People attack out of fear.
I began to wonder if what we were doing it evangelical circles had more to do with redeeming ourselves to culture than it did with showing Jesus to a hurting world, a world literally filled with outcasts.
It’s one thing to impress people, but it’s another to love them.
A character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it is the basic structure of a good story.
Unless we’re honest with each other, we can’t connect. We can’t be intimate.
Those who can’t accept their imperfections can’t accept grace either.
I’m starting to wonder if the whole point of life is to be thankful and to live in such a way others are thankful for theirs as well.
I was talking to a homeless man at the laundry mat recently, and he said that when we reduce Christian spirituality to math we defile the Holy. I thought that was very beautiful and comforting because I have never been good at math.
We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people... That is why God tells us so many times to love each other.
Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll. This is how God does things.
G. K. Chesterton says chess players go crazy, not poets. I think he is right.
I think it is easier to do bad things than to do good things. And there is something in that basic fact, some little clue to the meaning of the universe.
We have to be taught to be good. It doesn’t come natural.
I made a single decision early on. I decided I wouldn’t judge my kids. No matter what they told me, I wouldn’t judge them. I might have to discipline them, but I wouldn’t make them feel like lesser people for their mistakes. And because of that, they learned to trust me with their deepest thoughts... We taught them the basics early. But the older they got, the more I listened without judgment as they figured out how to apply wisdom in their own lives. And they’ve turned out well.
The whole experience makes me wonder if the time we spend trying to become somebody people will love isn’t wasted because the most powerful, most attractive person we can be is who we already are, an ever-changing being that is becoming and will never arrive, but has opinions about what is seen along the journey.
I don’t have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad, I only have to look at myself.
I wonder if what might help couples build great families is to pick a place for their family to go and then hit the gas, to work toward their vision and build it out.
I believed if word got out about grace, the whole church was going to turn into a brothel.
After a tragedy, I think God gives us a period of numbing as a kind of grace. Perhaps he knows our small minds, given so easily to false hope, couldn’t handle the full brunt of reality.
Just out of high school, you didn’t realize you were creating drama for the sake of drama.