Craig D. Lounsbrough

To grasp love, I must grasp the fact that it is a creation of God and therefore it is forever beyond me. But the very fact that it is forever beyond me is the very thing that prompts me to forever pursue it.

Although it pains me, I must admit that I have never found what I __eed._ And I am in this place because long ago I took it upon myself to decide what I __ant_ to need, verses surrendering to what I __eed_ to need. And thankfully I have realized that God made Christmas everything that I __ant,_ but more so He made it everything that I __eed.

When standing face to face with myself, I far too often refuse to look in the mirror. When standing face to face with God, there is no place where a mirror is not.

The sure path to tomorrow was plotted in a manger and paved on a cross. And although this sturdy byway is mine for the taking, I have incessantly chosen lesser paths. And maybe it is time to realize that Christmas is a promise that I can walk through the world and never get lost in the woods.

God has given me both the right and privilege to outrun Him if I so choose. Yet, if I do so, I will have lost the race.

To understand the mysteries of God we must move past the logic of men.

Despite my incessant desperation, I simply cannot paint the perfect picture within which I would wish to live out my life. And because I cannot, God picked up the brush of love, positioned the canvas of history and painted a manger.

The extent of God__ grace always eclipses the extent of my grotesqueness. Therefore, I can never be bad enough for God to tell me that He__ had enough.

Without a doubt, the most ingenious plan I could ever hope to devise would be to trade my plans for God__.

The promises of God hold up long after the promises of the world have blown up.

I often think myself to be so ingenious that I don__ even realize that my own plans may actually be my own undoing. Therefore, I might be wise to realize that God__ plans undo what I__e done that__ undoing me.

Why in the world have we never found what we__e really looking for? Because what we need is often the very thing we won__ accept. And sadly, in turning away the God we need, we need to understand that we have chosen to live without everything we need.

I find that I spend a tremendous amount of time chasing the praises of men rather than sitting with the praises of God. The former is something I attempt to catch, the latter catches me.

To attempt to know myself __part_ from God is to choose to know nothing more than __ part_ of myself.

Sooner or later I will realize that the very things I most desperately need are the very things I am unable to give myself. Therefore, I will either be left despising the fact that I am doomed to live out a life that is perpetually empty, or I will realize that an empty tomb is the single thing that will eternally fill me.

Maybe I don__ have enough beginnings in my life because I fought against the endings that were about to birth those beginnings.

Easter is God throwing everything at death so that I can give everything to life.

I am pressed to admit that I don__ have the capacity to understand the bloodied horrors of a cross and the wild exhilaration of an empty tomb. But at the point that I think I completely understand God, I have at that very point humanized Him and in that very action I have lost Him. Therefore, I much prefer to simply marvel.