"Christmas is not a story birthed of a humanized god for it simply doesn't fit into the rubric of such an emaciated plot."

"Integrity is the antithesis of compromise and the sworn enemy of comfort. It bases its decisions not on how much discomfort we might be able to avoid, but on how much we need to avoid the compromise of comfort."

"To declare myself as a genius immediately evidences that I am not."

"To forget is to blithely toss aside the hard lessons that were hard won by others before us, thereby needlessly dooming us to endure the hard lessons that are likely to be forgotten by those who will follow us. And it is altogether reasonable that in order to avoid this repetitive trouncing, God graciously granted us memories."

"I am far too often the author of terribly poor decisions. Yet I must rest in the unalterable fact that God says I am far better than what the sum total of those decisions would ever suggest."

"Judging others is too often escapism dressed in the garb of righteous indignation, whereby I dutifully point out in others that which I probably should be pointing out in myself."

"Far too often, it is at the moment where we finally stand on the very precipice of some great thing that we turn and abandon it, for it is at these seminal moments that fear wins and greatness dies. The beauty of Christmas is that God steps over precipices."

"We think that boxes take everything that's bad and they lock all that nasty stuff out, when in reality they take everything that we are and they lock all of those great things in."

"The miracle is that the brilliance of the miraculous can live in the blandness of the mundane. The greater miracle is that we have enough brilliance in our own blandness to see it."

"I tend to walk around convinced that any amount of forgiveness that I could extend could never possibly compensate for the offenses that I've had to endure. Yet, maybe the greater offense is that I've got that backwards."

"The most critical time in any battle is not when I'm fatigued, it's when I no longer care."

"Only God understands how incredibly far we've fallen, and only God understands how incredibly far we can rise. And only we can determine if we're going to wallow in the mediocrity that is born of the refusal to understand either."

"We tend to deny our humanity because in accepting the fullness of it, we would need to confess how little we've done with it."

"We recklessly attempt to disguise our 'greed' by dressing it in the garb of other nobler ideals such as 'rights' and 'privileges.' Yet, if we dare dress 'greed' in an authentic sense of thankfulness, greed will suffocate within the folds of that very clothing."

"If I am so terribly limited as to view my handicaps as nothing more than lamentable limitations, then I have taken some of my greatest God-given assets and completely handicapped them."

"I much prefer not to fall, unless of course I am falling into the hands of God."

"However, in many instances we might be very wise to ask what the consequence of removing the consequence might actually be."

"It's really a rather simple thing to bring balance to my anger. All I need to do is remember that the 'hand of cards' that have been dealt to me pale in comparison to the 'deck of cards' that I've thrown at others."

"Nearly everyday life leans over and says, 'Come on down!' But standing at the bottom looking up, it's finally dawned on me that it's not these invitations that have dug this hole. Rather, it's the fact that I accepted them."

"If my goal is simply to survive the journey, then I'm not on the journey in the first place."

"As I contemplate a relationship with God, I find that I'm afraid to ride on the coattails of the infinite. But what I fear more than that is spending my life in the coat closet."

"Most of the things we deem as impossible are only impossible because we've given them permission to be impossible."

"I want to stand on the belief that great things are the product of ordinary people who are made great when they stand."

"Loss is the uninvited door that extends us an unexpected invitation to unimaginable possibilities."

"I must look at the 'nature' of God, not the 'nature' of the challenge. For the former means everything and the latter means nothing."

"To find one's purpose is to discover one's worth, discern one's direction, wholly dedicate oneself to the journey, and forge an unbending determination that I will not leave the world the way I found it. This week's blog outlines the finding of our purpose."

"It is not within my power to refuse the journey of life regardless of the nature of my fears or the depth of my selfishness, for the definitions of 'journey' and 'life' are indistinguishably synonymous. I can however sufficiently inhibit them and amply fight them to the point that I have accepted the journey, but the journey is now solely defined as my effort to forsake the journey."

"Maybe I don't have enough beginnings in my life because I fought against the endings that were about to birth those beginnings."

"To deny the battle is unwise. To believe that I can fight it without God is insane. To actually do so is suicidal. No wonder so many of us walk around looking like death warmed over."

"Is safety the 'dream' that will kill all of my other 'dreams?' For the truth is, no 'real' dream is safe."

"It's not that I've been invited to the hole I'm standing in. It's that I accepted the invitation."

"The sure path to tomorrow was plotted in a manger and paved on a cross. And although this sturdy byway is mine for the taking, I have incessantly chosen lesser paths. And maybe it is time to realize that Christmas is a promise that I can walk through the world and never get lost in the woods."

"My prayer is that God would continue to love me enough to refuse to answer the prayers I'm praying that I shouldn't be praying."

"If we're missing life it's probably because we're expecting it to reveal itself to us, rather than realizing that life is revealed by us looking for it."

"Tomorrow' is the thing that's always coming but never arrives. 'Today' is the thing that's already here and never leaves. And because that's the case, I would much prefer to invest in today than sit around waiting for an arrival that's not arriving."

"If I am not at 'peace', then I can be altogether confident that I've placed a larger 'piece' of myself in the hands of someone other than God."

"The challenge is never based on the size of the obstacle that stands before me. Rather, it is dictated by the degree of faith that rests within me."

"Betrayal is advancing myself at the expense of the one who I committed myself to advance."

"The road from 'here' to 'there' is a map yet to be written with the pen I hold in my hand."

"Undoubtedly, our weariness is not based on the fact that we're running. Rather, our weariness is all too frequently based on the fact that many of the things that we're running from are the very things we should be running to."

"I have yet to learn that I am not designed to carry the burden of men. Rather, I am designed to carry the love of God so that I might soothe the burden of men."

"Thanksgiving is not some formulaic action based on a tedious ledger that neatly tallies everything I have received so I can determine if being thankful is warranted or not. Rather, it's appreciating the fact that I have already received the privilege of living life which in and of itself will fill the whole of my ledger for the whole of my life."

"We lose the understanding that death always begets life of some sort, and that life is always an opportunist, persistently standing ready to build something out of the smoldering ashes and raise something up out of the tangled carnage."

"Instinct is all of our humanity being deliberately honest with all of life."

"To lead solely on the behalf of those being led is the utter pinnacle of fatherhood, and it is sad that so few ever stand on the summit."

"Strength other than that received from God is just hype manufactured by men."

"Things becomes invisible at the very moment I refuse to grant them importance. And while I am utterly ashamed to admit it, many of the most important things in my life are invisible."

"If a father does not altogether embrace a life of uncompromised sacrifice as the core of all principles by which he nurtures his children, he is a father by birth only and no power on earth can ever or will ever make that sufficient."

"Uncommon solutions can always overcome problems of the most common or uncommon kind if I am sufficiently committed to overcoming them."

"To think that we grasp the fullness of life is to say that by holding a mere drop of water in our hands we are able to understand the immensity of the ocean."