His major contribution to the world was not a set of aphorisms. He was born in a turdy barn, grew up in a dirty world, got baptized in a muddy river. He put his hands on the oozing wounds of lepers, he let whores brush his hair and soldiers pull […]
“To love somebody is not just a strong feeling—it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were just a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever.” -Erich Fromm
Because we’re going through our lives, and we’re trying as hard as we can, and things just seem to always blow up in our faces, and we keep going, ‘God, God, why?’ We don’t know what he’s doing. So just let him do it. If you really believe he’s good, then let him […]
The love for equals is a human thing–of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing–the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, […]
If you try to have faith, you will be attacked by doubts you never knew you were capable of. But you keep on believing, even if you fall, even if you struggle with doubts, you keep on believing. And if you live a life that is marked by hope, by […]
Despair is for people who know, beyond any doubt, what the future is going to bring. Nobody is in that position. So despair is not only a kind of sin, theologically, but also a simple mistake, because nobody actually knows. In that sense there is always hope. – Patrick Curry
There are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no matter in what, are at once disposed to turn their backs on everything good in him, and to see only what is bad. There are people, on the other hand, who desire above all to find in that lucky rival […]
All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being. – Thornton Wilder, Our Town
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise does not merely express but completes the enjoyment. It’s not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling each other how beautiful they are. The delight in one another isn’t complete unless it’s expressed. – C.S. Lewis
Every now and then when you’re on stage, you can hear the best sound that a player can hear. It is a sound you can’t get in movies or in television. It is the sound of a wonderful, deep silence that means you’ve hit them where they live. – Shelley Winters
Is God stern and angry, or warm and kind? In a sense, He is both. He is a father who delights in His child, so He therefore disciplines His child with a rebuke (Proverbs 3:11-12). Another contemporary image is the oncologist. He is a cancer specialist who will do anything to destroy that which destroys. He will surgically cut away flesh; He will burn out cells through radiation; and He will poison them with chemotherapy. The treatment is, at times, brutal and appears cruel, but the result is profoundly life-changing and lovely. Discipline, though it often feels like a judgment that exiles and abandons us, is a labor of love that beautifies the heart through the disruptive touch of a severe mercy.
– Dan Allender, Bold Love
