Inspiration Box

Do you suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused? Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we then prohibit and abolish women? – Martin Luther

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” – C.S. Lewis

“I’m kind of jealous of the life I’m supposedly leading.”

“Play: work that you enjoy doing for nothing.”

Too close for missiles, switching to guns. :-D (Top Gun!!!)

“My most recent faith struggle is not one of intellect. I don’t really do that anymore. Sooner or later you just figure out there are some guys who don’t believe in God and they can prove He doesn’t exist, and some other guys who do believe in God and they can prove He does exist, and the arguement stopped being about God a long time ago and now it’s about who is smarter, and honestly I don’t care.” – Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

“God judges them by their moral choices…. [So when an emotionally troubled person] who has a pathological horror of cats forces himself to pick up a cat for some good reason, it is quite possible that in God’s eyes he has shown more courage than a healthy man…. Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and a good upbringing that we’re really worse than those whom we regard as fiends.
That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man’s choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it.” – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“… the gospel of Jesus was not primarily a political platform. The issues that confront Christians in a secular society must be faced and addressed and legislated, and a democracy gives Christians every right to express themselves. But we dare not invest so much in the kingdom of this world that we neglect our main task of introducing people to a different kind of kingdom, one based soley on God’s grace and forgiveness. Passing laws to enforce morality serves a necessary function, to dam up evil, but it never solves human problems. If a century from now all that historians can say about evangelicals in the 1990s is that they stood for family values, then we will have failed the mission Jesus gave us to accomplish: to communicate God’s reconciling love to sinners.” – Philip Yancy, The Jesus I Never Knew

“Each of us pays a heavy price for our fear of falling flat on our faces. It assures the progressive narrowing of our personalities and prevents exploration and experimentation. As we get older we do only the things we do well. There is no growth in Christ Jesus without some difficulty and fumbling. If we are going to keep on growing, we must keep on risking failure throughout our lives. When Max Planck was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of quantum theory, he said, ‘Looking back over the long and labyrinthine path which finally led to the discovery, I am vividly reminded of Goethe’s saying that men will always be making mistakes as long as they are striving after something.'”- Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

“The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.” – Matthew Henry

“It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what it’s meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” – C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“Our parents were the only ones required to take care of us. Some did, some didn’t. If they failed, it’s up to you – not your wife, girlfriend, boss, minister, children, whoever – to do something about it. Remember: You’ve got one Daddy, and as you get a handle on fear, you’ll increasingly see and know that he’s all for you, looking out for you. No one on this earth is accountable to bring you what you need or want. It’s not up to your wife or girlfriend to fill your emotional holes. That work is yours. Your boss isn’t on the hook to provide a living for you. That’s your job. It’s not your minister’s role to maintain your relationship with God. That’s up to you. Your kids are yours to nurture, not yours to nurture you. This is how real men live – not in a codependent vacuum, but in a vital state of healthy connection and interaction with others.” – Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Guy

“In Luke 18, a rich young man comes to Jesus, asking what he must do to inherit eternal life. He wants to be in the spotlight. It is no coincidence that Luke juxtaposes the passage of Jesus and the children immediately preceding the verses on the young aristocrat. Children contrast with the rich man simply because there is no question of their having yet been able to merit anything…. Children are our model because they have no claim on heaven. If they are close to God, it is because they are incompetent, not because they are innocent. If they receive anything, it can only be as a gift.” – Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

“Jesus said whatever you do to the least of these my brothers you’ve done it to me. And this is what I’ve come to think. That if I want to identify fully with Jesus Christ, who I claim to be my savior and Lord, the best way that I can do that is to identify with the poor. This I know will go against the teachings of all the popular evangelical preachers. But they’re just wrong. They’re not bad, they’re just wrong. Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in a beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken.” – Rich Mullins, Musician

“Optimism is an antidote to one of the seven deadly sins, or what were originally referred to as the “eight bad thoughts.” There used to be eight, anyway, until some Christian monks, seventeen centuries ago, rolled the sin of acedia into the sin of sloth, which isn’t accurate. Acedia, from a Greek word meaning ‘without care,’ denotes the indifference to one’s life and to the surrounding world. Sloth describes a general laziness and a specific aversion to work; Christian Nice Guys aren’t lazy but they are primarily indifferent. This is where deep-seated fear and passionless living lead: a lukewarm existence that pretends it’s somehow virtuous to sit on the sidelines.” – Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Guy

“Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. You find out the strength of an army by going against it, not by giving in. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They always give in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us unitl we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means.” – C.S. Lewis

“Here’s what I know. If you don’t think you’re valuable, others won’t either. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani calls this the ‘broken window’ theory. He noticed that when broken windows go unrepaired in parts of the city, people assume no one really cares for the building; as a result, more people feel comfortable breaking more windows, and eventually criminals take over, all because no one valued it. This happns to people as well, writes Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: ‘Holiness has leaked out of our lives, and we, like abandoned buildings, are broadcasting our lack of self-esteem far and wide’ (Face Your Fears, 183)” – Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Guy

“For what we need to know, of course, is not just that God exists, not just that beyond the steely brightness of the stars there is a cosmic intelligence of some kind that keeps the whole show going, but that there is a God right here in the think of our day-by-day lives who may not be writing messages about himself in the stars but in one way or another is trying to get messages through our blindness as we move around down here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world. It is not objective proof of God’s existence that we want but the experience of God’s presence. That is the miracle we are really after, and that is also, I think, the miracle that we really get.” Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat

This was from the beginning of a chapter of a book that was talking about logical fallacies (I think)

Why firetrucks are red:
Firetrucks have 4 wheels and 8 men.
4 plus 8 equals 12.
There are 12 inches in a foot.
Rulers are a foot long.
Queen Elizabeth II is a ruler.
Queen Elizabeth II sails the Seven Seas.
Seas have fish.
Fish have Fins.
The Finns hate the Russians.
Russians are red.
Firetrucks are always Russian; therefore firetrucks are red.

Websites I visit:
Google.com (and assorted things related to google like calendar and gmail)
Facebook.com
Digg.com
postsecret.blogspot.com
xkcd.com