For it is easy to understand that the best deed is well done: and so well as the best deed is done—the highest—so well is the least deed done; and all thing in its property and in the order that our Lord hath ordained it to from without beginning. For there is no doer but He.

Lifting your eyes from the things of this world is an activity that must begin WHERE YOU ARE.

The secret to following God's will, I discovered, usually is wrapped up in rejecting the good for God's best.

We must live according to what we know from Scripture, committed to a heavenly kingdom, so that our lives affect not only our home and community, and perhaps our state and country—but also the entire earth.

When we give away our rights and surrender our wills, when we give our obedience, our return is "good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.

We encounter God in the ordinariness of life: not in the search for spiritual highs and extraordinary, mystical experiences, but in our simple presence in life.

May all that I know apart from You be nothing more than a chance traveling companion on the journey toward You.

In prayer Jesus slows us down, teaches us to count how few days we have, and gifts us with wisdom. He reveals to us that we are so caught up in what is urgent that we have overlooked what is essential. He ends our indecision and liberates us from the oppression of false deadlines and myopic vision.

In days long ago when there were no spiritual directors or brilliant commentaries on Scripture, fidelity to God's will was the whole of spirituality.

Faith means you want God and want to want nothing else.

What the father planted will be harvested, and nothing will get in the way. Not heresies, schisms, ecclesiastical blunders, defections, moral failures; not if the budget isn't balanced; not if I can't find a way to end this book; not persecutions or nuclear holocausts—nothing will obstruct the coming of the Kingdom.

Getting answers to my questions is not the goal of the spiritual life. Living in the presence of God is the greater call.