If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world
can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made
for another world.
-- C. S. Lewis

We must be willing to get rid of the life we have planned, so as
to have the life that is awaiting us.
-- Joseph Campbell

What seems too difficult for us is a sure sign that it belongs
to God.
-- Marie DePree

[Jesus said,] "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened,
and I will give you rest."
-- Matthew 11:28

The Son of God became the Son of man so that the sons of men
might become the sons of God.
-- Terry Fullam

[Jesus said,] "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God;
trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were
not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place
for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back
and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am."
-- John 14:1-3

Without faith... nothing is possible. With it... nothing is
impossible.
-- Mary McLeod Bethune

[Jesus said,] "I have told you these things, so that in me you
may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take
heart! I have overcome the world.
-- John 16:33

This is what the Lord says, ... "Forget the former things; do
not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs
up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and
streams in the wasteland."
-- Isaiah 43:16,18-19

God never made a promise that was too good to be true.
-- Dwight L. Moody

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old
has gone, the new has come!
-- 2 Corinthians 5:17

Perhaps God brings us to the end of our resources so we can
discover the vastness of His.
-- Neil Anderson

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be
terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be
with you wherever you go.
-- Joshua 1:9

Against the backdrop of people who avoid work, cut corners, and
do half-hearted jobs, a diligent man stands out. Practicing
diligence is an excellent way to stand out for Christ at home,
in the workplace, and even at church.
-- Dr. David Jeremiah

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with
what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you; never
will I forsake you."
-- Hebrews 13:5

Christians are supposed to not merely endure change, not even to
profit by it, but to cause it.
-- Henry Emerson Fosdick

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.
For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
-- 2 Corinthians 4:18

For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and
ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.
-- 2 Corinthians 4:5

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has
any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself
through love.
-- Galatians 5:6

Brotherhood doesn't come in a package. It is not a commodity to
be taken down from the shelf with one hand -- it is an
accomplishment of soul-searching, prayer and perseverance.
-- Oveta Culp Hobby

If Only I Could Keep You Guessing

I would continue this careful dance with you
If dancer’s shoes I wore
Upon my feet they would clumsily cling
But that was many years before

What is before but long begotten past?
An instance for times dawdling hand to leave nothing left to last

But nothing of much can nothing create
For things long forgotten or ignored
I’ve learned that lasting is not an illness
For which I must die to find a cure

Would loving last a loving girl
Of that I’ve never been sure
All I know is that you speak to my soul
And that is more than enough, be sure

I’ll fall for your words like I always do
Wrapped up in a smile that belongs to you
So hold me tight and crinkle that nose
And make me smile back at you

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds
you plant.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson

The angel said to [Mary], "Do not be afraid, you have found
favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and
you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be
called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the
throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of
Jacob forever."
-- Luke 1:30-33

The Spirit of God will not lead a man where the grace of God
cannot keep him.
-- Author Unknown

God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a
virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of
David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said,
"Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you."
-- Luke 1:26-28

Watch your thoughts; they become words.|Watch your words; they
become actions.|Watch your actions; they become habits.|Watch
your habits; they become character.|Watch your character; it
becomes your destiny.
-- Frank Outlaw

When [King Herod] had called together all the people's chief
priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was
to be born. "In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied, "for this is
what the prophet has written: 'But you, Bethlehem, in the land of
Judah, are by no means the least among the rulers of Judah; for out
of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people
Israel.'"
-- Matthew 2:4-6

If we would learn from our prosperity, we would not need so much
adversity.
-- Charles H. Spurgeon

But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a
woman, born under law, ... that we might receive the full rights of
sons.
-- Galatians 4:4-5

I longed to be a flame of fire continually glowing in the divine
service and building up of Christ's kingdom to my last and dying
breath.
-- David Brainerd

[Jesus said,] "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man
remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me
you can do nothing. ... This is to my Father's glory, that you bear
much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples."
-- John 15:5,8

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found
out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in
the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should
never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
-- C. S. Lewis

Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.
-- Bodie Thoene

So...this just in:

Vice president Cheney's lesbian daughter is pregnant.

and...

Some woman got bit by a bat that was hiding in a Christmas tree.

This is going to be a VERY good day.

Therefore Jesus said again, "I tell you the truth, I am the gate
for the sheep. ... whoever enters through me will be saved. He will
come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal
and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have
it the full."
-- John 10:7,9-10

The refiner is never very far from the mouth of the furnace when
His gold is in the fire.
-- Charles H. Spurgeon

We, the Traitors

Adam Michnik, Gazeta Wyborcza (liberal), Warsaw, Poland, March 28, 2003

A German journalist published an article in the paper Die Tageszeitung in which he claimed that Vaclav Havel, Adam Michnik, and George Konrad, Europe’s long-standing moral authorities, had suddenly become undiscriminating admirers of America.

