Eternity Marvel Quotes

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. —"Old Man's Advice to Youth: 'Never Lose a Holy Curiosity.'" LIFE Magazine (2 May 1955) p. 64

The power of prayer is still the greatest ever known in this endless eternal universe.-The Watcher in The Avengers #14

[about suicide] And why is it the biggest sin of all? All your life you're told that you'll be going to this marvellous place when you pass on. And the one thing you can do to get you there a bit quicker is something that stops you getting there at all. Oh, I can see that it's a kind of queue­jumping. But if someone jumps the queue at the Post Office, people tut. Or sometimes they say, “Excuse me, I was here first.” They don't say, “You will be consumed by hellfire for all eternity.” That would be a bit strong.

Situations seem to happen to people, but in reality, they unfold from deeper karmic causes. The universe unfolds to itself, bringing to bear any cause that needs to be included. Don’t take this process personally. The working out of cause and effect is eternal. You are part of this rising and falling that never ends, and only by riding the wave can you ensure that the waves don’t drown you. The ego takes everything personally, leaving no room for higher guidance or purpose. If you can, realize that a cosmic plan is unfolding and appreciate the incredibly woven tapestry for what it is, a design of unparalleled marvel.

None of your knowledge, your reading, your connections will be of any use here: two legs suffice, and big eyes to see with. Walk alone, across mountains or through forests. You are nobody to the hills or the thick boughs heavy with greenery. You are no longer a role, or a status, not even an individual, but a body, a body that feels sharp stones on the paths, the caress of long grass and the freshness of the wind. When you walk, the world has neither present nor future: nothing but the cycle of mornings and evenings. Always the same thing to do all day: walk. But the walker who marvels while walking (the blue of the rocks in a July evening light, the silvery green of olive leaves at noon, the violet morning hills) has no past, no plans, no experience. He has within him the eternal child. While walking I am but a simple gaze.

But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity.

Paris that eternal monstrous marvel … the city of a hundred-thousand novels … a living creature, the great courtesan whose face and heart and mind-boggling morals they know: “They” are the lovers of Paris.

Imagine the marvels we would experience if we believed in the things in which we don't believe.

Don't think about why you question, simply don't stop questioning. Don't worry about what you can't answer, and don't try to explain what you can't know. Curiosity is its own reason. Aren't you in awe when you contemplate the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure behind reality? And this is the miracle of the human mind--to use its constructions, concepts, and formulas as tools to explain what man sees, feels and touches. Try to comprehend a little more each day. Have holy curiosity.

But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found; Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try That long-preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust; The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace.

Let the dust take me when the adventure's done and I shall make the dust glitter for all eternity with my marvelous fury.

Don’t think about why you question, simply don’t stop questioning. Don’t worry about what you can’t answer, and don’t try to explain what you can’t know. Curiosity is its own reason. Aren’t you in awe when you contemplate the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure behind reality? And this is the miracle of the human mind—to use its constructions, concepts, and formulas as tools to explain what man sees, feels and touches. Try to comprehend a little more each day. Have holy curiosity. —ALBERT EINSTEIN

The journey of the hero is about the courage to seek the depths; the image of creative rebirth; the eternal cycle of change within us; the uncanny discovery that the seeker is the mystery which the seeker seeks to know. The hero journey is a symbol that binds, in the original sense of the word, two distant ideas, the spiritual quest of the ancients with the modern search for identity, always the one, shape-shifting yet marvelously constant story that we find.

To His Coy Mistress Had we but world enough and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love’s day. Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires and more slow; An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast, But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart. For, lady, you deserve this state, Nor would I love at lower rate. But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found; Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try That long-preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust; The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace. Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapped power. Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.

I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.

