Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “All of us, Lord, from the moment we are born feel within us this disturbing mixture of remoteness and nearness.” Although we’re cut off from God, He is still not very far away. God is near us, waiting to be found.
To live life at its best, we must learn to combine three things: what is good, what is right, and what is true. Learning to recognize these things is no small challenge, and learning to balance them harmoniously is an even greater challenge!
God is to be our only real “possession.” All other things must be loved with a love we can let go of, and if our attachment to anything other than God is so strong that we can’t let go of it, then that thing, whatever it is, has become an idol to us.
No matter how formidable our difficulties, the right step to take at any moment will always involve the doing of something that is quite doable. Freedom means that we can take this step, and responsibility means that we should take it.
Our conscience should move us to act in ways that are consistent with our principles. But often, we fail to act. Afraid of making a mistake, we do nothing. And consequently, we learn nothing — and lose the opportunity to grow in our understanding.
When we disobey what we know to be God’s will, we are saying by our actions, “Not Thy will, but mine be done.” Sin is always a refusal to acknowledge God, a declaration of our independence and a stiff-necked resistance to God’s sovereignty.
Unlike the atheist who believes there is no God, we may believe we don’t really have to deal with the God who does exist. We may think that He can be ignored. But our disregard for God only shows us to be foolish. It does nothing to diminish Him.
Eloquent words about God may abound in some circles, and there is certainly no shortage today of profound discussion about spirituality. But our relationship with God is not determined by either the eloquence or the profundity of our talk.
In this age, we’ve discovered how to multiply our own words vastly, and we’re frequently reminded of the power of these words. But we dare not forget their danger. “The Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before Him.”
Can we recognize that which is morally excellent when we come in contact with it? Our judgment must come to coincide more closely with God’s, so the things we approve are the same things He approves. Spiritually speaking, our tastes must be refined.
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What distinguished Zacchaeus from so many others who crowded around Jesus was not that he was lost, for every person Jesus ever met fell into that category. But Zacchaeus recognized ...
The “gospel” is the greatest of all proclamations: not one concerning Caesar, but the very King of the universe. God is establishing the kingdom predicted by the prophets, offering the ...
Even to the Jews who took the prophets seriously, it needed to be shown that the death and resurrection of the Messiah were predicted by the prophets — and that ...
The One whom David foresaw in Psalm 16:10 is the only person in the world who, having been killed, did not “see corruption.” His resurrection proved Him to be the ...
Although God might have let justice run its course, He was not willing to leave us lost. If we had ruined the perfection He had created us to enjoy, He ...
If we’ve obeyed the gospel, we are not any more alive physically, but we certainly possess a spiritual life we didn’t used to have. When we were baptized, God “raised ...