Hope

"A Christian’s hope is not a possibility but a promise in Jesus."

"Sin bites bitter. But oh, the sweet taste of salvation, that stirs the spirit!"

"We must leave Christmas to be what it is, for to reduce it to the stuff of myth and whimsy is take the single and sole hope of a dying humanity and obliterate it. And I would contend that such an action is insanity of the greatest sort."

"One of the most amazing things that we often forget is this: God never forgets us! Face it; you could hide under a rock, BUT, God will still be beside you saying, "Rock bottom, already?"

"He cannot do anything deliberate now. The strain of his whole weight on his outstretched arms hurts too much. The pain fills him up, displaces thought, as much for him as it has for everyone else who has ever been stuck to one of these horrible contrivances, or for anyone else who dies in pain from any of the world’s grim arsenal of possibilities. And yet he goes on taking in. It is not what he does, it is what he is. He is all open door: to sorrow, suffering, guilt, despair, horror, everything that cannot be escaped, and he does not even try to escape it, he turns to meet it, and claims it all as his own. This is mine now, he is saying; and he embraces it with all that is left in him, each dark act, each dripping memory, as if it were something precious, as if it were itself the loved child tottering homeward on the road. But there is so much of it. So many injured children; so many locked rooms; so much lonely anger; so many bombs in public places; so much vicious zeal; so many bored teenagers at roadblocks; so many drunk girls at parties someone thought they could have a little fun with; so many jokes that go too far; so much ruining greed; so much sick ingenuity; so much burned skin. The world he claims, claims him. It burns and stings, it splinters and gouges, it locks him round and drags him down…All day long, the next day, the city is quiet. The air above the city lacks the usual thousand little trails of smoke from cookfires. Hymns rise from the temple. Families are indoors. The soldiers are back in barracks. The Chief Priest grows hoarse with singing. The governor plays chess with his secretary and dictates letters. The free bread the temple distributed to the poor has gone stale by midday, but tastes all right dipped in water or broth. Death has interrupted life only as much as it ever does. We die one at a time and disappear, but the life of the living continues. The earth turns. The sun makes its way towards the western horizon no slower or faster than it usually does. Early Sunday morning, one of the friends comes back with rags and a jug of water and a box of the grave spices that are supposed to cut down on the smell. She’s braced for the task. But when she comes to the grave she finds that the linen’s been thrown into the corner and the body is gone. Evidently anonymous burial isn’t quite anonymous enough, after all. She sits outside in the sun. The insects have woken up, here at the edge of the desert, and a bee is nosing about in a lily like silk thinly tucked over itself, but much more perishable. It won’t last long. She takes no notice of the feet that appear at the edge of her vision. That’s enough now, she thinks. That’s more than enough. Don’t be afraid, says Yeshua. Far more can be mended than you know. She is weeping. The executee helps her to stand up."

"The cross unerringly exposes this stunningly marvelous and abruptly exquisite declaration that God will not let this single life of mine, with all of its grotesque maladies and pathetic filth pass into oblivion without unflinchingly declaring that my life carries a value worth the expenditure of His. And if I dare look upon the cross, I am utterly perplexed but wholly enraptured by the immensity of such a love as this."

"It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born.” That line came back to me, from out of nowhere, and I decided to practice radical hope, hope in the face of not having a clue."

"Can you, at a minimum, objectively step back—throw out the stereotypes, ditch the conformity, set aside the religion—and ask yourself, why? Why Jesus?"

"And one day, God would send another baby, a baby promised to a girl who didn't even have a husband. But this baby would bring laughter to the whole world. This baby would be everyone's dream come true."

"If God could do things like that, the world wouldn’t look the way it does. He can’t reach down and change things. He can’t stop any of us doing what we choose to do.'“What use is he then?”Oenone shrugged. 'He sees. He understands. He knows how you’re feeling. He knows how Theo felt. He knows how it feels to die. And when we die, we go to him.''To the Sunless Country, you mean? Like ghosts?”'Oenone shook her head patiently. 'Like children. Do you remember what it was like to be a tiny child? When everything was possible and everything was given to you, and you knew that you were safe and loved, and the days went on forever? When we die, it will be like that again. That’s how it is for Theo now, in heaven."

"Childhood is this time of magic and monsters; hoping for one and fearing the other... The worst part of being a kid is discovering which one exists... So, I chose to believe in magic."

"I want to tell you a story, Alex." Alex nibbled on his bottom lip, waiting. Wondering now if Mr. Today really understood that Alex was turning him down."Simber." The old mage said. Alex automatically turned to the door, expecting to see the beast. Mr. Today shook his head. "No, he's not hear. Simber was my first creation. Before there was Artime, there was Simber."

"Life is magical! You are magic!"

"It is entirely conceivable that life's splendour forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from our view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come. This is the essence of magic, which does not create but summons Franz Kafka, 18 October 1921Es ist sehr gut denkbar, dass die Herrlichkeit des Lebes um jeden und immer in ihrer ganzen Fülle bereitliegt, aber verhängt, in der Tiefe, unsichtbar, sehr weit. Aber sie liegt dort, nicht feindselig, nicht widerwillig, nicht taub. Ruft man sie mit dem richtigen Wort, beim richtigen Namen, dann kommt sie. Das ist das Wesen der Zauberei, die nicht schafft, sondern ruft. Kafkas Tagebücher,18 Oktober 1921"

"For the entire history of humanity, we have stared into fires, hypnotized by the twitch and flow of the blues and yellows. We see the stars of alien skies reflected in the coals and divine messages in the dance of the flames. Fire is magic."

"The Gentle Gardener I'd like to leave but daffodils to mark my little way,To leave but tulips red and white behind me as I stray;I'd like to pass away from earth and feel I'd left behind But roses and forget-me-nots for all who come to find. I'd like to sow the barren spots with all the flowers of earth,To leave a path where those who come should find but gentle mirth;And when at last I'm called upon to join the heavenly throng I'd like to feel along my way I'd left no sign of wrong. And yet the cares are many and the hours of toil are few;There is not time enough on earth for all I'd like to do;But, having lived and having toiled, I'd like the world to find Some little touch of beauty that my soul had left behind."

"My mom used to say that’s why we have memory. And the opposite of memory—hope. So things that are gone can still matter. So we can build off our pasts and make futures."

"I didn't want to remember...yet in remembering, it dawned on me - finally - just how far down God had reached to free me."

"In art, either as creators or participators, we are helped to remember some of the glorious things we have forgotten, and some of the terrible things we were asked to endure..."

"Changes in Meaning:Finally, chronically traumatized people lose faith that good things can happen and people can be kind and trustworthy. They feel hopeless, often believing that the future will be as bad as the past, or that they will not live long enough to experience a good future. People who have a dissociative disorder may have different meanings in various dissociative parts. Some parts may be relatively balanced in their worldview, others may be despairing, believing the world to be a completely negative, dangerous place, while other parts might maintain an unrealistic optimistic outlook on life"