Typically, the louder a voice gets, the bigger the knot in my gut grows. So I have to turn my heart and mind toward our Heavenly Father and ask, "Is this pit in my stomach about today or is it about what already happened in the past or about what I'm afraid might happen in the future?

Mrs. Lot was a sandwich-generation woman, not sure what life might hold for her-scared of going forward, frightened of going back.

Just as God always knew how the life of his Son would unfold on earth, God knows how our lives will unfold as well. Nothing is a surprise to him. When we stumble, however badly, he stretches out his hands, pulls us to our feet, and draws us into his embrace.

But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary; …" Luke 1:30 How like the Lord to identify our fears and hasten to ease them. Notice that Gabriel called her by name: "Mary, you have nothing to fear" (MSG). God knew her name just as he knows ours.

History is made by men and women of vision and courage. Tonight freedom is on the march.

the new humanity that is created around Jesus is not a humanity that is always going to be successful and in control of things, but a humanity that can reach out its hand from the depths of chaos, to be touched by the hand of God.

admire the ingenuity that goes into this but I am not at all convinced that such people have quite got the right end of the stick. Does God really want us to know, in exact detail, ancient Babylonian history? I suspect not. But I am confident that God does want us to know how people in circumstances of acute displacement, living with the fear and the anxiety of a persecuted minority, responded to a hostile state and a pagan power.

He who is educated by anxiety is educated by possibility… When such a person, therefore, goes out from the school of possibility, and knows more thoroughly than a child knows the alphabet that he demands of life absolutely nothing, and that terror, perdition, annihilation, dwell next door to every man, and has learned the profitable lesson that every dread which alarms may the next instant become a fact, he will then interpret reality differently…

The one knight of faith can render no aid to the other.

Another marvel: some one has me fast Within his ample palm; 'tis not a grasp Such as they use on earth, but all around Over the surface of my subtle being, As though I were a sphere, and capable To be accosted thus, a uniform And gentle pressure tells me I am not Self-moving, but borne forward on my way. And hark! I hear a singing; yet in sooth I cannot of that music rightly say Whether I hear, or touch, or taste the tones. Oh, what a heart-subduing melody!

Don't pray for an easy life, pray to be a stronger man.

Having faith does not mean having no difficulties, but having the strength to face them, knowing we are not alone.