Springtime

Plans

Tell me,what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver



Saving

Judgement

   If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

    During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.

   Socrates taught us: Know thyself!

   Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't.

   If Malyuta Skuratov had summoned us, we, too, probably would have done our work well!

   From good to evil is one quaver, says the proverb.

   And correspondingly, from evil to good.

   From the moment when our society was convulsed by the reminder of those illegalities and tortures, they began on all sides to explain, to write, to protest: Good people were there too!

~Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago





Passion

How little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue.

Jane Austen

Heroes

Our culture has filled our heads but emptied our hearts, stuffed our wallets but starved our wonder. It has fed our thirst for facts but not for meaning or mystery. It produces “nice” people, not heroes. Peter Kreeft

Awe

via The Legacy Project

Awe, that rush of quiet passion, that sudden gasp in the presence of great beauty or immensity or unfathomability is another necessary ingredient for the full appreciation of life. Cousin to gratitude, fear, and ecstasy, it overwhelms and enriches us beyond our usual boundaries.

Check this website out and enter if you can. Have a great day!

In Christ,

Emily xoxoxo

Strength

Because He lives, I can face yesterday.

Jared C. Wilson





Success

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

Winston Churchill

Fear