redemption

It's hard to know, isn't it, whether the things we face are just because the world is full of sin and sinful people, or if God is working out a plan,' Grandma continued. 'I happen to think it's both. There's sin, but through it all, He takes the mess we make and paints a masterpiece. In fact, I'm quite certain that before God can ever bless a woman__nd use her to impact many__e uses the hammer, the file, and the furnace to do a holy work.

How I wish, how fervently I ache, to take my mother's hand, kiss her check,tell her I love her, and watch her smile. For me it was not, nor can ever be. But for you, reach out now. Reach out for your mother's hand-the hands of those you love. Say I love you.Don't wait.

It was suffering and incapacity that created all afterworlds - this, and that brief madness of bliss which is experienced only by those who suffer deeply. Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.

The only cure for suffering is to face it head on, grasp it round the neck and use it.

Are we always our mistakes? Does anything we do heal them?

When you fall into the gutter you tell yourself that you can climb out. Then you notice that you__e covered in filth but you still think that you can get out. But the smell seeps into your soul and is always there with you. All you need is someone else to look at you differently, talk to you like you__e someone that matters and extend a hand. Only then can you climb into the gutter.

Have you heard of the most evil things done by people in their lifetime? They have coveted men's wives, killed hundreds of Christians and sold their best friend's life away for just a few coins. Isn't it interesting that they were God's chosen in the bible? ---Saul, Judas & King David

Don't forget - you're the one who swam across the freezing sea at night.

Sometimes you only get one chance to rewrite the qualities of the character you played in a person's life story. Always take it. Never let the world read the wrong version of you.

The soft heart is not a thing to harden but a treasure to protect. For soft hearts extend mercy, compassion, refuge, and God__ redemption to the world.

The deaf who deny they are deaf will never hear; the sinners who deny there is sin deny thereby the remedy of sin, and thus cut themselves off forever from Him Who came to redeem.

It was not enough that the Son of God should come down from the heavens and appear as the Son of Man, for then He would have been only a great teacher and a great example, but not a Redeemer. It was more important for Him to fulfill the purpose of the coming, to redeem man from sin while in the likeness of human flesh. Teachers change men by their lives; Our Blessed Lord would change men by His death. The poison of hate, sensuality, and envy which is in the hearts of men could not be healed simply by wise exhortations and social reforms. The wages of sin is death, and therefore it was to be by death that sin would be atoned for.

The more He loved those for whom He was the ransom, the more His anguish would increase, as it is the faults of friends rather than enemies which most disturb hearts!

Sometimes, most times, when I think back to the people that I loved, the person that I was... I feel like I'm reading the pages of a book written about someone else's life.I can't believe that was me. I can't believe that was you. I can't believe there was an us.It's not that I regret it. It just doesn't feel like it happened to me and yet, I can't forget it. I feel like it's still refracting and reflecting back on me, haunting me.Jesus intercepted my mind, my thoughts, my mistakes, my shame. He's changed me from the inside out. But I'm afraid you still see the stain.Lord, let them see my heart, look at You and Your still-in-progress work of art. Help us all to look beyond our burned bridges, charred reputations, scattered shards of memories, and gaze at the One who took on the weight of all the hate to find the freedom in redemption that we all crave.

But who is Aslan? Do you know him?""Well-he knows me," said Edmund. "He is the great Lion, the son of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea, who saved me and saved Narnia.

God hijacks and bends evil to work peace and healing. If God were only a God of justice, He could punish evil but do no more. Only a God of grace can use our evil to work His good. God__ grace is so much bigger than our sin . Sometimes He__l let us pursue our idolatry until it kills us. Then He will resurrect us and turn our evil into testimonies of God__ grace.Charis: God's Scandalous Grace for Us (p. 86).

It was like magic, but so much of magic is about misdirection, whereas so much of redemption is straightforward and ordinary, piercing true and lit with surprise.

I could shoot you in the foot.""Please do. At least then I wouldn't have to endure this sock humiliation any longer.