Thoughts to Ponder
Check back for more Thoughts to Ponder.

I believe in the sun, even if it does not shine.
I believe in love, even if I do not feel it.
I believe in God, even if I do not see him.
An inscription on a wall of the Warsaw Ghetto by an unknown Jew, circa 1942 to hope against a hope is still a form of hoping.

The human loves can be glorious images of Divine love. No less that that: but also no more.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.
Søren Kierekegaard, Philosophical Fragments

Blessed are those who mourn" is, paradoxically, a more necessary message than "Rejoice in the Lord always," because there can be no true rejoicing until we have stopped running away from mourning.
Simon Tugwell, The Beatitudes

It is impossible for one to live without tears who considers things exactly as they are.
Gregory of Nyssa, De Beatitudine

"God never wastes a hurt.  He's able to take the tangled loose ends of our lives and weave them into something beautiful that brings out the best in us and makes us useful in the lives of other people.  But helping has to include more than simply connecting at the point of our pain.  When two people who've experienced similar hurts get together, they can certainly understand one another.  This creates an instant rapport.  ... The challenge is not to equate rapport and understanding with helping.  ... [2 Corinthians 1:3,4] Paul's point is that it's out of the comfort we've received that we are able to offer comfort to others.  Notice it's not merely out of the pain we've suffered.  So two people with similar stories of pain can commiserate, but no real healing will occur unless one of the individuals has experienced God's comfort and is able to point the other person to that same hope and healing."
Marv Penner, Help! My Kids are Hurting: A Survival Guide to Working with Students in Pain.

I think we're all made for intimacy, but intimacy carries its risks.  People can reject us, people can disappear, they can die but pornography offers this art of artificial intimacy with no risks.
Nate Larkin, www.iamsecond.com/#/seconds/Nate_Larkin/

"My personal opinion is that everyone is an addict.  Some of our addictions are more respectful than others.  A workaholic will destroy his self and destroy his family every bit effectively and efficiently as an alcoholic would or sex addict." 
Nate Larkin, www.iamsecond.com/#/seconds/Nate_Larkin/

It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcoholic addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts.
Rep. Shirley Chisholm at a Congressional hearing on crime

Your marriage is more than a sacred covenant with another person. It is a spiritual discipline designed to help you know God better, trust him more fully, and love him more deeply.
Gary Thomas, Sacred Marriage

The night you were born, I ceased being my father's boy and became my son's father. That night I began a new life.
Henry Gregor Felson, Letters to a Teenage Son

It is much easier to become a father than to be one.
Kent Nerburn, Letters to My Son: Reflections on Becoming a Man

[Philippians 4:4, 6-8, and 9b] The practice of thanksgiving is one of the best ways I know to cease worrying.  However, to understand thanksgiving properly we must first of all combat a dangerous heresy in contemporary Christianity.  The false notion that we are to thank God for everything has caused immeasurable pain and damage to many Christians.  ... The Philippians passage I just cited stresses that we can "in everything ...with thanksgiving" present our request to God.  In all our situations we can find reason to thank God ... but we certainly are not commanded to thank God for the evils that befall us.
Marva J. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting.