thought-provoking :)

hey hey. i found this and it made me think, convicted me. hope it encourages you. :) of course, there are some to agree with and some not to. you can actually remove it if u think it's not edifying. Credits to this lovely lady

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At the very least it would mean something about every day, to the best of my ability, resisting being a fake. Resisting the fake answer, the false front, the superficial conversation in favor of something more deeply human, more deeply connected to what really matters about being alive, whether it sounds religious or spiritual or correct or not. It means worrying less about being perfect and being concerned more with being authentic or real with other people. Much of the religion I was schooled in was about putting myself away, aside, behind me in order to become something holier and closer to God. In other words, to draw nearer to the Really Real I needed to be less me. Perhaps it was a mid-life revelation or just wearing out on that that led me to a different understanding that my humanity was God's chief gift to me and that if I was going to find the Really Real it was going to be within that and not separating myself from that.

~ Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor ~

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You are never a great man when you have more mind than heart

~ Beauchene ~

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This seems a cheerful world, Donatus, when I view it from this fair garden, under the shadow of these vines.

But if I climbed some great mountain and looked out over the wide lands, you know very well what I would see--brigands on the high roads, pirates on the seas; in the amphitheaters men murdered to please applauding crowds; under all roofs misery and selfishness. It is really a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world.

Yet in the midst of it I have found a quiet and holy people. They have discovered a joy which is a thousand times better than any pleasures of this sinful life. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They have overcome the world.

These people, Donatus, are the Christians -- and I am one of them.

~ St. Cyprian, c. 258, a letter ~

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Most women think they have to settle for a life of efficiency and duty, chores and errands, striving to be the women they "ought" to be, but often feeling they have failed. Sadly, too many messages for Christian women add to the pressure. "Do these ten things, and you wil be a godly woman."

~ Captivating ~

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"Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all."

~ Saint Augustine ~

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The glory of God is man fully alive

~ St. Irenaeus ~

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"No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. The pulpit can be a shop window to display one's talents, the prayer closet allows no showing off.

Poverty stricken as the chuch is today in many things, she is most stricken in the place of prayer. We have many organisers but few agonizers; many players and payers, few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few ears; much fashion; little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, few fighters. Falling here, we fail everywhere."

~ Leonard Ravenhill in Why Revival Tarries ~