I read that article with a twinge of nostalgia. Here we were, together again. Our three names were grouped together for the first time by Timothy Garton Ash in his widely acclaimed essay nearly two decades ago. If I recall correctly, Havel and I were doing jail time then, and Konrad’s books were banned from print in Hungary. Even though we did not meet very often, we maintained a common ground in our reflections on the worlds of values and of politics. We were united by a dream of freedom, a dream of a world infused with tolerance, hope, respect for human dignity, and a refusal of conformist silence in the face of evil.

We were also united by the specific wisdom of people familiar with “history unleashed,” the experience of the acute loneliness of people subject to the pressures of totalitarian despotism and doomed to the world’s indifference. Every Hungarian citizen had retained the image of Budapest burning in November 1956, every citizen of Czechoslovakia was haunted by the sight of Soviet tanks on the streets of Prague in 1968, every Pole was to keep in the back of his mind the memory of Warsaw in the fall of 1944, murdered by Hitler and deserted by its allies.

We were not fanatics of primitive anticommunism. We saw communism as a historical phenomenon and communists as people capable of becoming democrats. Later, too, after 1989, we—Konrad, Havel, and I—did not like the fundamentalism of anticommunist radicals, especially those who remained quiet throughout the years of the dictatorship and were now eager to string up the communists. I am bringing all of this up to explain who these three traitors of the new generation are, those accused of blind, conformist pro-Americanism by the German journalist.

I do not know whether Havel and Konrad agree, but I will present my own perspective.

I aim to avoid double standards in thinking about the world. I thus aim to use the same criteria in assessing the arrogance of all great powers, not just the Bush administration.

I remember my nation’s experience with totalitarian dictatorship. This is why I was able to draw the right conclusions from Sept. 11, 2001. Just as the murder of Giacomo Matteotti [leader of Italy’s United Socialist Party] revealed the nature of Italian fascism and Mussolini’s regime; just as the great Moscow trials showed the world the essence of the Stalinist system; just as “Kristallnacht” exposed the hidden truth of Hitler’s Nazism, watching the collapsing World Trade Center towers made me realize that the world was facing a new totalitarian challenge. Violence, fanaticism, and lies were challenging democratic values.

This is not the place to analyze the ideology that, while disfiguring the religion of Islam, creates a crusade against the democratic world. Saddam Hussein takes part in this just as Hitler and Stalin did before him. He asserts that in the holy war with the “godless West” all methods are permitted. Waiting for this sort of regime to obtain weapons of mass destruction would be plain recklessness.

This logic is accused of leading to the idealization of the United States, of not leaving room for critical reflection on American policies. In answer to this, I guarantee that I have not forgotten about the U.S. intervention in Vietnam or the American support of despotic, anticommunist regimes in Latin America—the perpetual argument of the intellectuals of the Western European left. However, I also have not forgotten that the American defeat in Vietnam resulted in the North’s armed conquest of the South and a wave of terrible repression. I also realize that while condemning the dictatorships of [Rafael] Trujillo or [Augusto] Pinochet, I should remember the dictatorship of Fidel Castro. Brutal power is equally repugnant whether executed under a red banner or a black one. The belief that there was no rightist or leftist torture, no progressive or reactionary torture, was a fundamental principle we lived by. It led us to reject the hypocrisy of the Western left, which proclaimed that even bad communism was better than good capitalism because it was the former and not the latter that led to a bright future.

What, then, is our betrayal? Today we reject the notion of equality between a regime that belongs to the democratic world—even if it is conservative and disagreeable—and a totalitarian dictatorship, whether its colors are black, red, or green. This is why we will never again say that Chamberlain is no better than Hitler, Roosevelt no better than Stalin, and Nixon no better than Mao Zedong, even if we do condemn Roosevelt for Yalta, Chamberlain for Munich, and Nixon for Watergate.

We do not like Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon because of his brutality and his primitive demagogy, but we would not equate him with the Hamas leaders who openly call for barbarian suicide attacks. George W. Bush may not be our hero, but he is the one we will support in the war with Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, and Saddam Hussein.

Many of us participated in the anti-American protests of 1968, which is why we were horrified and guilt-stricken at the image of so many Vietnamese escaping the regime after the communist victory in tiny boats, risking their own lives and those of their families. We also remember the Manichaeism of the supporters of the Viet Cong who burned the American flag but later failed to denounce the regime. We want to avoid this. Today we are not burning the Iraqi flag; we just do not understand those protesting under Saddam Hussein’s portraits.

The hatred felt toward America becomes absurd when it ceases to be a critical stance that is normal within democratic discourse and takes up the defense of brutal, totalitarian dictatorships. The so-called peace movements of the Cold War burned effigies of American presidents and genuflected before Stalin’s portraits. We will not repeat such a masquerade today.

