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When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is t...more

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Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that ...more

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Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.

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I'll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful.I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.

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It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire.

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Adulthood is a wonderful thing and brief. You must be sure to enjoy it while it lasts. I believe the soul in Paradise must enjoy something nearer to a...more

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People talk about how wonderful the world must seem to children, and that's true enough. But children think they will grow into it and understand it, ...more

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I felt just the way I imagine the shade of poor old Samuel must have felt when the witch dragged him up from Sheol. "Why hast thou disquieted me, to b...more

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How I wish you could have known me in my strength.

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. . . there is an absolute disjunction between our Father's love and our deserving.

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There is more beauty than our eyes can bear, precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.

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There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forg...more

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There was no way to abandon guilt, no decent way to disown it. All the tangles and knots of bitterness and desperation and fear had to be pitied. No, ...more

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There is clearly a feeling abroad that God smiled on our beginnings, and that we should return to them as we can. If we really did attempt to return t...more

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I experience religious dread whenever I find myself thinking that I know the limits of God’s grace, since I am utterly certain it exceeds any imaginat...more