Adversity
One reason God created time was so there would be a place to bury the failures of the past.
James Long
If I have learned anything, I owe it neither to precepts nor to books, but to a few opportune misfortunes. Perhaps the school of misfortune is the very best.
Louise Honorine de Choiseul (1734-1801)
Many people quench the Spirit by being down in the mouth rather than rejoicing, by planning rather than praying, by murmuring rather than giving thanks, and by worrying instead of trusting in him who is faithful.
Cameron Townsend, founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators
Culture
The world is a spiritual kindergarten where bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.
Edward Arlington Robinson
At the point of desperation is the time for rededication.
Wellington Boone
Marriage
To keep your marriage brimming With love in the loving cup, When you’re wrong, admit it, When you’re right, shut up.
Ogden Nash
Let the wife make her husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.
Martin Luther
Men and Women
A woman with a woman’s point of view is of more value than when she forgets she’s a woman and begins to act like a man.
Nelly Ptaschkina
Manhood, once an opportunity for achievement, now seems like a problem to be overcome. What you find is terrible gender anxiety, guys trying to be Mr. Right; the man who can bake a cherry pie, go shoot skeet, come back, toss a salad, converse easily about intimate matters, cry if need be, laugh, hug, be vulnerable, perform passionately that night, and the next day go off and lift them bales onto that barge and tote it. Being perfect is a terrible way to spend your life, and guys aren’t equipped for it, anyway.
Garrison Keillor
Morality
I have never been tempted to resort to gratuitous sex, profanity, or violence. I couldn’t write a book that I would be embarrassed for my kids to read a few years from now. Plus, my mother would kill me.
John Grisham best-selling author and Sunday school teacher
Patience
My grandmother used to tell me that every boss is temporary, that every rainy day is temporary, that every hardship is temporary. She used to tell me, “Son, every goodbye ain’t gone. Just hold on—there’s joy coming in the morning.”
James Melvin Washington
Even the darkest hour of your life is only 60 minutes long.
Unknown
Reconciliation
While integration was a political concept, reconciliation is spiritual. Integration forced some people to change their behavior. Reconciliation invites the changing of hearts.
Spencer Perkins, author of More Than Equals
Spiritual freedom
The problem of pain, of war and the horror of war, of poverty and disease is always confronting us. But a God who allows no pain, no grief, also allows no choice. There is little unfairness in a colony of ants, but also there is little freedom.
Madeleine L’Engle, Newberry-Award-winning author
1996 by Christianity Today/LEADERSHIP journal
Last Updated: September 17, 1996
