A lot of words have both encouraged and challenged me lately...here are just a few that have been really powerful:
"The love for equals is a human thing-of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing--the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world. The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing--to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints. And then there is the love for the enemy--love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured's love for the torturer. This is God's love. It conquers the world."
--Frederick Buechner
"Love must be learned, and learned again and again; there is no end to it. Hate needs no instruction, but waits only to be provoked."
--Katherine Anne Porter
"Summing it all up, friends, I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious--the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies."
-Philippians 4:8-9 (msg)
"If the pump of love runs dry, it is because the pipe of prayer isn't deep enough."
--John Piper
"For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-control."
--2 Timothy 1:6-7
"From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked."
--Luke 12:48
"Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays."
--Soren Kierkegaard
:)
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