_{A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
~ William Blake}

Reflect, Resonate, Reevaluate, Respond

These illustrations suggest four general maxims[…]. The first is: remember that your motives are not always as altruistic as they seem to yourself. The second is: don’t over-estimate your own merits. The third is: don’t expect others to take as much interest in you as you do yourself. And the fourth is: don’t imagine that most people give enough thought to you to have any special desire to persecute you.
~ Bertrand Russell, 1872-1970, Philosopher, Mathematician, The Conquest of Happiness

============== Isaiah 8:18-22; 9:1-4 ==============

The engaged mind, illuminated by truth, awakens awareness; the engaged heart, affected by love, awakens passion. May I say once more – this essential energy of the soul is not an ecstatic trance, high emotion or a sanguine stance toward life: It is a fierce longing for God, an unyielding resolve to live in and out of our belovedness.
~ Brennan Manning, 1934-2013, Author, public speaker, Abba’s Child

People are always clinging to what they want to hear, discarding the evidence that doesn’t fit with their beliefs, giving greater weight to evidence that does.
~ Paula Stokes, Author, The Key to Everything

I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.
~ Barbara Kingsolver, 1955- , Author, essayist

There is no smaller package in the world than a man wrapped up in himself.
~ William Sloane Coffin, 1924-2006, Minister, author

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, founded the school of analytical psychology

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.
~ Desmond Tutu, 1931-2021, Anglican Archbishop in South Africa

^{A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
~ William Blake}

Reflect, Resonate, Reevaluate, Respond

While the truth that we cannot escape God’s all-seeing eye may weigh us down at times, it is finally the only remedy for our uneasiness. If we wish to hide from the penetrating gaze of holy love, it is because we know it falls on what is unholy and unloving within us. Only under God’s steady gaze of love are we able to find the healing and restoration we so desperately need.
~ Marjorie Thompson, Director of Pathways Center for Spiritual Leadership

Taste and see that the Lord is sweet. He was made sweet to you because he liberated you. You had been bitter to yourself when you were occupied only with yourself. Drink the sweetness.
~ Augustine of Hippo, Sermon on the 33rd Psalm

Exodus 40:20-37

A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy.
~ Guido “Guy” Fawkes, 1570-1606, member of the ‘gunpowder plot’ of 1605

What we have at the moment isn’t as the old liturgies used to say, ‘The sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead,’ but a vague and fuzzy optimism that somehow things may work out in the end.
~ N. T. Wright, Former Bishop of Durham, Surprised by Hope

Jesus Christ says, ‘Kill me and in 3 days, not only this temple, but all temples in the whole world will be out of business.’ This is the most stunning thing any human being has ever said.
~ Tim Keller, pastor, author

In my deepest wound I saw your glory, and it dazzled me.
~ Augustine of Hippo

You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
~ Charles H. Spurgeon, Baptist preacher, 19th Century

Praise is the rehearsal of our eternal song. By grace we learn to sing, and in glory we continue to sing. What will some of you do when you get to heaven, if you go on grumbling all the way? Do not hope to get to heaven in that style. But now begin to bless the name of the Lord.
~ C.H. Spurgeon, 1834-1892