With difficult spiritual questions we sometimes just need to know that an answer is possible, even if we don’t yet know what it is. Shapes and shadowy forms suggest something concrete beyond the veil, and that is enough for man to believe.
If you never have quiet,
You will never hear the things
That don’t make any noise.
One of the great quests of this life,
Is to find something that matters more to you than life,
Something for which you would give up your life.
For if you do not,
Then you haven’t transcended life.
You may have learned to hate evil,
But you will still never know peace,
Until you learn to love God.
The only one with the authority to dismantle your belief in God,
Is God, Himself.
There is a world of difference between wanting to be right,
Versus wanting to be true.
Seek to be true, even when it reveals that you weren’t right.
The man who admits to being uncertain,
Is closer to the truth,
Than the man who insists he has sure knowledge.
No argument, or even well-meaning discussion, will accomplish anything meaningful, unless you get to speak to the real, authentic soul that lives within the other person. Glimpses of that genuine, vulnerable soul are very rare. It is almost always shut up behind a facade, which you will never make any serious impression upon.
I would far rather have a man disagree with my genuine beliefs, than for him to disagree with fabricated positions I have never held.
If you try to tell me what I believe to discredit my faith, then your disagreement with me is not rational, it is emotional.
Much of what we call “suffering” is simply going through pain that we don’t think we’re supposed to. We had a plan or an expectation for life, and the pain is ruining all of that, and it can be a crippling disappointment that some never grow past.
Growth comes in accepting. It comes in saying, “Well maybe this is the right pain for me. Maybe this is here for me to learn how to get through it. Maybe this is exactly the path my quest was meant to follow.” Purposeful pain yields growth, meaningless suffering only yields agony.
Spiritual Wanderings 