Craig D. Lounsbrough

Avoidance is paying forward that which I would be much wiser to pay off.

Kicking the can down the road implies that we__e accepted the galling reality that whatever it is that we__e avoiding, it__ something that__ not going to go away; at least on its own.

One sure way I can avoid facing myself is by refusing to look into the face of God.

If I scan the expanse of my heart and find it empty of everything except emptiness, it is because I __oured_ the whole of my passion into something other than God. And anything other than God will always be too __oor_ to be able to __our_ back anything that can fill that kind of emptiness.

It is when I am cold, alone, bitterly forlorn and shuttered from all hope that you will see who I truly am. And my goal is that at those most precarious of moments, what you will see is Jesus holding you through my tears.

The greatest prayers that I could ever utter come from the heart. And when I pray that way, I rarely need to open my mouth. Therefore, maybe I should think about talking less.

My goals exceed the reach of my energies, but my God exceeds the reach of my goals.

Underneath the chaos there stirs a great plan. And it will be birthed only if I give it permission to do so because I have exercised the faith that it__ there.

If I look closely, my failures are less about my inadequacies and more about the fact that I channel my abilities into the wrong places.

The problem with wearing a facade is that sooner or later life shows up with a big pair of scissors.

Sure, things die. Yet hard on the heels of every death there comes a birth. And if the life around me is being perpetually refreshed in such a relentless manner, why would I think that the life within me can__ have the same experience.

Too often our lives are soiled to desperation by endings that in reality are magnificently outnumbered by beginnings. And unless we become convinced that an ending is always the birthplace of a beginning that is on its way, we will live terribly soiled lives.

What I would be quite wise to remember is that __ieces_ are not the end of what was, but the beginning of what is to be.

To blithely discard the spent kernels of something that has ended is to discard the very resources that have painstakingly been harvested from that ending from which a spirited new beginning will be cultivated.

Minutes remain the same length whether they are held against the span of years or minutes themselves. Yet, when minutes are held against themselves, they seem so terribly brief. Therefore, we__ be wise to celebrate life before minutes are all that__ left.

Judging others shackles them to the cold iron of our limited notions.

Somewhere, somehow, something arises out of the ashes of our losses to remind us that nothing ever ceases. Nothing ever vanishes. Nothing ever comes to nothing.

If there is any solace to be found in the carnage of September 11th, may I find it in understanding that the potential to do great good can handily rival the tendency to carry out great evil. And out of that understanding may I commit in my own life to make certain that in such a critical rivalry I will ensure that towers will never fall because of me, but people will be raised up due to me.