We’re social animals Teia. All of us. Without a community, we can’t reach our proper end, our telos. We can’t become who we’re supposed to be when we’re alone. Those without a community become monsters. We can get stuck looking for a freedom that doesn’t exist, because when you’re part of something, the weakness of others puts a burden on you. Maybe even an unfair burden. But you’ll put unfair burdens on your community, too. And let me be blunt. You do. You’re inexperienced, you’re uneducated, you’re colorblind, you’re short, and you’re weak. So in this thing, you are going to help Gavin Greyling. Not because you’re the woman, but because you’re human. You’re a Blackguard. And our community, this precious little thing we have, helps each other grow and become the best us we can be. And maybe he’ll never help you back, but one of the rest of us will. Or maybe we won’t, and you’ll go through life with your ledger slightly unbalanced. If you’ve got complaints about things being unfair, take them to my friends who died at Garrison in on unlucky cannon shot. It’s not fair. But so what? There was a scholar–more of a dramatisr, really–who said ‘Hell is other people.’ He was right, and he was a fool. Heaven is other people too.

- Brent Weeks “The Blood Mirror”

A lie people believe: “My feelings will overwhelm anyone.”

This is a common conviction of people whose feelings were denied by people in their past. If they show certain kinds of emotion, they think it will cause a problem in the relationship. They fear their anger, sadness, and fear.

- Henry Cloud “Changes that Heal”

Why Pastors Are Committing Suicide

Let us love on our pastors, for they give their lives for their flock.

Let us take mental health seriously, and not assume that the maladies of the spirit are separate from the maladies of the mind and body.

Humankind isn’t just some abstraction. To love humanity, you must start by loving individual persons, by fulfilling your responsibility to those you love.

- Cixing Liu (translated by Ken liu) “Death’s End”

If the Lord had not been my help, my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence.

- Psalm 94:17

For most of us, being great is far more important than being good. Being great is most often a description of our talent, but being good is poignantly connected to our essence. Obviously creation was great, but it is far more important for us to understand that creation is the reflection of the very nature of God. Remember, we can create only out of who we are, and everything we create is a reflection of who we are. So it makes perfect sense that all of creation, every stroke of the creative act, ended with an emphatic declaration that it was good. Creation was good because God is good. Creation resulted in life because God is life.

From the very beginning, the Scriptures describe God as an artist. At his core God is an artisan. On the seventh day he rested not from his work of engineering or his work of teaching or his work of administrating, but from his work of creating. Granted, there was in creation extraordinary engineering, profound teaching, and no small amount of administration. The point is not to contrast these actions, but that all those things happened within the creative act.

- Erwin McManus, The Artisan Soul
(via placeofdiscipleship)

No one condemns Tolkien because he put Sauron in Middle-earth. The treachery of Saruman does not defile Tolkien. He does not share in the corruption of the Nazgul. And yet all of these are under his sovereign direction and design.

- Joe Rigney “The Things of Earth”

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

- Flannery O'Connor

Literature, both writing and reading it, is strategic. How many people have been primed to receive the gospel because they read The Chronicles of Narnia as children? And how much medieval philosophy and classical poetry and fantastic fiction did C. S. Lewis have to read before he was equipped to write those precious books?

- Joe Rigney “The Things of Earth” (via placeofdiscipleship)

A letter of encouragement written by Joe Rigney to a friend whose infant son was dying.

placeofdiscipleship:

I take it as a given that Christ is supreme for you and your wife. I know that he’s your treasure and your life. I know that faith in him runs deep in your bones, that your love for him is at the core of who you are. And I can imagine that at times like this your love for God and trust in his sovereignty produces questions like, “If God is taking our son to himself, is it okay for me to want to keep our little one in my arms for as long as possible? Am I resisting God in some way if my desire for my son is so real and so intense and so undeniable, and yet it is so clear that God is taking my baby from me?”
So I just wanted to affirm that, given the deep reality of your supreme and full love for God, your love for your dying son cannot be too intense. It is impossible for you to feel too deeply for him, for you to want to hold him too much, for you to long for his health and happiness with too much fervor. Let me say it again: You cannot love your son too much. This is because, as you’ve said to me over and over again, he is a gift to you. God has given him to you, as a gift, and you are receiving him as a gift. Your son is a work of God, an expression of God’s glory and grace and love, and one that is customized for you and your family. You can only love him wrongly if you love him in place of God. But if you receive him as a gift from God, in all of his wonder and beauty and sweetness and fragility, then you cannot love him too much or prize him too highly, and you should feel no shred of guilt because you love him as you do and long for his health and desperately want to cling to him and know him and spend time with him for as long as you can.
So I just want to encourage you and your wife to plunge headlong into the gift. Savor every moment with that baby. Touch him, hold him, caress him, let the love that you feel for him surge through you. Let it provoke you to tears and sadness and that gut-wrenching feeling that you would do absolutely anything to make your son whole. Let your love for your little boy take you beyond the pain and sorrow to the indestructible joy of the God who gives good gifts and is not threatened by them. It’s as if God is saying to you, “You don’t know how intense my love is for you, how deep my affections are for you. So I’m going to show you. I’m going to stretch your heart to the breaking point. It will feel like you are dying. But if you go with me, into the love, into the pain, into the sorrow and longing and desire, then when all is said and done, you will know that “as a father has compassion on his children, so does the Lord have compassion on you.”
- Joe Rigney “The Things of Earth”

Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense. Proverbs 19:11

placeofdiscipleship:

I think what one has to remember when people “hurt” one is that in 99 cases out of a 100 they intended to hurt very much less, or not at all, and are often quite unconscious of the whole thing. I’ve learned this from the cases in which I was the “hurter.” When I have been really wicked and angry and meant to be nasty, the other party never cared or even didn’t notice. On the other hand, when I have found out afterwards that I had deeply hurt someone, it has nearly always been quite unconscious on my part. - C.S. Lewis

One reason Bonhoeffer wished to spend a year as a pastor in Barcelona was that he believed communicating what he knew theologically—whether to indifferent businessmen, teenagers, or younger children—was as important as the theology itself.

- Eric Metaxas “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy”
(via placeofdiscipleship)

(via stubbornnobodygirl)