Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
September 13 - September 27, 2021
We humans are constantly transitioning, bandying back and forth between the sharpest joys and the dullest sorrows.
A life of wisdom is about learning to think on our feet, about learning to be responsive to the actual conditions of life.
I’ve never found anybody that didn’t want to help me if I asked them for help. . . . And I’ve never found anyone who said no or hung up the phone when I called.
“it’s going to hurt either way.” There will be pain that comes from putting in the effort, or the pain that is the result of continuing to ignore something that needs attention.
You have nothing to lose and much to gain, so keep your eyes open. Seek out someone with a convincing and beautiful life and ask for help.
Eugene told me to “read the dead people” because their work has been “tested by more than one generation and been given passing marks. That means that what these Christians have written has been validated by something deeper than fashion or fad.”
“Being a good writer is 3% hard work and 97% not getting distracted by the Internet.”6 Clearly
The great seventeenth-century mathematician and theologian Blaise Pascal summed it up well when he said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”7
Only those who give themselves over to the absence can discover the fullness of the Presence.
Vacations don’t heal us; they entertain us. Vacations are for occasional recreation. Sabbath is for weekly restoration.
In just a few sentences, Jesus let the world know that the Sabbath does not exist so a rigid rule can be followed. It exists so our withered lives can be made whole.
Wisdom is found in knowing when to draw away so that you can step back in with something to give.
A Christian community should be a place that grants permission to feel the loss, permission to grieve, permission to be where we are, and permission to tap into the pathos of the God who feels.
The experiences and the perspectives you have gained are something money can’t buy and youth can’t replicate. It just takes time to grow old and to see what you have seen. You stand on the precipice of realizing your greatest potential. Yet the society in which we live seems to be actively telling you either that you’re not needed anymore or that you should retreat into leisure (to golf or go on a vacation), away from the life you once lived.
