The phrase 'Love one another' is so wise. By loving one another, we invest in each other and in ourselves. Perhaps someday, when we need someone to care for us, it may not come from the person we expect, but from the person we least expect. It may be our sons or daughter-in-laws, our neighbors, friends, cousins, stepchildren, or stepparents whose love for us has assigned them to the honorable, yet dangerous position of caregiver.
По-мъдрата народна поговорка: всеки се грижи за ближния си, а Бог — за всички.
It has always been difficult for Jews to take Christians serious, mostly because Christians lack the fundamentals that religious Jews learn in their youth. It remains an embarrassing fact, that modern Jews can comprehend the New Testament better than modern Christians. There is no excuse for this. Christians have dropped the ball and should be anxious to remedy that neglect. Not only would they benefit themselves, but their community too.
He wanted to make cast models of her. He wanted to take a set of precision calipers and measure every distance between her features. He wanted her blood and glandular fluids analyzed by the finest chemists in the world—there must be something detectibly different in her inner workings for him to respond so dramatically, as if he’d been given a drug for which science had yet to find a name.But more than anything, he wanted to—
For those who want to pray for me to "find God," please don't waste your prayers. If you really think God is listening to you, then please use those precious moments to ask God to care for the sick and dying, and leave me out of it. I'm happy without my faith and with living my life in the here and now. Besides, thousands before you have prayed for me to find God and it hasn't worked yet. Why would God value your request over theirs?
Perhaps a past of bingeing, restricting, or purging comes back to haunt you from time to time. Maybe you have to fight hard battles against vanity, gluttony, and shame. But with God’s saving power, every new day is a gift, an opportunity to detach yourself from tormenting thoughts about food or how you look and to attach yourself to God. Remember, we all hunger for God, more than we hunger for a big bowl of ice cream or a perfect physique.
أن الإيمان لا يكون إيمانا, إلا إذا كان يناقض العقل والمنطق, وإلا هو فكر وفلسفة
A Spiritual Discipline is an intentionally directed action which places us in a position to receive from God the power to do what we cannot accomplish on our own....The deep waters of God's life are already flowing. We simply learn the strokes that will enable us more and more to be at home in them....The human body is our power-pack of mind-body-spirit -- we discipline it in order to practice cooperation with God. (Life with God, p. 135-137)
It is neither just the religious, the spiritual, the power-hungry, the evil, the ignorant, the corrupt, the Christian, the Muslim, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Jew, nor the atheist that makes a hypocrite, but being a human being. Any man who thinks himself to be free of hypocrisy while committed to cherry-picking others for such, I am confident, the Almighty can prove to him a great deal of his own hypocrisy even beyond his earthly comprehension.
God forbid that I should boast of being poor, gentle, and meek. But I am striving to attain these virtues. Every day the exercises, and indeed the whole ascetic discipline of my Yoga, make it easier for the grace of Christ to flow in me. I feel my hunger for God growing, and my thirst for righteousness, and my desire to be a Christian in the full strength of the word- to be for Christ, to be of Christ, without any half-measures of reservations.
It is a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world. But I have discovered in the midst of it a quiet and good people who have learned the great secret of life. They have found a joy and wisdom which is a thousand times better than any of the pleasures of our sinful life. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They are masters of their souls. They have overcome the world. These people, Donatus, are Christians. . . and I am one of them.
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, the demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere."Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!
...So far I have restrained myself. For how much longer, I do not know.I have never known such happiness, shot through with such misery. Only four days have passed, they tell me. But that is not true. It has been decades since I sawyou last.You will find me a stooped old man when we meet again. Perhaps I might even need a pair of spectacles to recognize your veil.But I remain always,Your servant,C.One of Christian's onesided letters to the Baroness
Adelaide remembered the first storm Justinius had seen her through. She had seen many storms since then, some milder than others, some worse than the first, and the Prince had been with her, comforting her and protecting her life through each wail of the wind and each crash of thunder. If he could free her from the slave yard and get her through every violent storm with her life still intact, he'd see her through the transition into her palace home.
Adelaide remembered the first storm Justinius had seen her through. She had seen many storms since then, some milder than others, some worse than the first, and the Prince had been with her, comforting her and protecting her life through each wail of the wind and each crash of thunder. If he could free her from the slave yard and get her through every violent storm with her life still intact, he'd see her through the transition into her palace home.