As it is, we are merely bolting our lives—gulping down undigested experiences as fast as we can stuff them in—because awareness of our own existence is so superficial and so narrow that nothing seems to us more boring than simple being. If I ask you what you did, saw, heard, smelled, touched and tasted yesterday, I am likely to get nothing more than the thin, sketchy outline of the few things that you noticed, and of those only what you thought worth remembering. Is it surprising that an existence so experienced seems so empty and bare that its hunger for an infinite future is insatiable? But suppose you could answer, “It would take me forever to tell you, and I am much too interested in what’s happening now.” How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such a fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself as anything less than a god? And, when you consider that this incalculably subtle organism is inseparable from the still more marvelous patterns of its environment—from the minutest electrical designs to the whole company of the galaxies—how is it conceivable that this incarnation of all eternity can be bored with being?

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.” —ALBERT EINSTEIN

Albert Einstein, for one, repeatedly expressed these feelings, as in the following celebrated passage (Einstein, 1949, p. 5): The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science…the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.

He cupped his hand around her cheek, and she marveled at how perfectly his palm fit her cheek. His fingers in her hair, she waited, maybe for an eternity, for his lips to meet hers. When they did it was like being inside an exploding star. Time and space became irrelevant. She slipped her arms under his, clinging to him, his body the only thing stopping her from drifting away, untethered in space. His hand on her back slipped under layers of clothes, finding her skin. He pulled her close, and she leaned into him, feeling like she could never be close enough to him.

He wondered again at the easy, graceful manner in which the Roman lyricists accepted the fact of death, as if the nothingness they faced were a tribute to the richness of the years they had enjoyed; and he marveled at the bitterness, the terror, the barely concealed hatred he found in some of the later Christian poets of the Latin tradition when they looked to that death which promised, however vaguely, a rich and ecstatic eternity of life, as if that death and promise were a mockery that soured the days of their living.

Make no mistake about it: embracing the marvelous calling of God is not easy or glamorous. There will always be obstacles to overcome and seemingly more attractive ways to live. Yet, God calls us to live as His ambassadors among the nations, spreading His love and making an eternal difference in the lives of those in our sphere of influence.

The journey of the hero is about the courage to seek the depths; the image of creative rebirth; the eternal cycle of change within us; the uncanny discovery that the seeker is the mystery which the seeker seeks to know. The hero journey is a symbol that binds, in the original sense of the word, two distant ideas, the spiritual quest of the ancients with the modern search for identity, “always the one, shape-shifting yet marvelously constant story that we find.

Beauty made you love, love made you beautiful.... She pulled her wrap closer round her with a gesture of defence, of keeping out and off. She didn't want to grow sentimental. Difficult not to, here; the marvelous night stole in through all one's chinks, and brought in with it, whether one wanted them or not, enormous feelings--feelings one couldn't manage, great things about death and time and waste; glorious and devastating things, magnificent and bleak, at once rapture and terror and immense, heart-cleaving longing. She felt small and dreadfully alone. She felt uncovered and defenceless. Instinctively she pulled her wrap closer. With this thing of chiffon she tried to protect herself from the eternities.

I am chaos eternal. I desire everything this world and the next offers. I am greed, I am hunger. Oh how I hunger... I want the pathetic mortals of this world to bow before me. I want all that they own, all they desire, every marvelous creation of theirs, but there is only one thing in this world that I need, and that, Muse, is you.

How great indeed is our debt to [Joseph Smith]. His life began in Vermont and ended in Illinois, and marvelous were the things that happened between that simple beginning and that tragic ending. It was he who brought us a true knowledge of God the Eternal Father and His Risen Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. During the short time of his great vision he learned more concerning the nature of Deity than all of those who through centuries had argued that matter in learned councils and scholarly forums. He brought us this marvelous book, the Book of Mormon, as another witness for the living reality of the Son of God. To him, from those who held it anciently, came the priesthood, the power, the gift, the authority, the keys to speak and act in the name of God. He gave us the organization of the Church and its great and sacred mission. Through him were restored the keys of the holy temples, that men and women might enter into eternal covenants with God, and that the great work for the dead might be accomplished. . . . "He was the instrument in the hands of the Almighty.

Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in her full and lofty majesty, let him turn his gaze away from the lowly objects around him; let him behold the dazzling light set like an eternal lamp to light up the universe, let him see the earth as a mere speck compared to the vast orbit described by this star, and let him marvel at finding this vast orbit itself to be no more than the tiniest point compared to that described by the stars revolving in the firmament. But if our eyes stop there, let our imagination proceed further; it will grow weary of conceiving things before nature tires of producing them. The whole visible world is only an imperceptible dot in nature’s ample bosom. No idea comes near it; it is no good inflating our conceptions beyond imaginable space, we only bring forth atoms compared to the reality of things. Nature is an infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference is nowhere. In short it is the greatest perceptible mark of God’s omnipotence that our imagination should lose itself in that thought.

Makina had never seen snow before and the first thing that struck her as she stopped to watch the weightless crystals raining down was that something was burning. One came to perch on her eyelashes; it looked like a stack of crosses or the map of a palace, a solid and intricate marvel at any rate, and when it dissolved a few seconds later she wondered how it was that some things in the world — some countries, some people — could seem eternal when everything was actually like that miniature ice palace: one-of-a-kind, precious, fragile.

It's as if someone bought all the diamonds at Tiffany's, and crushed them into dust, then spread that dust across the water so that it sifts down evenly, filtering through the shards of light that cut into the depth. We are swimming through eternity, my daughters' bright mermaid legs, kicking out, towards deeper water. I stay beneath the surface and marvel for as long as lungs can hold. "Swimming is the reset button," Pallas used to say, "swimming starts the day again.

Isaac's humility did not discriminate between man and man and scarcely between man and watch. In his thought men were much like their watches. The passage of time was marked as clearly upon a man's face as upon that of his watch and the marvelous mechanism of his body could be as cruelly disturbed by evil hazards. The outer case varied, gunmetal or gold, carter's corduroy or bishop's broadcloth, but the tick of the pulse was the same, the beating of life that gave such a heartbreaking illusion of eternity.

Imagine the marvels we would experience if we believed in the things in which we don’t believe.

A dog’s love is forever. We expect infidelity from one another; we marvel at this one’s ability to hold that one’s interest for fifty, sixty years; perhaps some of us feel a secret contempt for monogamy even as we extol it, wishing parole for its weary participants. But dogs do not receive our sympathy or our suspicion—from dogs we presume an eternal adoration.

The laws of nature are sublime, but there is a moral sublimity before which the highest intelligences must kneel and adore. The laws by which the winds blow, and the tides of the ocean, like a vast clepsydra, measure, with inimitable exactness, the hours of ever-flowing time; the laws by which the planets roll, and the sun vivifies and paints; the laws which preside over the subtle combinations of chemistry, and the amazing velocities of electricity; the laws of germination and production in the vegetable and animal worlds, — all these, radiant with eternal beauty as they are, and exalted above all the objects of sense, still wane and pale before the Moral Glories that apparel the universe in their celestial light. The heart can put on charms which no beauty of known things, nor imagination of the unknown, can aspire to emulate. Virtue shines in native colors, purer and brighter than pearl, or diamond, or prism, can reflect. Arabian gardens in their bloom can exhale no such sweetness as charity diffuses. Beneficence is godlike, and he who does most good to his fellow-man is the Master of Masters, and has learned the Art of Arts. Enrich and embellish the universe as you will, it is only a fit temple for the heart that loves truth with a supreme love. Inanimate vastness excites wonder; knowledge kindles admiration, but love enraptures the soul. Scientific truth is marvellous, but moral truth is divine; and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light, has found the lost paradise. For him, a new heaven and a new earth have already been created. His home is the sanctuary of God, the Holy of Holies.

C. S. Lewis’s marvelous essay The Weight of Glory. He writes, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” In light of Lewis’s eternal view of life after death—heaven and hell—he explains, “All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all love, all play, all politics.”20

You are capable of far more than you know. Why do you think I look at you now and marvel? Why do you think I draw close to your kind? I have sung many of you to eternal rest after death, and I have found that the music of a mortal life burns brighter than any magic my songs could stoke.

