Ted Bundy, the serial killer, after his arrest, could not fathom the fuss. What was the big deal? David Von Drehle quotes an exasperated Bundy in Among the Lowest of the Dead: “I mean, there are so many people.”

One R. Houwink, of Amsterdam, uncovered this unnerving fact: The human population of earth, arranged tidily, would just fit into Lake Windermere, in England’s Lake District.

How are we doing in numbers, we who have been alive for this most recent installment of human life? How many people have lived and died? “The dead outnumber the living, in a ratio that could be as high as 20 to 1”

On April 30, 1991 – on that one day – 138,000 people drowned in Bangladesh. At dinner I mentioned it to my daughter, who was then seven years old, that is was hard to imagine 138,000 people drowning. “No, it’s easy,” she said. “Lots and lots of dots, in blue water.” ~ Annie Dillard, The Wreck of Time


[No words should shake us up more, to the very core of our being than these: “I am a child of God”]


I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. ~ Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek


If they had a soci al gospel in the days of the prodigal son, somebody would have given him a bed and a sandwich and he never would have gone home.
~ Vance Havner, 1901-1986, Revivalist Preacher

Reflections

Once upon a time, as a man was walking through a forest, he saw a tiger peering out at him from the underbrush. As the man turned to run, the tiger sprang after him to give chase.
Barely ahead of the tiger, the man came to the edge of a steep cliff. He grabbed hold of a strong vine and climbed over the cliff edge as the tiger was about to pounce. Hanging over the side of the cliff, with the hungry tiger pacing above him, the man looked down in dismay to see another tiger, stalking the ravine below.
~ From ‘The Tiger and the Strawberry’

It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you. Strong faith in a weak branch is fatally inferior to weak faith in a strong branch.
~ Tim Keller

A plumb line can only prove that a crooked wall is crooked. No matter how you use it, a plumb line can’t make a crooked wall straight. The law was God’s plumb line.
~ Michael P. Green

Tomorrow. The word hangs in the air for a moment, both a promise and a threat. Then it floats away like a paper boat, taken from her by the water licking at her ankles.
~ Thrity Umrigar, The Space Between Us, 1962-, journalist/novelist