redemption

It's hard. Being 15, 16, 17. You get so angry. You want to do something with that anger. I guess try to find some other way to let it out. Don't kill people. Don't kill yourself. Let yourself grow up a little. Then you might start to think differently about things. You might get new opportunities to do something with your life that you never thought possible as a teenager." -- Thomas Harvey from the upcoming novel, "Nikki White: Polar Extremes" (Nikki, #3)

I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that divine love, incarnate and indwelling in the world, summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation and atonement with God.

We all long for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human, is still soaked with the sense of exile.

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.

Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.

It was only by faith in Christ that they could secure pardon of sin and receive strength to obey God's law. They must cease to rely upon their own efforts for salvation, they must trust wholly in the merits of the promised Saviour, if they would be accepted of God.

I like this dirty Chase, this crude and irreverent man. I want to go where he's taking me. I need to be dragged down to where he is so we can build ourselves back up, together, stronger.

It's always easier to avoid temptation than to resist it.

We are [God's] by creation, and again by redemption. He has every right to tell me what to do with my mind and body. I have. I right to do whatever I want with my body.

Was it a moment of indecision or was it a moment of redemption. Redemption long overdue and long unacknowledged? They didn__ know. He suddenly went at her mouth and she claimed it as if it was never supposed to be elsewhere. It was stormy. It was fierce. His manhood shafted through his loose night pajamas challenging her even beyond the thickness of her bath robe, which was cast aside in one unsparing sweep of his hand, revealing the quavering ripeness of her fulsome breasts. After a moment of awe, he went at them with unquenched ferocity.First he devoured her there itself, against the wall, on the carpet. Within moments their frenzied hands tore away each other__ underpants with unapologetic fury and then in one smooth motion of a dancer__ lucidity, he lifted her and like a great performer of an opera, placed her on the bed. The inviting altar of desire and passion and longing. Now as they claimed each other, there was unhurried fluidity in their motion. Tears of pain and love in their eyes. Ecstasy of carnal compatibility in their fusion. Symphony of sensuality in their strokes and when he finally exploded inside her, she had gone aflame with matching uncontrollability. It was a heavenly union which in one go had robbed them of their beings, their earth, their universe, their past, their present, their future. In one instant, they had undone what was done and had done what was __ot done_.

We witness the miracle of redemption together with people of like passion

God has a way of picking a __obody_ and turning their world upside down, in order to create a __omebody_ that will remove the obstacles they encountered out of the pathway for others.

The most important gift you can give your children is the importance of standing up to injustice. Children will remember moments spent with you. However, it isn't togetherness that creates humane parents and righteous kids. It is the example of integrity that a parent sets and the on going lessons they teach about compassion toward others throughout their lives. A good father or mother teaches their children that cruelty is not something you cause or ignore, rather it is the moment you suit up for war.

I have a lightA light that guides my sightI have a lightA light that brightens my nightI have a lightA light that makes me a knightI have a lightI have a lightOh yes! I have a lightI have a light!Christ Jesus my LightI have a lightI light that raises me highI have a light A light that makes me see farI have a lightA light that makes me a lightI have a lightI have a lightOh yes! I have a lightI have a light!Christ Jesus my LightI have a lightA light that makes me rightI have a lightA light that makes me wiseI have a lightA light that makes me brightI have a lightI have a lightOh yes! I have a lightI have a light!Christ Jesus my Light

An act of redemption, the ultimate act of personal grace, is an undervalued form of courage.

I don__ mind my friends calling me 'Thornes,' but the fact of people calling me 'Prickly Thornes' draws the line.

Your dignity can be mocked, abused, compromised, toyed with, lowered and even badmouthed, but it can never be taken from you. You have the power today to reset your boundaries, restore your image, start fresh with renewed values and rebuild what has happened to you in the past.

God can allow you to pass through storms and get to your success. But what the devil loves to do is to make you not to realize it that the storm is over. He wishes to keep you in condemnation even at the time you have to feel liberated.