We need the sweet pain of anticipation to tell us we are really alive.

For the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that I was happy still.

I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live.

For whoso dies for Christ, he is conqueror and is delivered from all misery and attains the eternal joy to which may it please our Saviour to bring us all.

What we think of man and God, of sin and salvation, is partly prompted by the comparative comforts or discomforts in which we live. It is a very sobering reflection on the lack of transcendence of the human spirit over the flux of historical change.

O what a blessed day that will be when I shall . . . stand on the shore and look back on the raging seas I have safely passed; when I shall review my pains and sorrows, my fears and tears, and possess the glory which was the end of all!

Preaching a man a sermon with a broken head and telling him to be right with God is equal to telling a man with a broken leg to get up and run a race.

When the world is worth nothing, then heaven is worth something. I leave every Christian to judge by his own experience, whether we do not overlove the world more in prosperity than in adversity (374) [.]

Though every man naturally abhorreth sorrow, and loves the most merry and joyful life; yet few do love the way to joy, or will endure the pains by which it is obtained; they will take the next that comes to hand, and content themselves with earthly pleasures, rather than they will ascend to heaven to seek it ;l and yet when all is done, they must have it there, or be without it (491).

It has been acceptable for some time in America to remain wound identified (that is, using one's victimhood as one's identity, one's ticket to sympathy, and one's excuse for not serving), instead of using the wound to redeem the world, as we see in Jesus and many people who turn their wounds into sacred wounds that liberate both themselves and others.

We suffer to get well. We surrender to win. We die to live. We give it away to keep it.

If we know our original blessing, we can easily handle our original sin. If we rest in a previous dignity, we can bear insults effortlessly. If you really know your name is on some eternal list, you can let go of the irritations on the small lists of time. Ultimate security allows you to suffer small insecurity without tremendous effort. If you are tethered at some center point, it is amazing how far out you can fly and not get lost.