Personal, spiritual symmetry emerges only from the shaping of prolonged obedience. Twigs are bent, not snapped into shape.
Perfect love is perfectly patient.
The enlarging of the soul requires not only some remodeling, but some excavating.
It is better to trust and sometimes be disappointed than to be forever mistrusting and be right occasionally.
Pure religion is having the courage to do what is right and let the consequence follow.
There are certain mortal moments and minutes that matter. Certain hingepoints in the history of each human. Some seconds are so decisive they shrink the soul, while others are spent, so as to stretch the soul.
We can hold to the iron rod even if others slip away and a few end up mocking us from “the great and spacious building.”
Eventually, there will not be enough prisons if there are not enough good homes.
It is not the years but the changes that make us grow.
The true Christian is a communicator.
Satan delights to have us put ourselves down. Self-contempt is of Satan. There is no such thing in heaven.
The winds of tribulation, which blow out some men’s candles of commitment, only fan the fires of faith of others.
Defectors often cause more difficulty than disinterested disbelievers.
The authority of example and considerations of character, unlike pudding, are not whipped up in an instant.
Our journey is demanding enough that the need for reassurance as well as reminders is constant.
Blessed is he who will not be offended.
Those few members who desert the cause are abandoning an oasis to search for water in the desert.
Our little pebble of poor performance helps to start, or to sustain, an avalanche.
God’s anger is kindled not because we have harmed him but because we have harmed ourselves.
Our goals should stretch us bit by bit. So often when we think we have encountered a ceiling, it is really a psychological or experiential barrier that we have built ourselves. We built it and we can remove it.
Without making a fetish of goal setting, and without letting “lists” of tasks we desire to do dominate us, some recording of goals is wise not only for the self-reminder these constitute, but also for the satisfaction of crossing things off.