stages of life on Foolishness

May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart. May God bless you...

Prayer of Confession All: Certainly God is good to his people, to those pure in heart, but as for me, I nearly stumbled; I nearly lost my sure footing. I struggle with envy as I look at the those in ...

If you young fellows were wise, the devil couldn't do anything to you, but since you aren't wise, you need us who are old.

In the first century, children enjoyed little esteem and virtually no respect. While families appreciated their own children, society merely tolerated them. The very language of the day reveals this f...

Fancy and humor, early and constantly indulged in, may expect an old age overrun with follies.

Charles Spurgeon related a trip through the Lake District, when a dense fog descended on him and his fellow travelers, “we felt ourselves to be transported into a world of mystery where everything was...

The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy describes a view (not his own view, because Tolstoy was a Christian) of the human person, based on a theory of reality he saw emerging in his day. It is a narrative that...

Good people will mirror goodness in us, which is why we love them so much, Not so mature people will mirror their own unlived and confused life unto us, which is why they confuse and confound us so mu...

The mind has a dumb sense of vast loss—that is all. It will take mind and memory months and possibly years to gather the details and thus learn and know the whole extent of the loss.

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wi...

Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a ...

Beware of him who hates the laugh of a child.

Light griefs can speak; great ones are dumb.

Once upon a time, which is to say at a time beyond time, or belief that there was not because there could not be such belief was not because there could not be such at a different kind of time altoget...

Writing about ministering to postmodern skeptics, Don Everts and Doug Schaupp share a helpful insight into the mystery of God's movement: The first lesson they have taught us about the path to f...

Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they are going to catch you in next.

Father, as adults, we can fool ourselves into being quite self-sufficient. Yet, You have called us to be precariously dependent upon You. When we see how Jesus welcomes the little children, we can als...

And yet the wiser mind Mourns less for what age takes away Than what it leaves behind.

It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a man’s death hallows him anew to us; as if life were not sacred, too.

According to Greek mythology, people once knew in advance their exact day of death. Everyone on earth lived with a deep sense of melancholy, for mortality hung like a sword suspended above them. All t...

Have you ever noticed that some people hide their kindness? Fred Allen, an American comedian and writer, would always hide behind his own cynicism after performing a kind act. One time Allen rushed ou...

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief, More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring. Comforter, where, where is your comforting? Mary, mother of us, where is your relief? My cri...

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.

If youth but knew; if age but could.

Time, like an ever rolling stream, Bears all its sons away; They fly forgotten as a dream Dies at the break of day. The busy tribes of flesh and blood With all their cares and fears, Are carried downw...

Some kind of loss is usually necessary to turn the mind toward faith. If you’re satisfied with want you’ve got, you’re hardly going to look for anything better.

At some point in childhood we all make the powerful discovery that we can manipulate the truth about ourselves.

Good people will mirror goodness in us, which is why we love them so much, Not so mature people will mirror their own unlived and confused life unto us, which is why they confuse and confound us so mu...

Even as we eagerly await your return, Lord Jesus, we must confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart, with our entire mind, nor with all of our strength. We have loved our rituals and our...

Father Time is not always a hard parent, and, though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who have used him well.