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Hurt
people hurt people
I'm
not an optimist. I'm
a prisoner of hope.
Archbishop
Desmond Tutu
Ignoring
the
facts doesn’t
change the
facts.
The
highest result of education is tolerance.
Helen
Keller
I
think people need love or
they die inside.
John R Williams, International Educational Foundation
Who
can be good, unless
made so by
loving?
Augustine
Being
kind is more important than
being right.
Andy
Rooney
Love
is not love that alters when it alteration finds.
William Shakespeare
I
destroy my enemies when
I make them my friends.
Abraham
Lincoln
It
is not the answer that
enlightens, but
the question.
Real communication happens
when people feel safe.
Ken Blanchard
Cruel
words hurt deeply, but
loving words heal quickly.
Listening
is the very first thing we owe the oppressed.
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer
Be
kind, for everyone you
meet is fighting a
hard battle.
Plato
God
and I have something in common - we both love you!
Love is hard to give away
because
it keeps coming
back
Never
deprive someone of hope; it
might be all they have.
H
Jackson Brown, Jr.
How else, but through a broken heart, may Christ enter in?
The
only way to make a person worthy of love is to love them.
Thomas
Merton
Let
my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God,
Bob
Pierce
Don’t confuse being
"soft"
with seeing the other guy’s point of view.
George
Bush
God,
help us not to despise or oppose what we do not understand.
William
Penn
Man's way leads
to a hopeless end; God's way leads to an endless hope.
Minds are like
parachutes; they function effectively only when they’re open.
Too
often we enjoy the
comfort of an opinion without
the discomfort of thought.
John
F. Kennedy
We
could never learn to
be brave and
patient if
there were only joy
in the world.
Helen Keller
Two
people can
look at the exact
same thing and
see something
totally different.
The
greatest undeveloped resource is faith; the
greatest unused power is prayer.
Grief
is not a sign of weakness nor a lack of faith – it is the price we pay
for loving.
It’
s so much easier to suggest solutions
when you don’t
know much
about the problem.
Malcolm
Forbes
Change
comes from a degree of discomfort that
allows for and spurs thought and action.
William
Blum
Compassion
means being so close to someone
that
his tears run down your
cheeks.
The practice of peace and reconciliation
is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.
Lord,
when I am wrong, make me willing to change;
when
I am right, make me easy to live with.
Where
the heart is willing it
will find a thousand ways,
but
where it is unwilling it
will find a thousand excuses.
The
truth can set us free,
but
only if we're always in the process of discovering it.
Rabbi
Irwin Kula, Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life
Only
in the context of grace can we face our sin;
only
in the place of healing do we dare to show our wounds.
Henri Nouwen
One
of the oldest human needs is having
someone to wonder
where you are
when
you don’t come home at night.
Margaret
Mead
If God sent not His Son into the world
to condemn the world,
what right do we have to condemn?
Cal Thomas
Life is a grindstone,
but whether it grinds us down
or polishes us
up
depends on us.
The
first half of
our life is
spent ignoring
our parents’
advice...
and
the second
half trying
to keep our
children from
ignoring ours!
"Forgiveness
is the economy of the heart.
[It]
saves the expense of anger, the
cost of hatred, the waste of spirits."
Hannah More
Nothing
will make us so
charitable and tender to
the faults
of others as,
by
self-examination, thoroughly
to know
our own.
Fenelon
It’s
not enough to belong to a religion; you
also have to put it into practice.
Religion
is like a medicine; you
have to ingest it to combat the illness.
the Dalai Lama
Dear God,
Please
make all the bad people good and
the good people nice.
Amen.
Repeat
Performance:
Oh
God of Second Chances and New Beginnings,
Here
I am again.
There
are two ways to
slide easily through
life:
to
believe everything or
to doubt everything.
Both
ways save
us
from thinking.
The
Holy Spirit's voice is only as loud as our willingness to hear it.
To be
otherwise would compromise our free will,
which the Holy Spirit seeks
to restore, not to destroy.
Marianne Williamson
"God
created us to be in relationship; first with Him and
then with one another.
And
the need to belong and
be a part of someone else’s life
is
still one of our primary basic needs."
Willie
and Elaine Oliver
Life
is too short, and
we have never too much time
for gladdening the hearts of those
who are traveling the dark journey with
us.
Oh,
be swift to love! Make
haste to be kind!
