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My father told me once that we are on earth to learn. God wants us to receive everything that life was meant to teach. Then we take what we’ve learned, and it becomes our offering to God and to mankind. But we have to live in order to learn. And sometimes we have to fight in order to live.
Loving someone and then losing them would be much worse than not having them at all.
“God makes me strong. He gives me courage. He gives me peace. He gives me purpose.”
wondering what the future would hold for the two young people who had always loved the other but didn’t belong together. And as their fires were banked, they both smelled the smoke.
ah.. the damage :'(
A rejected infant will often die, even if its basic needs are met. A rejected child will spend his whole life trying to please everyone else, and never please himself. A rejected woman will often cheat, just to feel desirable. A rejected man will rarely try again, no matter how lonely he is. A rejected people will convince themselves they deserve it, if only to make sense of a senseless world.
We can cause pain, but we can so seldom cure it.”
So damn true. A gentle reminder that we also often didn't realize how our words and some little acts can also bring pain for other people, and we can't cure it. Either because we don't know how or we don't know that we are the cause of the pain.
“The more I see, the harder it is to believe in God. What kind of priest can I be if I don’t believe in God anymore?” he confessed, his voice thick. “Some days it hurts too much to believe.” “It hurts more not to believe,” Eva whispered back, stroking his hair. “I’m starting to think God is the only reason any of us are still alive.”
oh how my heart breaks :'(
Does it matter what we call him? Does it matter how we pray, if our devotion is pure, if our love for him leads us to love and serve and forgive and be better? I guess it does. Sadly, it does. Because my prayers could get me killed.
“Eva wrapped all of them and labeled them so we can gift them appropriately. The Jews celebrate Hanukkah, not Christmas, but she says it doesn’t matter. She says we can all celebrate Christ this year, as it is his church protecting her people.”
I like her beautiful heart <3
Sand and ash. The ingredients of glass. Such beauty created from nothing. It had been something Babbo had marveled about and something she’d never understood. From sand and ash, rebirth. From sand and ash, new life. With every song and with every prayer, with every small rebellion, Eva felt reborn, renewed, and she vowed to press on. She vowed to push back, to make glass from the ashes, and that courage was a victory in itself.
We are all products of the places we are raised, the people who love us or have power over us, and the things we hear, over and over again, as we grow.
A boy and his father knelt side by side and were murdered side by side, their bodies falling into a sloppy embrace, and Angelo wept as he prayed. But he refused to close his eyes. He needed to see, to bear witness, even in his last moments, to what was occurring. The blood of the innocent demanded it.
*crying* this is hurt, breaking my heart
Fear is strange. It settles on chests and seeps through skin, through layers of tissue, muscle, and bone, and collects in a soul-size black hole, sucking the joy out of life, the pleasure, the beauty. But not the hope. Somehow, the hope is the only thing resistant to the fear, and it is that hope that makes the next breath possible, the next step, the next tiny act of rebellion, even if that rebellion is simply staying alive.
Like Angelo, I believe that God is quiet. But he is not blind or impartial in the affairs of man. I don’t know his mysteries, and like Eva, I’m not convinced anyone does. But I am grateful to know him to the extent that I do, to feel his love and influence in my life, and to walk quietly with him as best I can.
