There is always something left to love.

I must be an emotional archaeologist because I keep looking for the roots of things, particularly the roots of behavior and why I feel certain ways about certain things.

If you can love the wrong one so much, just imagine how much you can love the right one.

God wants to give me more blessings than I am willing to receive. He is willing to give me more forgiveness and love than I’m willing to receive. I insult Him by acting as if He doesn’t love me, but I know the moment I receive all He has for me, I can no longer feel sorry for myself.

The problem with me is that I’ve always waited and what if I’ll be waiting my entire life. Waiting for something that will never happen. Waiting for someone who will forget about me. Waiting for nothing.

You can begin as if nothing had ever gone wrong. White as snow.

Don’t save up love like you’re going to need it later; we’re rivers, not reservoirs.

The thing I love about God is He intentionally guides people into failure. He made us be born as little kids who can’t walk or talk or even use a bathroom correctly. We have to be taught everything. All that learning takes time, and He made us so we are dependent on Hom, our parents, and each other. The whole thing is designed so we try again and again until we finally get it right. And the whole time He is endlessly patient.  I love those passages in Scripture where Jesus teaches the disciples something, saying, “I want to teach you to think differently about life.” They walked with Him for years, and some of them didn’t learn everything they needed to know until after He’d gone back to heaven. Yet, even though they were slow to learn, they still refer to themselves as His beloved. Failure is just part of the process not just okay; it’s better than okay. God doesn’t want failure to shut us down. God doesn’t make it a three-strikes-you’re-out sort of thing. It’s more about how God helps us dust ourselves off so that we can swing for the fences again. And all of this without keeping a meticulous record of our screw-ups.

One of the most satisfying experiences I know is just fully to appreciate an individual in the same way I appreciate a sunset. When I look at a sunset … I don’t find myself saying, “Soften the orange a little on the right hand corner, and put a bit more purple in the cloud color” … I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch it with awe as it unfolds. It is this receptive, open attitude which is necessary to truly perceive something as it is.

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us.

But it was Jesus who taught me there was nothing I could really lose if I had Him.

Love is not making someone feel good; it is not avoiding conflict; it is not merely getting along. Love is a commitment to see Christ grow in the heart of the other by offering a strength that disrupts patterns of idolatry and a tenderness that invites reconciliation and hope. Love will be tender and long-suffering; it will also be bold and wounding. If it involves one without the other, then it is an offer of something less than God’s character. We are told that God is a God of mercy and strength (Psalm 62:11). To love others is to give them a taste of the full character of God.

Somebody put it to me by saying: “I can believe in God alright, but what I can’t swallow is this idea of Him listening to several hundred million human beings who are all addressing Him at the same moment.” Well that, of course, is what happens to us. Our life comes to us moment by moment. One moment disappears before the next comes along, and there’s room for precious little in each. That’s what Time is like. Almost certainly God is not in Time. His life doesn’t consist of moments following one another. The point I want to drive home is that God has infinite attention, infinite leisure to spare for each one of us. He doesn’t have to take us in the line. You’re as much alone with Him as if you were the only thing He’d ever created. When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you’d been the only man in the world.

I wanted to tell you that wherever I am, whatever happens, I’ll always think of you, and the time we spent together, as my happiest time. I’d do it all over again, if I had the choice. No regrets.