"Christmas is everything that God would do, and nothing that we would imagine Him doing."

"Why is it that none of the things I construct ever make me feel safe? The answer lies in the fact that safety can't be created. It can only be found. And the only thing I've found that's never been created is God."

"The greatest dividends in life are those that we give away."

"The death of our self-worth begins at its appraisal, for such an action erroneously implies that our worth can be quantified."

"And so to tame Christmas we spin myths to temper the story, we create our own caricatures to speak our own lines into the script, we gift ourselves to enhance an adventure now lagging, and we think we're on a grand adventure when we've completely forgotten what an adventure is."

"Easter is a time when God turned the inevitability of death into the invincibility of life."

"Sooner or later I will be faced with the fact that the world is helpless to meet my needs. And at that point, I will be left with two conclusions; that life is cruel or God is real."

"The worst of me is the raw material from which God molds the best of me."

"Sometimes chaos is the very thing that deliberately shakes up our neatly ordered world's in order to get us out of the neatly ordered ruts that have kept us stuck."

"Mediocrity is 'purpose' left to rot in minds ensnared in the deluded rationalization that vision is nothing more than a collection of fanciful dreams constructed by an imaginary God."

"God's eyes readily see beyond our actions, for our actions are simply fear and selfishness pretending to be us."

"Greatness demands that I understand that I am not nearly as big as I thought myself to be, but that I am capable of becoming far bigger than I ever imagined myself to be."

"To seek the praise of men as our motivation is to abandon truly great things, for more often than not truly great things elicit the ire of men far more than they garner their praises."

"Sadly, in too many cases surrender is having been 'outrun' by fear rather than having 'run out' of heart."

"Be absolutely assured that we will die long before our own deaths if we ever allow the fear of adulthood to kill the wonder of childhood."

"In the oddity or maybe the miracle of life, the roots of something new frequently lie in the decaying husks of something old."

"My decisions determine my destination long before I ever get there. And once I do get there, I suddenly realize this is not the destination I had in mind because what I had in mind was the fantasy that my denial had created verses the reality my choices crafted."

"There is no doubt that the most effective way to heal my pain is to purposefully put it to work healing the pain in the life of another. But that means I must endure the pain of not focusing on 'my' pain."

"Fear says that what God has called me to is blatantly impossible. Selfishness says that the cost is unacceptably prohibitive. My humanity harbors other lesser agendas that seduce me to my own death. And I would be wise to believe none of it."

"To dress up today in the threadbare garments of yesterday is to create an impoverished tomorrow."

"Too often there is this sinister greed that pulls at my coattails, subtly whispering in the ear of my soul that it is within my rights to tuck away a few dark trinkets to toy with when the tedium of righteous living gets a bit boring. But God would suggest that I empty my pockets."

"I will either adamantly prioritize my agendas at the expense of the truth, or I will consistently bring my agendas into unrelenting obedience to the truth. And if for some reason you're trying to determine who I truly am, the choice I make will tell you."

"To even begin to embrace the magnitude of God's vision, we must first embrace our vision as being nothing more than vision by definition."

"If I'm surprised at where I'm at, it's probably because I'm not listening to the reality that listening to the voices that I've listened to have put me here. So, maybe I should be less surprised and more disappointed."

"The eyes of love have 20/20 vision when focused on another, and become entirely blind when focused on ourselves."

"To only see 'death' in death is to somehow assume that death itself is a barrier so abrupt that God Himself is halted by it. To see 'life' in death is to understand that death is a sprawling horizon to a new beginning that God created long before death ever thought to show up."

"Hope is oxygen to the soul, and God is the oxygen of hope."

"In a very tragic kind of way, sometimes things have to be gone before I fully realize that they were ever there."

"Oh yes, I am frequently driven to an enraged frenzy by the blatantly crass actions of others. But to be painfully honest, that anger is much less driven by the reality of their actions and far more fueled by the realization that everything I am is everything that I hate in them."

"The real promise in too many promises is a promise that I'm going to be disappointed."

"Genius without wisdom is like a plane without wings, it will navigate the runway but it will never know the sky."

"The only thing I have to wait for to change my life is my attitude."

"Men can dig wells, but they can't create water."

"Consequences are not the spoiler that kills my dreams. Rather, they are the lessons that enhance my dreaming."

"Truth is its own defense, therefore if something can't speak for itself, it's not truth."

"Greatness untethered from God results in calamity unrestrained by men."

"If I can't quite figure out what an ego is, all I have to do is look for the thing that's killing itself in the very act of feeding itself."

"Fear is often bred of an imagination that couldn't let something be what it actually was."

"To keep my life free of evil I must of necessity keep my life full of God, for keeping my life full of anything else will give evil everything else."

"What I allow into my head finds its way to my heart, which is a porthole to my soul. Therefore, I might be wise to consider the state of my soul, and then walk this process backwards."

"For once in my life maybe I ought to actually think about taking God at His word, and in doing so to suddenly find myself riotously welcoming the rather shocking reality that Christmas is truly everything that He says it is."

"All too soon the garden of childhood is paved cold with the asphalt roads of adulthood. And while it is not within her power to halt this unrelenting progression, a mother can diligently guard this most precious garden and insure that the roads become gentle paths that wind through it instead of byways that kill it."

"With God, the word 'impossible' is itself impossible."

"Because thankfulness is the tonic that always cures the cancers of greed, envy and jealously, it should be taken in liberal doses daily."

"My soul is utterly frantic for that single place of perfect refuge from which I can clearly see the winds rip and hear the tempest tear, yet despite the ferocity of the tumult I rest in such a sublime peace it is as if neither existed at all. And if I have not yet found such a place, it is because I have not yet found God."

"I must be ever so careful to remember that my pain is a precious salve that when used in the service of others can heal a thousand wounds and more. And I must likewise remember that if I do not use it as such, I have done nothing more than wound myself yet again."

"The 'gods' that do us the greatest harm are the gods we deny having."

"We need to know that our limits do not define our limitations. And an empty tomb does exactly that."

"Starting over is opportunity informed by failure, which is opportunity made intelligent."

"It's not that I've 'faked my own death' as the saying goes. Maybe it's that I've 'faked my own life,' and in doing so I've yet to realize how dead I really am."