One reason why Jesus could handle stress is that he knew when to relax.

You can capture a butterfly, and pin its wings down to study the colors and shape and design, but the moment that butterfly is still and you're able to make the most precise and detailed observations about that butterfly is the moment the butterfly can't fly anymore.

You start with your 1 and then you suspend judgment on what you're doing, because you don't know what you have when you start. When you are constantly judging what you're doing, you aren't here. You aren't present. You are standing outside of your life, looking in, observing. The time for judgement will come at some point, but in the moment, you have only the 1. And then the 2. And then the 3...

The question, then, the art, the task, the search, the challenge, the invitation is for you and me to become more and more the kind of people who are aware of the divine presence, attuned to the ruach

And now here's the twist, the mystery, the unexpected truth about admitting that takes us back to the counterintuitive power of gospel: When you come to the end of yourself, you are at that exact moment in the kind of place where you can fully experience the God who is for you.

You embrace your impotence, your powerlessness, your lack of control over the outcomes—you make peace with all that you can't do, with your limits, with all the people you can't help.

I am for the artist, who is more alone than he looks. I am not for the reformer, who is always active but usually has nothing to give. The real thing that you do is a lonely thing. And remember the paradox that you become more social in order that you may become more of an individual.

The heart of everything is faith. Without it, life has no meaning. With it, everything is ennobled.

God's in His heaven, all's right with the world.

Like when you sit in front of a fire in winter — you are just there in front of the fire. You don't have to be smart or anything. The fire warms you.

Many of the men who had come to the wilderness to practice religion appeared to have forgotten its true nature.

Work might come later, but for now, he needed God's perspective. And the only way to get it was to stop, look, listen, and remember the goodness and greatness of Almighty God.