Henri F. Amiel
God’s love to sinners
involves His
identifying Himself with their
welfare.
Such an identification is involved in
all love; it is, indeed,
the test
of whether love is genuine or not.
J I Packer
Biologically, adults produce children.
Spiritually, children produce adults.
Most of us do not grow up
until we have helped children do so.
Thus do the generations form a braided
cord.
George F. Will
You
may discover that what truly matters in life
has
less to do with
getting exactly the right answers
than
with asking the truly important questions.
Timothy
Johnson, MD, medical commentator on Good Morning America
The essential
problem before the church is not
reconciling homosexuality with the Bible,
but
to reconcile the continuous abuse and condemnation
of gay and lesbian persons
with the love of Christ.
Dr.
Harold G Porter
The
soft-minded man fears change. He feels security in the status quo,
and he
has an almost morbid fear of the new.
For
him, the greater pain is the pain of a new idea.
Martin Luther King
Mother
Teresa realized that the greater poverty
is to be unloved, unwanted, rejected
and lonely.
She saw the physical poverty, but she saw more -
the poverty
of the soul which needs love and compassion,
but which one may not find in the
church.
Let
it be love which builds bridges between us
and encourages
us to do everything possible.
Let love for
each other and love for the truth be the
answer
to present difficulties and tensions.
From
the cowardice that shrinks from new truth,
From the laziness that is content with half-truth,
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all the truth,
Oh God of Truth, deliver us!
Compassion
is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling
what it is like to live inside
somebody else’s skin.
It is the knowledge that there can never really be
any peace and joy for me
until there is peace and joy finally for you,
too.
Frederick Buechner
If I am inconsiderate about the comforts of
others,
or their feelings, or even their little
weaknesses;
if I am careless about their little
hurts
and miss opportunities to smooth their way,
then I know nothing of Calvary love.
Amy Carmichael
A
pastor was appealing to his congregation to reach out to gays
as Jesus
would. A concerned parishioner countered,
"But then more gays would
come and fill up our church."
The pastor responded, "Yes,
that's true, and they could sit in the
pews beside the adulterers,
murderers, liars, thieves, gossipers, etc."
It appears to me that the problem
of homosexuality
isn’t what it does to people who have that orientation (and
their families),
but what it does to those of us who are trying to
reflect
Christ’s character in our lives and communities.
Steve Chavez,
Associate Editor, Adventist Review
When
we honestly ask ourselves which people in our lives mean the most to us,
we often find that it’s those who, instead of giving advice, solutions
or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a
gentle and caring hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment
of despair or confusion,
who can stay with us in an hour of grief or
bereavement,
who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing,
and
face with us the reality of our powerlessness — that is the friend who
cares.
Henri
Nouwen, Out of Solitude
He
drew a circle that
shut me out,
Heretic,
rebel, a
thing to flout.
But
Love and I had
the wit to win;
We
drew a circle that
took him in.
Edwin Markham
Lord,
make me an instrument of Thy peace!
Where
there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where
there is injury, pardon.
Where
there is doubt, faith.
Where
there is despair, hope.
Where
there is darkness, light.
Where
there is sadness, joy...
St.
Francis of Assisi
A
Franciscan Blessing
quoted
in the Adventist
Review
special issue on Loma Linda University
May
God bless you with discomfort at easy answers,
half
truths, and superficial relationships,
so
that you may live deep within your heart.
May
God bless you with anger at injustice,
oppression
and exploitation of people,
so
that you may wish for justice, freedom and peace.
May
God bless you with enough foolishness
to
believe that you can make a difference in this world,
so
that you can do what others claim cannot be done.
Lean Hard
Child
of My love, lean hard,
and
let Me feel the pressure of thy care;
I
know thy burden, child, I shaped it;
poised
it in My own hand,
made
no proportion in its weight
to
thine unaided strength;
for
even as I laid it on, I said,
"I
shall be near, and while he leans on Me,
this
burden shall be Mine, not his;
so
shall I keep My child within
the
circling arms of My own love.
Here
lay it down, nor fear
to
impose it on a shoulder which
upholds
the government of worlds.
Yet
closer come; thou art not yet near enough;
I
would embrace thy care
so
I might feel My child reposing on my breast.
Thou
lovest Me? I knew it.
Doubt
not then, but, loving Me, lean hard!
Blessed
be the Lord, Who daily bears our
burdens.
