Before we can see that created things (especially material) are unreal, we must see clearly that they are real.

He is heard only when we hope to hear Him, and if, thinking our hope to be fulfilled, we cease to speak, His silence ceases to be vivid and becomes dead, even though we recharge it with the echo of our own emotional noise.

Hope is the living heart of asceticism. It teaches us to deny ourselves and leave the world not because either we or the world are evil, but because unless a supernatural hope raises us above the things of time we are in no condition to make a perfect use either of our own or of the world's true goodness. But

By faith we know God without seeing Him. By

By faith we know God without seeing Him. By hope we possess God without feeling His presence.

PRAYER and love are really learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart turns to stone.

Thus, just about the time when I most needed it, I did acquire a little natural faith, and found many occasions of praying and lifting up my mind to God.

Anyone who listens to the world, anyone who seeks the sacred in the ordinary events of life, has "problems about how to believe.

I began to appreciate religious belief as a relationship, like a deep friendship, or a marriage, something that I could plunge into, not knowing exactly what I was doing or what would be demanded of me in the long run.

Faith simply is, and what the religious traditions of the world do is to give us guidance as to how to interpret our own experience in the light of what our ancestors have made of it over the centuries.

Faith is not faith until it is tested!

Would undisputed evidence of the ark be of value? Absolutely. But is it necessary for one's faith? Not in the least. So do not forget this point: the Bible is true, and Christ is who He says He is, regardless of whether anyone finds the remains of the ark or not.