relationships and community on Fickleness

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...

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels.

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 ignora...

Forgiveness vacillates like this. It has fits and starts, good days and bad. Anger intermingled with love. Irregular mercy. We make progress only to make a wrong turn. Step forward and fall back. But ...

Riches are the pettiest and least worthy gifts which God can give a man. What are they to God's Word, to bodily gifts, such as beauty and health; or to the gifts of the mind, such as understanding...

Fatherlike he tends and spares us Well our feeble frame he knows In his hand he gently bears us Rescues us from all our foes

Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.

Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.

It is human to err, it is devilish to remain willfully in error.

How quickly our loyalties fade, oh God. We proclaim you are our Lord, but lives do not reflect that truth. We pay you homage when it’s easy, but live our own way when we feel like it. We praise you to...

Merciful God, if we are honest, we recognize that every fiber of our being is impacted by our imperfections and sins. Even our acts of obedience and faithfulness are overshadowed by our tendencies tow...

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

Constantly choose rather to want less, than to have more.

Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.

Praise has different effects, according to the mind it meets with; it makes a wise man modest, but a fool more arrogant, turning his weak brain giddy.

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.

There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.

Pastor: O wise and wonderful God, in our quick temper and selfish pride, we have not followed your example—you are slow to anger, abounding in love, and show steadfast faithfulness to your children. ...

Laughter should dimple the cheek, not furrow the brow. A jest should be such that all shall be able to join in the laugh which it occasions; but if it bears hard upon one of the company, like the crac...

And yet I decide, every day, to set aside what I can do best and attempt what I do very clumsily--open myself to the frustrations and failures of loving, daring to believe that failing in love is bett...

Nothing is more like a wise man than a fool who holds his tongue.

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is pos...

Countless mistakes in marriage, parenting, ministry, and other relationships are failures to balance grace and truth. Sometimes we neglect both. Often we choose one over the other.

Leadership is often a matter of failing people’s expectations at a rate they can stand.

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotio...

Whether we are easily swamped or nearly waterproof, there’s one wiring challenge we all face: Bad is stronger than good. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt elaborates: “Responses to threats and unpleasantnes...

It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become toward the defects of others.

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.

There is not any thing, relating to men and characters, more surprising and unaccountable, than this partiality to themselves. . . . Hence it is that many men seem perfect strangers to their own chara...