All the time the joke is that the word “mine” in its fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything. In the long run either [Satan] or [God] will say “mine” of each thing that exists, and specially of each man.
« πλ | 3 Sep 2004 »
Heaven…a place where everything that is not music is silence.
And Hell, according to C.S. Lewis, is the kingdom of noise.
« πλ | 28 Jul 2004 »
Perhaps Heaven and Hell are made of the same thing everything is made of, namely truth, the one thing is inescapable. To love it and live on it as our food, is Heaven. To hate it and fear it and to be tortured by it, is Hell. For truth is inescapable; God can no more turn off the light of His truth than the sun can stop shining.
God’s truth is Love.
« πλ | 8 Jan 2006 »
Heaven is not just somewhere you go. It is something you carry with you.
« πλ | 9 Nov 2005 »
Hell is God’s great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice.
« πλ | 13 Feb 2006 »
Humility is the marriage bond of Heaven. Pride is the frigidity of Hell.
« πλ | 29 Sep 2004 »
The older I get, the more I feel like an exile, that I don’t belong here. And I don’t. I was made for heaven, and my heart is longing for it.
« πλ | 17 Feb 2006 »
There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else.
« πλ | 26 Oct 2005 »
We are not citizens of this world trying to make our way to heaven; we are citizens of heaven trying to make our way through this world … we live as those who are on a journey home; a home we know will have the lights on and the door open and our Father waiting for us when we arrive. That means in all adversity our worship of God is joyful, our life is hopeful, our future is secure. There is nothing we can lose on earth that can rob us of the treasures God has given us and will give us.
« πλ | 21 Feb 2006 »
Finished reading The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. This is one of those books that I kept hearing about here and there. Mea was the last impetus needed to finally read it. It’s a pretty darn good book as fiction goes. It makes you think. I highly recommend it. Here are some quotes that caught my attention:
No story sits by itself. Sometimes stories meet at corners and sometimes they cover one another completely, like stones beneath a river.
People think of heaven as a paradise garden, a place where they can float on clouds and laze in rivers and mountains. But scenery without solice is meaningless.
This is the greatest gift God can give you: to understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for.
The human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn’t just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.
Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know.
No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.
Young men go to war. Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to. Always, they feel they are supposed to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down.
Time is not what you think. Dying? Not the end of everything. We think it is. But what happens on earth is only the beginning.
Sacrifice, you made one. I made one. We all make them. But you are angry over yours. You kept thinking about what you lost… You didn’t get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something you regret. It’s something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to care of her sick father.
Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you’re not really losing it. You’re just passing it on to someone else.
All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhood completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.
You have peace when you make it with yourself.
Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move away. The moments that used to define them—a mother’s approval, a father’s nod—are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.
Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.
People say they “find” love, as if it were an object hidden by a rock. But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman. What people find then is a certain love.
Love, like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with a soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive.
Life has to end. Love doesn’t.
« πλ | 8 Mar 2004 »
For the last event in history, according to the Bible, is a wedding feast. It is the supper of the Lamb, the celebration of the wedding between the Lamb and his Bride, the Church. That is, you and me.
« πλ | 16 Mar 2006 »
The self is like a baseball. Throw it back to the divine pitcher who pitched it to you in the first place, and the game of love goes on. Hold it, and the game is over. That is the difference between Heaven and Hell.
« πλ | 5 Mar 2006 »
We look for visions of heaven and we never dream that all the time God is in the commonplace things and people around us.
« πλ | 20 Dec 2005 »
May God’s love,
peace, and energy
touch you in faith.
![[Jerusalem Cross with Heart]](http://cowpi.com/journal/grafiks/jerusalem-cross-heart.gif "Jerusalem Cross with Heart")