Craig D. Lounsbrough

To embrace the message of Christmas is to throw off my hedonistic rebellion and bow before the chafing reality that I can't save myself, and in that very act to be suddenly taken aback in that I've stumbled upon the very freedom I've longed for in the very place I'd least expected it.

Sometimes the very things that we__e expending our lives to sustain are the very things that are killing our ability to live. And against our blind and frequently raging protests, these are the very things that God let__ die so that we can live.

That which I cannot hold is that which I can treasure the most because it affords me no burden other than to enjoy it.

One of the greatest lies is to believe that we don__ have value. One of the greatest mistakes is to act on that belief. And the greatest liberation is found in looking at the cross of Christ and realizing the enormity of the lie.

To embrace an attitude of humility is to free myself from myself. And that is likely the great liberation of all.

The assumption of __ights_ is the cancer of privilege.

We work hard to believe that our actions really don__ affect others all that much because we want the license to act without thinking all that much.

I don__ know that love is freedom. Rather, I think it__ more a force to preserve freedom.

The birthplace of anarchy is the cemetery of freedom.

It is not the chains of some tyrant that robs us of freedom. Rather, it is the staleness of our attitude.

Rights_ are __rivileges,_ and if I am arrogant enough to demand the former without respecting the latter I will lose both.

Shame is embarrassment multiplied against itself until it dies under it__ own weight and we with it. Forgiveness is freedom multiplied against the Cross until it flies under it__ own liberation and we with it.

Every tomorrow is an outcome of what I do today, and the beauty of it all is that today is happening all the time.

I can be absolutely assured that any endeavor of which God is not a part is most certainly a step backward. And any step backward is at least two steps behind where I__ be if I__ have gone forward in the first place.

Decisions are the privilege we__e been granted to have a hand in penning the script of our lives. And in the writing, the question is not the availability of the paper or the pen. The question is the wisdom to use them rightly.

Consequences are not the spoiler that kills my dreams. Rather, they are the lessons that enhance my dreaming.

Men can dig wells, but they can__ create water.

What is an adventure, I might ask? And in the asking, I might begin to understand that my adventures are sorely limited to the confines of my lackluster imagination. Therefore, an adventure of the most robust and wild sort must be constructed by an unlimited imagination. And unless I am mistaken, only God has an imagination like that.