Upon you will be founded a city, a city past compare in riches and marvels and beauty,” she said. “But first, you must lose yourself, riding on the waves of seven oceans. Only at your journey’s end will you come to rest, and only then will the city rise. It will be a city of eternal summer, a land of surpassing beauty. Indeed, it will come to be known as the city of the gods.” “Where must I journey? Where should I go?” asked the fisherman, staring in awe at her radiant beauty. “Before, between, and beyond. Tomorrow night, take your boat and sail towards the rising moon,” she replied. “And you will find your destiny.

Men may perish, but the world will neither celebrate nor mourn. It will go on.' His smile thinned. 'Would you like to know how?' 'No.' 'Animals will swell to fill the void left by men," he told her. 'And over-swell it, perhaps. There will be other extinctions and other recoveries. The sky will clear, but those who see it will not marvel at its many colors. Those ruins will collapse, burying treasures like this-' He waved at the walls. '-and this-' He picked up the spoon from her coffee tray and tossed it down again with a clatter. '-forever, but the world will go on. Years become centuries so easily when no one is there to count them. Centuries become millennia. The forests will reclaim the lands that Men have razed. Rivers will carve canyons across the scars left by this fallen cities. Mountains will rise up, trapping seas to dry under and uncaring sun and leaving the bones of whales to bleach in the newborn deserts for no one to find, no one to be inspired by thoughts of giants and dragons. And still the worlds will go on, and I will go on with it through ages that can only be measured by the coming and going of glaciers. The stars themselves will shift in the heavens and no one will be there to invent names for their new alignments or remember the stories of the old ones, no one but me. In time, the sun itself will begin to cool. Here on Earth, the world goes on and on as its remaining life passes through its last changes and dies away. It will be quiet. And lonely.' His mouth curved into a bitter line. 'But I'll live.' 'Stop it,' Lan whispered through numb lips. 'I read once that the sun will someday swell and engulf this world before it burns itself out. Perhaps I will finally die with it. Or perhaps I' will continue to endure... my ashes pulled eternally apart through the frozen vacuum of space, and I with no more mouth to scream... still alive.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity

A dog's love is forever. We expect infidelity from one another; we marvel at this one's ability to hold that one's interest for fifty, sixty years; perhaps some of us feel a secret contempt for monogamy even as we extol it, wishing parole for its weary participants. But dogs do not receive our sympathy or our suspicion -- from dogs we presume an eternal adoration.

Men have no right to complain that they are naturally feeble and short-lived, or that it is chance and not merit that decides their destiny. . . . What guides and controls human life is man's soul. . . . If men pursued good things with the same ardour with which they seek what is unedifying and unprofitable--often, indeed, actually dangerous and pernicious--they would control events instead of being controlled by them, and would rise to such heights of greatness and glory that their mortality would put on immortality. As man consists of body and soul, all our possessions and pursuits partake of the nature of one or the other. Thus personal beauty and great wealth, bodily strength, and all similar things, soon pass away; the noble achievements of the intellect are immortal like the soul itself. Physical advantages, and the material gifts of fortune, begin and end; all that comes into existence, perishes; all that grows, must one day decay. But the soul, incorruptible and eternal, is the ruler of mankind; it guides and controls everything, subject itself to no control. Wherefore we can but marvel the more at the unnatural conduct of those who abandon themselves to bodily pleasures and pass their time in riotous living and idleness, neglecting their intelligence--the best and noblest element in man's nature--and letting it become dull through lack of effort; and that, too, when the mind is capable of so many different accomplishments that can win the highest distinction.

