Ideas, stories, quotes, and short essays or selections from books that stimulate thoughtful consideration of a topic or spiritual principle.
I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty and joy to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. For the world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.
Helen Keller
Admonished for his lack of familiarity with modern science, the Indian mystic Sundar Singh asked, “What is science?”
“Natural selection, you know, and the survival of the fittest”, he was told.
“Ah”, Sundar Singh replied, “but I am more interested in divine selection, and the survival of the unfit.”
Sacrifice yourself for once for God’s will. It will not be in vain. Sacrifice yourself for truth, for justice. Sacrifice yourself for once against all human sense for something that is truly good. Sacrifice yourself for Christ in all things, and seek the kingdom of God. There is great strength in this- Stand for something: then your joy will be unbroken and lasting.
C. F. Blumhardt
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each person’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Only the person who never gives up in life, who persists with his wish to find and fulfill the promise of himself, makes this truly self-liberating discovery: those places that he once mistook as being impassible barriers to his happiness
become as bridges to the same, but only if he learns to welcome them as part of his journey.
Guy Finley
There is something about life that, little by little, makes us forget all that is good. This can happen to anyone…and so we must look for a cure against it. Praise be that such a cure exists: the act of quietly making a decision. A decision stirs the mind from the slumber of monotony. A decision breaks the magic spell of custom and the long row of weary thoughts. A decision will bring blessings upon even the weakest beginning. A decision is an awakening to the eternal.
Soren Kierkegaard
On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?”
Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?”
And Vanity comes along and asks the question, “Is it popular?”
But Conscience asks the question, “Is it right?”
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil. It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.
Source: The Gulag Archipelago
– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
To the same measure that we put ourselves at the disposal of God’s cause,
to the same measure that we put God’s will into practice,
so will we gain confidence in our personal life.
For we are promised, “Seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness and all these things shall be added to you.”
That is our faith, and it can answer every need of our time.
-Else von Hollander, January 1932
At sunrise everything is luminous, but not clear. It is often the same with those we live with and love and should know: they elude us. Yet you can love completely without complete understanding.
Norman Maclean