The Power of Children’s Books

Children and Books 0

What is it about a good children’s book that has such a seismic effect on so many lives?  What is the special magic of children’s books that we remember all our lives and that is more intense than even the most profound reading experience as an adult?  I think it is that those early books are the first that transport us out of the egocentric life of the child, conjuring worlds of experience and events about which we had never dreamed.  Although that magic transcends the self-centeredness of the child, it also allows that self to roam and become part of the story and the magic.

— Michael Gorman, Our Own Selves:  More Meditations for Librarians, p. 19

Too Easily Pleased

God, Joy, Life 0

The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point.  I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love.  The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself.  We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.  If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.  Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased.

— C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Living in Eternity

Letting Go, Life 0

Living in eternity is, in fact, the way we are supposed to live all the time, right now, in the immediate moment, not hanging onto the past, not projecting into the future.  The past is the rock that is under our feet, that enables us to push off from it and move into the future.

— Madeleine L’Engle, Sold Into Egypt, quoted in Glimpses of Grace, compiled by Carole F. Chase

Friendship in Marriage

Forgiveness, Love, Marriage, Relationships 0

Another important reason to deepen your friendship with your lover is that you are more likely to be kind and loving toward someone you consider a friend.  Friendship is an invitation to be kind and generous to both ourselves and our partners.  When your lover is your friend, you understand that he or she was not put on earth just to make you happy.  Your lover has as much right as you do to have personal habits and quirks.  When we are truly friends with our partners, we show them goodwill and do not just expect to have goodwill shown to us.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 154

Standing

Marriage 0

What is your assignment from God?  To stand with Him, praying for the one you love to be released from the enemy’s control, coming back to the Lord, and coming back to you.  “It is too hard,” someone will say.  What is too hard?  Praying for and being faithful to the one you promised to love?

Do you realize that every word in the marriage vows… can be carried out while you stand?  They are the promises of one spouse to another, without the demand of anything in return.  For your prodigal spouse, away in the far country for a season, may you always say, “With God as my witness, I take you as my covenant spouse, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death.  This is my solemn vow.”…

How many times a day do you think of your absent mate?  How often does something happen that will instantly remind you of the one you love?  Rest assured that you are coming to your prodigal’s thoughts just as often.  When you were married you became one flesh, a relationship that simply cannot be dissolved at will.  Your absent mate may wish you would drop from their memory, but God will never allow that to happen.

— Robert E. Steinkamp, The Prodigal’s Pen, p. 15-16