Ars Poetica To look at the river made of time and water And remember that time is another river, To know that we are lost like the river And that faces dissolve like water. To be aware that waking dreams it is not asleep While it is another dream, and that the death That our flesh goes in fear of is that death Which comes every night and is called sleep. To see in the day or in the year a symbol Of the days of man and of his years, To transmute the outrage of the years Into a music, a murmur of voices, and a symbol, To see in death sleep, and in the sunset A sad gold—such is poetry, Which is immortal and poor. Poetry returns like the dawn and the sunset. At times in the evenings a face Looks at us out of the depths of a mirror; Art should be like that mirror Which reveals to us our own face. They say that Ulysses, sated with marvels, Wept tears of love at the sight of his Ithaca, Green and humble. Art is that Ithaca Of green eternity, not of marvels. It is also like the river with no end That flows and remains and is the mirror of one same Inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same And is another, like the river with no end.

THE METAPHYSICAL POETS Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime (Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress) While theatre was the most public literary form of the period, poetry tended to be more personal, more private. Indeed, it was often published for only a limited circle of readers. This was true of Shakespeare's sonnets, as we have seen, and even more so for the Metaphysical poets, whose works were published mostly after their deaths. John Donne and George Herbert are the most significant of these poets. The term 'Metaphysical' was used to describe their work by the eighteenth-century critic, Samuel Johnson. He intended the adjective to be pejorative. He attacked the poets' lack of feeling, their learning, and the surprising range of images and comparisons they used. Donne and Herbert were certainly very innovative poets, but the term 'Metaphysical' is only a label, which is now used to describe the modern impact of their writing. After three centuries of neglect and disdain, the Metaphysical poets have come to be very highly regarded and have been influential in recent British poetry and criticism. They used contemporary scientific discoveries and theories, the topical debates on humanism, faith, and eternity, colloquial speech-based rhythms, and innovative verse forms, to examine the relationship between the individual, his God, and the universe. Their 'conceits', metaphors and images, paradoxes and intellectual complexity make the poems a constant challenge to the reader.

How many times had she stared up at this same sky and marveled at the view? How many more times would it take before it got old? She hoped she would never know the answer to that question. The gentle gold of Saturn's surface was ever present like a muted eternal sun. The rings, with shades varied from the same gold of the planet's to a brown so dark it might've been black, swept across the planet's fluid surface.

Everything and all the world became my enemy, and soon my very body betrayed me and became my foe. My leg became a creeping Japanese, and then the other leg. My arms, too, and then my head. My heart was alone. It was me. I was my heart. It lay quivering, I lay quivering, in that rotten hole while the darkness gathered and all creation conspired for my heart. How long? I lay for an eternity. There was no time. Time had disintegrated in that black void. There was only emptiness, and that is Something; there was only being; there was only consciousness. Like the light that comes up suddenly in a darkened theatre, daylight came quickly. Dawn came, and so myself came back to myself. I could see the pale outlines of my comrades to right and left, and I marvelled to see how tame the tree could be, how unforbidding could be its branches. I know now why men light fires

Does not every eternal masterpiece derive from the experience of disgrace, humiliation, wounded pride? The thoughtless mob may wildly applaud a work of art - to me it reveals the devastated mind of its creator. In all the great symphonies of tones, colours and ideas I see a gleam of the marvellous colour trumpet red, a faint reflection of the vision that for a short while raised the Master above the bewildering maze of his tormenting guilt.

Marcus Aurelius had a marvellous sense of who, and where, he was: As the Emperor Antoninus, Rome is my city and my country; but as a man, I am a citizen of the world . . . Asia and Europe are mere corners of the globe, the Great Ocean a mere drop of water, Mount Athos is a grain of sand in the universe. The present instant of time is only a point compared to eternity. All things here are diminutive, subject to change and decay; yet all things proceed from . . . the one Intelligent Cause.

The vanished mother is not mourned for long –once gone, never to return, from her accustomed place, her absence is accepted. And yet, by virtue of her one last freakish stroke, she was to manage, after all, to impress herself upon the memory of her children. Besides, the Room craved marvels. This death of hers, indubitably a marvel, made her a sarcophagus, a gothic monument, enshrined her in the Room; was duly to translate her into the eternity of dreams, into their magic heaven, with pride of place.

