Craig D. Lounsbrough

A hole is a space where everything has been moved out so that opportunity has space to move in.

If I have attached anything to sacrifice other than loss, I have at some level assumed a pay-off. And if I__e assumed a pay-off, I__ only assuming a sacrifice.

If you haven__ figured it out yet, an absolutely certain way to lose something as quickly as possible is to forget the privilege you have to possess it in the first place.

I can arrogantly brag that the doors I choose in life open wide and grant me unobstructed passage. But the widest doors tend to lead to the worst places.

To abandon the child __ithin_ means that the adult __ithout_ will be an adult in name only. And frankly, I can only name a handful of things that are that tragic.

Forgiving others simply means that you refuse to be a prisoner of a past that you can't change, and shackled to decisions that you didn't make.

We can hide a lot of stuff until God shows up, for when God shows up nothing is hidden, which includes both our embarrassment and His forgiveness.

It__ utterly astounding that every time I get knocked down God__ mercy compassionately raises me to my feet; His grace thoroughly brushes off every trace of assorted filth I accumulated in the fall, His word precisely recalibrates my direction to insure the success of a journey resumed, and once all of that is completed He gently leans over and whispers, __ow about another run?

To forgive is to refuse to contaminate the future with the errors of the past.

Forgiveness means that you will not allow a temporary event to have __orever_ repercussions.

I tend to walk around convinced that any amount of forgiveness that I could extend could never possibly compensate for the offenses that I__e had to endure. Yet, maybe the greater offense is that I__e got that backwards.

As it peaks over the horizon, does not a sunrise whisper the opportunity to try again. And if the day passes and our efforts were stunted by the bane of our insecurities or blunted by the challenges of life, does not a sunset invite us to rest before it whispers the same message the next morning?

Why does not the stunning evidence of the last miracle grant me confidence in the next crisis? Because my immaturity does not permit such a faith, my desperate prayer is that God would grant me a robust faith sufficient to trust Him not for one crisis, but for an eternity of miracles.

When we choose to stay down, we are in reality confusing wisdom with cowardice. When we choose to stand back up, we are using wisdom to overcome cowardice.

Too often the spotlight that highlights our successes burns out quickly, while the spotlight that scrutinizes our failures is a long-life bulb.

To be careless in making decisions is to naively believe that a single decision impacts nothing more than that single decision, for a single decision can spawn a thousand others that were entirely unnecessary or it can bring peace to a thousand places we never knew existed.

To forget is to blithely toss aside the hard lessons that were hard won by others before us, thereby needlessly dooming us to endure the hard lessons that are likely to be forgotten by those who will follow us. And it is altogether reasonable that in order to avoid this repetitive trouncing, God graciously granted us memories.

I will not find myself, nor will I obtain any precarious morsel of life in giving all of life to myself. If I am ever to find these things, I must first be willing to give these things away at the very moment that I come into possession of them.