relationships and community on Humor

"Love! The walks over soft grass, the smiles over candlelight, the arguments over everything else."

Some years ago, the syndicated newspaper columnist Sidney J. Harris shared an interesting anecdote from one of his friends. Each evening, this friend would stop at the same newsstand to buy a newspape...

Communicating with people is often easier said than done. Take for instance this apocryphal story of the census taker who had to venture many miles down a country road to reach a cabin. As the man pul...

The British actress Sybil Thorndike was married to Sir Lewis Casson another prolific actor. Their marriage was rather tumultuous at times, and after his death, she was once asked, “Did you ever think ...

Humility is freedom from the need to prove you are superior all the time, but egotism is a ravenous hunger in a small space—self-concerned, competitive, and distinction-hungry. Humility is infused wit...

Tolerance is a cheap, low-grade parody of love. Tolerance is not a great virtue to aspire to. Love is much tougher and harder.

Most Holy Lord, we speak with eloquence, but have no love. We speak truth to power, pontificate, and smugly consider our knowledge superior to others, but display little to no charity. We give sacrifi...

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity..

Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.

Beware you are not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.

Pastor: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and i...

Love alone makes heavy burdens light and bears in equal balance things pleasing and displeasing. Love bears a heavy burden and does not feel it, and love makes bitter things tasteful and sweet.

The final word is love.

I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so.

Prayer of Adoration Father: You know us and love us from eternity. Jesus: You love us enough to die for us and be rise again to give us eternal life. Spirit: You pour out love to us every day, in...

The furniture salesman said the couch would seat five friends without a problem. Then I realized, I don’t have five friends without a problem. Old joke—sorry—but still. It reminds me of the old saying...

Love takes up where knowledge leaves off.

Love is hunting for bigger game than happiness. Love is a union of souls. When one member of a couple suffers from Alzheimer’s, the other doesn’t just go away. Instead, as Lewis puts it, love says, “B...

Sharan Merriam and Carolyn Clark, in their fine study Lifelines , effectively show that life is fundamentally about two things—our work and our relationships. And maturity is found in having the c...

It’s been said home is the place where they have to let you in. While it’s a reach to say I’m friends with each of my family members, our relationships thrive because we share a mutual, understood res...

Religion is like a knife: you can either use it to cut bread, or stick in someone’s back.

Maurice Sendak, author and illustrator of and other children’s books, gets many letters from his young fans. A favorite was a “charming” drawing sent on by a little boy’s mother. “I loved it,” Sendak ...

A gift’s value is in the way it makes and reaffirms bonds between people. It’s an expression of a relationship. This isn’t to say that the cost of a gift doesn’t matter, but it certainly isn’t the mos...

If love is the soul of Christian existence, it must be at the heart of every other Christian virtue. Thus, for example, justice without love is legalism; faith without love is ideology; hope without l...

Only the one true God can take the risk of ruling by relying on the power of humility and love.

Dearest Brothers and Sisters, the One who was rejected by family, friend, and neighbor, is the One who expresses love for sinners like us. He epitomizes the love of which Paul wrote to the Corinthian ...

Friends, go now with this knowledge, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now we know in part, but then we will know fully, even as we have been fully known. But now faith, hope,...

I heard about a woman who married a very demanding, hard, and unloving man. Her husband made her existence miserable by presenting her with a list of his demands and expectations… The woman’s husband ...

Loving God, we confess today: We don’t even know what love truly is. We talk about love when we talk about favorite television shows and foods. We talk about love as if it happens to us. We describe l...

Once, while on vacation, on our way to church, Terri and I got into a disagreement over something. When I felt I was losing, to make my point, I stopped the car and got out. We were on a country road....