Who can listen to a story of loneliness and despair without taking the risk of experiencing similar pains in his own heart and even losing his precious peace of mind? In short: “Who can take away suffering without entering it?
The real mystery of marriage is not that husband and wife love each other so much that they can recognize God in each other’s lives, but more because God loves them so much that they can discover each other more and more as living reminder’s of God’s presence.
In true love the smallest distance is too great, and the greatest distance can be bridged.
Hope is willing to leave unanswered questions unanswered and unknown futures unknown. Hope makes you see God’s guiding hand not only in the gentle and pleasant moments but also in the shadows of disappointment and darkness.
Our life is full of brokenness – broken relationships, broken promises, broken expectations. How can we live with that brokenness without becoming bitter and resentful except by returning again and again to God’s faithful presence in our lives.
Pay attention to the people God puts in your path if you want to discern what God is up to in your life.
What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love.
Our society is so fragmented, our family lives so sundered by physical and emotional distance, our friendships so sporadic, our intimacies so ‘in-between’ things and often so utilitarian, that there are few places where we can feel truly safe.
Every time there are losses, there are choices to be made. You choose to live your losses as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression and resentment, or you choose to let these losses be passages to something new, something wider, and deeper.
A life without a lonely place, that is, without a quiet center, becomes destructive.
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.
This brief lifetime is my opportunity to receive love, deepen love, grow in love, and give love.
Hope means to keep living amid desperation and to keep humming in the darkness.
Dare to love and to be a real friend. The love you give and receive is a reality that will lead you closer and closer to God as well as those whom God has given you to love.
Christmas is believing that the salvation of the world is God’s work, and not mine.
Waiting time is not wasting time. Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.
We are called to be fruitful – not successful, not productive, not accomplished. Success comes from strength, stress, and human effort. Fruitfulness comes from vulnerability and the admission of our own weakness.
Our glory is hidden in our pain, if we allow God to bring the gift of himself in our experience of it.
You don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.
Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.