Do you so love the truth and the right that you welcome, or at least submit willingly to, the idea of an exposure of what in you is yet unknown to yourself -- an exposure that may redound to the glory of the truth by making you ashamed and humbled?... Are you willing to be made glad that you were wrong when you thought others were wrong?... We may trust God with our past as heartily as with our future. It will not hurt us so long as we do not try to hide things, so long as we are ready to bow our heads in hearty shame where it is fit that we should be ashamed. For to be ashamed is a holy and blessed thing. Shame is a thing to shame only those who want to appear, not those who want to be. Shame is to shame those who want to pass their examination, not those who would get into the heart of things... To be humbly ashamed is to be plunged in the cleansing bath of truth.

The little boy greeted his grandmother with a hug and said, "I'm so happy to see you grandma. Now maybe daddy will do the trick." The grandmother was curious. "What trick is that my dear," she asked. The little boy replied, "I heard daddy tell mommy that he would climb the walls if you came to visit us again.".

It is the growling man who lives a dog's life.

Although prayer has been defined as communion with God, aspiration after the highest things, Stopford Brooke [Irish clergyman, 1832-1916] is right when he insists that prayer, in its plainest meaning, is a petition addressed to God. When Jesus laid the duty of petition upon his disciples, He went on to assert the reasonableness of man's asking and God's answering. Jesus argues along the line of reason that, if an earthly parent does the best in his power for his children, ... the Almighty and All-Wise Love, of which human love is only the shadow, will do better still for His great family; and therefore our Master teaches that men ought everywhere to pray, without fear, with hope, and without doubt.

Feast of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Teacher, Martyr, 1945 Not only the young Christian but also the adult Christian will complain that the Scripture reading is often too long for him, and that much therein he does not understand. To this it must be said that, for the mature Christian, every Scripture reading will be "too long", even the shortest one, [for] the Scripture is a whole, and every word, every sentence, possesses such multiple relationships with the whole that it is impossible always to keep the whole in view when listening to details. It becomes apparent, therefore, that the whole of Scripture, and hence every passage in it as well, far surpasses our understanding. It is good for us to be daily reminded of this fact.

They say that man is mighty, He governs land and sea, He wields a mighty scepter O'er lesser powers that be; But a mightier power and stronger Man from his throne has hurled, For the hand that rocks the cradle Is the hand that rules the world.

How far must suffering and misery go before we see that even in the day of vast cities and powerful machines, the good earth is our mother and that if we destroy her, we destroy ourselves?

Hail, guest, we ask not what thou art; If friend, we greet thee, hand and heart; If stranger, such no longer be; If foe, our love shall conquer thee.

I said, Days should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom.

We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming.

This is courage in a man: to bear unflinchingly what heaven sends.

The sun that brief December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon.

All who would win joy, must share it; happiness was born a twin. Anon -Lord Byron.

Quoting: the act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link.

Maturity is the capacity to endure uncertainty.

The real conviction of the living Christ was not carried to the world by a book nor by a story. Men might allege that they had seen the risen Lord; but that was nothing till they themselves were known. The witness of the resurrection was not the word of Paul (as we see at Athens) nor of the Eleven; it was the new power in life and death that the world saw in changed men... The legend of a reputed resurrection of some unknown person in Palestine nobody needed to consider; but what were you to do with the people who died in the arena, the reborn slaves with their newness of life in your own house? And when you "looked into the story", it was no mere somebody or other of whom they told it. The conviction of the people you knew, amazing in its power of transforming character and winning first the goodwill and the trust and then the conversion of others, was supported and confirmed by the nature and personality of the Man of whom they spoke, of whom you read in their books. "Never man spake like this man", you read, nor thought like this man, nor like this man believed in God. I can not but think that the factors that make a man Christian to-day were those that won the world then, our age and that age, in culture, in hopes and fears in loss of nerve, are not unlike. [Continued tomorrow].

We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't, it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions. -Jessamyn West.

We emphasize that we believe in change because we were born of it, we have lived by it, we prospered and grew great by it. So the ;status quo has never been our god, and we ask no one else to bow down before it.

History: An account, mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.