Psalm
68:19
As
a mother comforts
her child, so
will I comfort you.
Isaiah
66:13
Do
not judge or you, too, will be judged!
Matthew
7:1
As
a father has compassion
on his
children,
so
the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
for
he knows how
we are formed, he
remembers that
we are dust.
Psalm
103:13, 14
I
have swept away your transgressions like a cloud,
and
your sins like a mist; return
to me, for I have redeemed
you.
Isaiah
44:22
Delight yourself in the Lord
and He will give you the desires of your
heart.
Psalm 37:4
God
demonstrates his
own love for
us in this:
While
we were yet
sinners, Christ
died for
us.
Romans 5:8
Love always protects, always trusts,
always hopes,
always perseveres. Love never fails!
1 Corinthians 13:7-8
I
have loved you with an everlasting love. I
have drawn you with loving-kindness.
Jeremiah
31:3
He
will turn the
hearts
of the fathers to
their children,
and
the hearts of
the children to
their fathers.
Hosea
4:6
He who began a good work in you
will carry it on to completion.
Philippians 1:6
I
know whom I
have believed, and
am convinced that
He is able
to
guard what I have entrusted to Him for
that day.
2
Timothy 1:12
By
this, all men will know
that you are
my disciples, if
you love one
another.
John
13:35
I
have not come to
call the righteous, but
sinners.
Matthew
9:13
Love
your enemies; pray
for those who persecute you.
Matthew
5:44
Christlike
love places the
most favorable construction
on
the
motives and acts of others.
E G White, Acts
of the Apostles,
319
No
circumstance of birth or nationality, no
condition of life,
can
turn away His love from the children of men.
E
G White, Desire
of Ages 194.
The
Savior is still carrying forward the same
work
as
when He proffered the water
of life to the woman of Samaria. Those
who call themselves His followers may despise and shun the outcast ones; but
no circumstance of birth or nationality, no condition of
life, can
turn away His love from the children of men.
E
G White, Desire of Ages, 194
All
the perplexities of
life’s experience will
then [in heaven] be
made plain.
Where
to us have appeared
only confusion
and disappointment,
broken
purposes and
thwarted plans, will
be seen
a
grand,
overruling, victorious
purpose, a
divine harmony.
E G White, Education,
305
Come
in humility, with
a heart full of
tenderness,
and
with a sense of
the temptations before yourself and
your children;
by
faith, bind them upon the altar, entreating for them the care of the Lord.
Ministering angels will
guard children who are thus dedicated to God.
E G White, Child
Guidance, 519
The
more we study the divine character in the light of the cross,
the
more we see mercy, tenderness and forgiveness
blended with equity and
justice, and
the more clearly we discern
innumerable
evidences of a love that is infinite and
a tender pity
surpassing a mother's yearning
sympathy
for her wayward child.
E
G White, Steps
to Christ, p. 15
The
Creator of all ideas may impress different minds with the same thought,
but each may express it in a different way, yet without contradiction.
The
fact that this difference exists should not perplex or confuse us.
It is
seldom that two persons will view and express truth in the very same way.
Each dwells on particular points which his constitution and education
have
fitted him to appreciate. The sunlight falling upon
the different objects
gives those objects a different hue.
E.
G. White, Selected
Messages,
Vol. 1, p.
22
No
one has a right to control another's mind, and judge for another,
prescribing
what is his duty. There are certain rights
that belong to every individual, in
doing God's service.
No man has any more right to take these rights from us than
to take life itself.
God has given us freedom to think, and it is our privilege
and duty
always to be a doer of the Word, and to follow our impressions of duty.
We are only human beings, and one human being has no jurisdiction
over the
conscience of any other human being.
E
G White, Letter
92, 1895
".
. .no man who has the true ideal of what constitutes a perfect character
will
fail to manifest the sympathy and tenderness of Christ.
The
influence of grace is to soften the heart, to refine and purify the feelings,
giving
a heaven-born delicacy and sense of propriety. . .
A
religion that leads men to place a low estimate upon human beings,
whom
Christ has esteemed of such value as to give Himself for them;
a
religion that would lead us to be careless of human needs,
sufferings,
or rights, is a spurious religion. . .
It
is because men take upon themselves the name of Christ,
while
in life they deny His character,
that
Christianity has so little power in the world."
E
G White,
Thoughts From the Mount of Blessings, pp. 135-137
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