This Sunday’s readings: James 1:18-21

Reflections

Just as our love for God begins with listening to God’s Word, the beginning of love for other Christians is learning to listen to them.
~ Dietrich Bonhöffer

Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words.
~ Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

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I begin to speak only when I’m certain what I’ll say isn’t better left unsaid.
~ Cato the Younger

A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good.
~ Henry Ward Beecher

The absence of anger … can, in my opinion, be a most alarming symptom … If the Jews cursed more bitterly than the Pagans this was, I think, at least in part because they took right and wrong more seriously.
~ C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
~ Søren Kierkegaard, 1813-1855, Danish Philosopher

Women speak because they wish to speak, whereas a man speaks only when driven to speak by something outside himself-like, for instance, he can’t find any clean socks.
~ Jean Kerr, 1922-2003, Author/Playwright

Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction . . . For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.
~ G.K. Chesterton, 1874-1936, The Club of Queer Trades

For God is good – or rather, of all goodness He is the Fountainhead.
~ Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation

If you’ve ever stood at the edge of a canyon and seen the birds swooping below you and the clouds stretched out over your head, or if you’ve ever stood in a field and felt a tiny rush of fear as you’ve watched a thunderstorm roll in over the horizon, then you know what this means. There is something about the grandeur of creation that calls out to the human heart, saying, “You are not all there is!” ~ Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel?

If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not,, you will remian dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die. ~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

When we are powerless to do a thing, it is a great joy that we can come and step inside the ability of Jesus.
~ Corrie Ten Boom, 1892-1983, writer, concentration camp survivor

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. ~ Carl Jung (1875-1961), Swiss psychiatrist

The very first temptation in the history of mankind was the temptation to be discontent…that is exactly what discontent-(ment) is – a questioning of the goodness of God. ~ Jerry Bridges, 1929-2016, Author, speaker, Staff w/ Navigators

If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others.
~ Brennan Manning, 1934-2013, Author, Speaker