If your job is to leaven ordinary lives with elevating spectacle, be elevating or be gone.
In naming that which is right before me, that which I'd otherwise miss, the invisible becomes visible.
You, who were made by Love, made for love-- be still and know and watch love come down.
Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing. . . . Through all that haste I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away.
Simplicity is never a matter of circumstances; simplicity is a matter of focus. So in the midst of educating and parenting our children, we can't necessarily go ahead and make everything fit into neat, controllable, simple schedules. But the point is, simplicity is: how do we keep our eyes fixed and focused on Christ, no matter where we are?
That which tears open our souls, those holes that splatter our sight, may actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart-aching beauty beyond. To Him. To the God whom we endlessly crave.
At the last, this is what will determine a fulfilling, meaningful life, a life that, behind all the facades, every one of us longs to live: gratitude for the blessings that expresses itself by becoming the blessing.
I suppose I have a highly developed capacity for self-delusion, so it's no problem for me to believe that I'm somebody else.
I was under the misconception that I have oily skin, I'm prone to breakouts, I shouldn't moisturize or put anything on my face. And then realizing, "Oh, no, my skin is incredibly dry - that's why I'm breaking out. I need to wear moisturizer. " Some of these steps could be anti-"I'm serious," but that's the one thing I feel I know the way on. I'm not snobby about anything else.
Some days you're the bug, some days you're the windshield.
Once you are thought selfish, not only are you forgiven a life designed mainly to suit yourself, which in anyone else would appear monstrous, but if an impulse to generosity should by chance overpower you, you will get five times the credit of some poor selfless soul who has been oozing kindness for years.