Once a week, beginning at sunset on Friday and until sunset on Saturday, the family had to pause. A Jewish merchant had explained the Sabbath to Agios already, back in Egypt. No devout Hebrew could work or travel on that day. If they were near a temple, the family went there. If no temple was available, they prayed where they were. When.
Apathy and arrogance: These are the real culprits that affect us all to one degree or another.
United States and abroad reject and condemn violent jihad. But it doesn’t follow.
To keep a man a slave you do much the same as the cruel circus masters did to the elephant around the turn of last century. Clamp heavy chains around their legs and stake them to the ground. Then beat and terrorize them. After a while you no longer even have to stake the chain; the elephant gives up and just the mere rattle of the chain convinces the elephant there is no hope, so they give up and do whatever it is the circus requires.
Our forbears came to these shores not for free stuff, but for freedom. The chance to make their own way, create a different life. They came here because they knew that God made them free to make their own way in life, take the risk, do their best and take responsibility for their own lives. They came here because they wanted to serve Him in the way they believed, not as they were told.
We have only one life. We may waste it, or we may use it to learn of God and what God wants for us. And we all make mistakes. Only one life.
Trust me: if you just pick up the really obvious bread crumbs, you will find that you have more than enough to find your path. It will transform your life. God isn’t trying to hide anything from you. He’s not being coy or playing games for His own amusement. He’s trying hard to show you the way.
It is no longer enough to just be a good person. We must work to be the next Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King. It is noble to strive to be the size of the bronze giant they dedicated this morning in the building behind me. Fredrick Douglas’ time was in the 1800; King’s time has passed. This is our time. This is the next long march toward civil rights and we shall overcome.
Americans are still a fair and just people. They know the difference between racism and race-baiting, between violence and accusations of violence, between hatred and patriotism. Let them weigh the evidence for as long as they need, because when the verdict comes down, we will once again be on the right side.
Having a child is like having your heart walk around outside of your body.
But if other people are irritable, we may divorce their behavior from their experiencing. We can’t feel their experience; and so we judge their behavior. If we think, “She shouldn’t be so arrogant,” we only see her behavior and judge it, because we have no awareness of what is true for her.
The minute we have even a passing thought of judging another person, the red light of practice should go on.
Shakespeare’s Polonius said, “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.
Practice is not a trimming on your life. Practice is the foundation. If that’s not there nothing else will be there.
So there are two kinds of suffering. One is when we feel we’re being pressed down; as though suffering is coming at us from without, as though we’re receiving something that’s making us suffer. The other kind of suffering is being under, just bearing it, just being it.
There’s nothing wrong with conceptualization per se; but when we take our opinions about any event to be some kind of absolute truth and fail to see that they are opinions, then we suffer. That’s false suffering.
Listen to me,” Audra said. “Listen good. You don’t get to touch me anymore. Not ever. You don’t own me, or my children. We are not your possessions. You never really loved our children, but I do. Now, I’m going to find Sean and Louise. You can either help me or get out of my way. Which is it?
Grace is the only thing in the world that is stronger than shame.
Write tests until fear is transformed into boredom.
Rather than apply minutes of suspect reasoning, we can just ask the computer by making the change and running the tests.