In other words, we understand the complexity of the world and we understand the complicated relationship between desire and possibility. We understand the drama of the war in Chechnya; that is why we do not call Putin “the next Stalin.” For the same reasons, we are not enthusiastic about America’s relations with the dictatorial regime in Saudi Arabia, though we believe that the democratization of Iraq can have a positive influence on the other nations of the Middle East.

Do we like the internal politics of the Bush administration, its projects to spy on citizens, or the rightist rhetoric of the Christian fundamentalists of the Republican Party? No, we do not, though we do believe that the American democracy, the wiser for the lessons of McCarthyism and Watergate, will be capable of protecting itself from the self-poisoning of the “open society.”

The German journalist accuses us of not being concerned about the Bush policies that lead to the suppression of humanitarian principles in international relations. Certainly we are unsettled, but we believe that what leads to the destruction of humanitarian principles is rather the tolerance of totalitarian regimes and the cowardly silence about the crimes of the dictatorships in Iraq, North Korea, Libya, and Cuba. We perceive real moral values in the people who take to the streets of the democratic world to protest against the war. These mass protests arouse the public’s criticism of the elites in power. Every war presents an excellent opportunity to stifle criticism and gag the critics. The climate of war promotes the violation of democratic procedures and the militarization of public life. It creates the belief that there is only one patriotic way of thinking while all other views amount to betrayal.

Still, we are all the wiser for our history. We remember Munich in 1938, which paved the way for Hitler while enjoying the enthusiastic approval of the war’s opponents. We remember Yalta, whose original goal was to prevent war but which led Stalin into our countries. After all, the reasoning of the proponents of the 1938 Munich agreement seemed sound. People wanted peace, not war. They were happy when Chamberlain read the declaration he signed with Hitler and said: “For the second time in our history, a British prime minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time.” It was Sept. 30, 1938. A year later World War II broke out.

This is why we are at odds with today’s pacifists: We will not peacefully pave the way for those who committed the crimes of Sept. 11 and their allies.

Finally, have we also lost the fear that democratic systems can become totalitarian, as suggested by the German journalist? We have often gone against the grain of public opinion and, before the German publication did, we were accused of betraying our countries. We have spoken about xenophobia and intolerance, about corruption, about the spirit of revenge, about a market devoid of humanity, about the taking over of nations by interest groups or even by mafias. I do not think that Havel’s, Konrad’s, or my own speeches suggest that we have stopped criticizing what is happening in our democratic countries or that we have failed to perceive the temptations and threats of totalitarian regimes.

Today, however, the primary threat is terrorism by Islamist fundamentalists. War has been declared against the democratic world. It is this world, whose sins and mistakes we know all too well, that we want to defend.

These are the reasons behind our absolute war on the terrorist, corrupt, intolerant regime of the despot from Baghdad. One cannot perceive totalitarian threats in George W. Bush’s policies and at the same time defend Saddam Hussein. There are limits to absurdity, which should not be exceeded recklessly.

Adam Michnik is a prominent Polish essayist, former dissident, and editor of Gazeta Wyborcza. This article was reprinted in El País in Madrid, Profil in Vienna, Libération in Paris, and Tages-Anzeiger in Zurich.

When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light
of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but
will have the light of life."
-- John 8:12

Deny your weakness, and you will never realize God's strength in
you.
-- Joni Eareckson Tada

Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will
never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty."
-- John 6:35

I know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ was no mere man:
Between Him and whoever else in the world there is no possible
term of comparison.
-- Napoleon

All that the downtrodden can do is go on hoping. After every
disappointment they must find fresh reason for hope.
--Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Cowards die many deaths each day, while the brave die but once.
--Giovanni Falcone

I thought that the following passages were worth sharing in light of the fact that people have been shooting each other and beating each other up over playstations and other useless crap because they want to be the first to have something.

I think that sometimes in life when we experience the shortlived happiness of passing pleasures and material things, we undermine the true and inexorable nature of our own worth. God has made each of us a masterpiece of creation.

-Rev. Tom Wade, Salem UCC

3If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, 4he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions 5and constant friction between men of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.

6But godliness with contentment is great gain. 7For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. 8But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. 9People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. 10For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

1 Timothy 6: 3-10

Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name
of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
-- Colossians 3:17

How would telling people to be nice to one another get a man
crucified? What government would execute Mister Rodgers or
Captain Kangaroo?
-- Philip Yancey

But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve...But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.
-- Joshua 24:15

Happy Turkey Day!!!

Enter [the Lord's] gates with thanksgiving and his courts with
praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is
good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues
through all generations.
-- Psalm 100:4-5

Have you thought about His (God) handling of the gospel? God
needs to get a message out the human race, without which they
will perish...forever. What's the plan? First, He starts with
the most unlikely group ever: a couple of prostitutes, a few
fishermen with no better than a second-grade education, a tax
collector. Then, he passes the ball to us. Unbelievable.
-- John Eldredge