared incompetent, I would not fight. I put the car in drive and hit the gas. I felt as if I'd jumped off a sinking ship and was in a life raft with my little girl, my face turned away from the h...
The Engineer smiled (internally, for of course it had no mouth). It was feeling good. It was feeling optimistic. Moving at its current speed, it would arrive back in Ireland in plenty of time to shut everything down before a series of overloads and p...
Of all the things I've ever done, perhaps none was more difficult than turning away from my beautiful girl and walking away, leaving her there, never to look back. But my friend Tom, my ever-faithful good friend Tom said, pointing down the hall away ...
In that pallid and sullen shadow in which he crawled, whenever he turned his head and endeavoured to raise his eyes, he saw, with mingled rage and terror, forming, massing, and mounting up out of sight above him with horrid escarpments, a kind of fri...
I wish I could convey the perfection of a seal slipping into water or a spider monkey swinging from point to point or a lion merely turning its head. But language founders in such seas. Better to picture it in your head if you want to feel it...I spe...
Many in the church have turned their back on serious study, and have embraced an anti-intellectualism which refuses to learn anything from scholarship at all lest it corrupt their pure faith. It is time to end this standoff, and to reestablish a herm...
You always say that I’m beautiful. Will you still love me when I’m old?" Geoff’s hand made small circles on his stomach. "Elijah." Geoff rarely called him that, and he turned his head to look into Geoff’s eyes. "I don’t love you because you...
They don't fit you?" V asked his roommate. "Not the point. No offense, but these are wicked Village People." Butch held his heavy arms out and turned in a circle, his bare chest catching the light. "I mean, come on." "They're for fighting, not fashio...
Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don't understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning--either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lo...
Turn around, and the people you thought you knew might change. Your little boy might now live half a world away. Your beautiful daughter might be sneaking out at night. Your ex-husband might by dying by degrees. This is the reason that dancers learn,...
People," Geralt turned his head, "like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. When they get blind-drunk, cheat, steal, beat their wives, starve an old woman, when they kill a trapped fox with an axe or riddle ...
Who are you?” I whispered, leaning forward and reaching across the table to touch his sternly gorgeous face, almost afraid he’d disappear beneath my fingertips. “The face of an angel, the soul of a poet, and the fists of a fighter. I don’t kn...
Frank tugged again with no luck. Even Hazel was trying not to laugh. Frank grimaced with concentration. Suddenly, he disappeared. On the deck where he’d been standing, a green iguana crouched next to an empty set of Chinese handcuffs. “Well done,...
And she was not beautiful asleep. Her expression slack and not angelic. The very ordinariness of it so beautiful he felt a yearning to be something more than he was or could be. And as good a player as he was, he knew as he turned on the reel to reel...
Insomnia is a variant of Tourette's--the waking brain races, sampling the world after the world has turned away, touching it everywhere, refusing to settle, to join the collective nod. The insomniac brain is a sort of conspiracy theorist as well, bel...
Evil things happen, and good things happen, and in neither physics nor religion is there an explanation that makes any kind of sense. When the world decides to hurt, there’s no way around it, no magical words that will save the day or turn back tim...
Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone yo...
Back at home, days later, feel cranky and tired. Sit on the couch and tell him he's stupid. That you bet he doesn't know who Coriolanus is. That since you moved in you've noticed he rarely reads. He will give you a hurt, hungry-to-learn look, with hi...
I turned my face up to his. I could hardly look at him the same way. I was crying without realizing I'd started. "You made a deal with Hank. You saved my life. Why would you do that for me?" "Angel," he murmured, clasping my face between his hands. "...
