Between the two...

Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God's grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God's grace.

Representing Christ

The living Word once took on flesh in Mary’s son. The eternal, living Word – Christ – now takes on a new body in the church. Therefore the apostle Paul said that a mystery was entrusted to him, which he calls the body of Christ (Col. 1:24-26). The fact that the church is the body of Christ means that he becomes visible and real in the world today.
Just as Christ was in Mary, so Christ wants to live in us who believe and love. If Christ is real in us then we will live in accordance with and reflect the character of God’s future. The future kingdom receives form in the church.
For this reason the church must represent now God’s peace and justice in our world. This is why it cannot shed blood or tolerate private property. This is why the church cannot lie or take an oath. This is why it cannot tolerate the destruction of bridal purity and of faithfulness in the marriage of husband and wife. This is why the church expends all its life and energy to make room for God to bring everything under his rule.  

Eberhard Arnold

From Little Things...

Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones tend to take care of themselves.

- Dale Carnegie

A Day's Beginning

When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the morning light, for your life and strength. Give thanks for your food, and the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies with yourself.

- Tecumseh (1768-1813) Shawnee Chief

A High Calling

Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A High Price

Don't sell out your virtue and your value for something you think you want. Judas got the money, but he threw it all away and hung himself because he was so unhappy with himself.

- Jim Rohn

Perspective

If we perceive things not as problems but rather as opportunities for learning, we can experience a sense of joy and well-being when the lessons are learned. We are never presented with lessons until we are ready to learn them.

- Gerald G. Jampolsky "Love Is Letting Go of Fear"

Youth

That's what being young is all about. You have the courage and the daring to think that you can make a difference. You're not prone to measure your energies in time. You're not likely to live by equations.

- Ruby Dee

Time

Time is amazing...you spend it, and it multiplies...you invest it, and it intensifies...and you ignore it...it passes you by...

- Doug Firebaugh

The Ultimate Victor

When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.

- Mohandas Gandhi

Something to be thanful for...

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

– Albert Schweitzer

People.

Dependent people need others to get what they want. Independent people can get what they want through their own efforts. Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success.

- Stephen Covey

The Price of Success

The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.

- Vince Lombardi

Happiness depends on...

I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves.

- Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Wellbeing

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, not to anticipate troubles, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.

- Siddhartha Gautama (c. 566-486 B.C.) Founder of Buddhism

Growth

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, tolerant of the weak and strong. Because sometime in your life you will have been all of these.

- George Washington Carver

Destiny

If humans are to fully attain their destinies, so far as earthly development permits this; if they are to become truly whole, unbroken units, they must feel and know themselves to be one, not only with God and humanity, but also with nature

- Friedrich Froebel

Freedom

Freedom is not a thing you can receive as a gift. One can be free even under a dictatorship on one simple condition, that is, if one struggles against it. A man who thinks with his own mind and remains uncorrupted is a free man. A man who struggles for what he believes to be right is a free man. You can live in the most democratic country in the world, and if you are lazy, callous, servile, you are not free, in spite of the absence of violence and coercion, you are a slave

- Ignazio Silone

The Intrepid Smuggler

Mahmud the Palestinian comes up to the Israeli border on his bicycle. He's got two large bags of sand over his shoulders. The Israeli soldier guard stops him and says, "What's in the bags?"
"Sand," answers Mahmud.
The guard says," We'll just see about that - get off that bike."
The guard takes the bags and rips them apart: he empties them out and finds nothing in them but sand. He detains Mahmud overnight and has the sand analysed only to discover there is nothing but sand in the bags.
The guard releases Mahmud, puts the sand in new bags and sends him on his way across the border.
A week later, the same thing happens again. The Israeli soldier asks, "What do you have there?"
"Sand," Mahmud replies.
The guard does a thorough examination and discovers the same thing, sand. He gives the sand back and Mahmud crosses the border on his bicycle.
This sequence of events is repeated every day for three years. Finally one day Mahmud doesn't show up and the guard meets him at a falafel stand outside of Jericho.
"Hey Buddy," says the guard, "I know you're smuggling something. It's driving me crazy, I can't eat or sleep. It's all I think about. Just between you and me, what are you smuggling?"
Mahmud stops chewing on his pita and says "Bicycles."

Misery

The greater part of happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go.

- Martha Washington