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such a fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself as anything less than a god? And, when you consider that this incalculably subtle organism is inseparable from the still more marvelous patterns of its environment — from the minutest electrical designs to the whole company of the galaxies — how is it conceivable that this incarnation of all eternity can be bored with being?

Don’t think about why you question, simply don’t stop questioning. Don’t worry about what you can’t answer, and don’t try to explain what you can’t know. Curiosity is its own reason. Aren’t you in awe when you contemplate the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure behind reality? And this is the miracle of the human mind—to use its constructions, concepts, and formulas as tools to explain what man sees, feels and touches. Try to comprehend a little more each day. Have holy curiosity. —ALBERT EINSTEIN As

was a teenager she’d bought a red clay Buddha in a charity shop, and when her mother asked her why she wanted it, she told her she preferred to look at a fat god laughing rather than a skinny one dying. Rabbit never needed to believe in any god to marvel at the world, to feel joy, hope, love and contentment. Rabbit lived in the moment. She didn’t know what came next, nor did she care. It was likely that death meant a full stop and that didn’t scare her. In fact, when she thought about it, the notion of eternity was far more worrying

What the Fates have decreed, it is not for the gods to intervene. All mortals live and die by the threads they spin—and each mortal shall die when they cut that thread. I mourned my beautiful Ampelos, but he was gone according to the laws that govern humanity, and I could not overturn the world to save my love. All I could do was pluck from him the light of his soul at the moment that he died so that I could save it from the chill eternity of the Underworld. I placed my Ampelos instead among the stars, where his beauty would brighten the night sky for all humanity to marvel at.

This is not to say that joy is a compensation for loss, but that each of them, joy and loss, exists in its own right and must be recognized for what it is. Sorrow is very real, and loss feels very final to us. Life on earth is difficult and grave, and marvelous. Our experience is fragmentary. Its parts don't add up. They don't even belong in the same calculation. Sometimes it is hard to believe they are all parts of one thing. Nothing makes sense until we understand that experience does not accumulate like money, or memory, or like years and frailties. Instead, it is is presented to us by a God who is not under any obligation to the past except in His eternal, freely given constancy.

Without the eternal, one lives with the help of habit, sagacity, aping, experience, custom, and usage. Indeed, take all this, put it all together, cook it over the slow or the merely earthly blazing fire of passions, and you will see that you will get all kinds of things out of it, a variously concocted tough slime that is called practical sagacity. But no one ever got possibility out of it, possibility, this marvelous thing that is so infinitely fragile (the most delicate shoot of spring is not so fragile!), so infinitely frail (the finest woven linen is not so frail!), and yet, brought into being and shaped with the help of the eternal, stronger than anything else, if it is the possibility of the good!

He wondered again at the easy, graceful manner in which the Roman lyricists accepted the fact of death, as if the nothingness they faced were a tribute to the richness of the years they had enjoyed; and he marveled at the bitterness, the terror, the barely concealed hatred he found in some of the later Christian poets of the Latin tradition when they looked to that death which promised, however vaguely, a rich and ecstatic eternity of life, as if that death and promise were a mockery that soured the days of their living. When he thought of Masters, he thought of him as a Catullus or a more gentle and lyrical Juvenal, an exile in his own country, and thought of his death as another exile, more strange and lasting than he had known before.

Her mind was sharpening as she remembered who she was, and the world around her started to melt. The mountains and the sky, the valleys and the wildflowers. Stars she had not even known existed. All of it was draining away like water in a bathtub, but the woman held firm before her, flowers blooming in her dark hair. Not a woman, but a goddess. “I don’t want you to die. I don’t want magic to fade, but I am not as strong as you,” Iris said. “He will surely defeat me.” “You are capable of far more than you know. Why do you think I look at you now and marvel? Why do you think I draw close to your kind? I have sung many of you to eternal rest after death, and I have found that he music of a mortal life burns brighter than any magic my songs could stoke.

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

My own theological views are those of an agnostic—one who doesn’t know. I do not know whether there is a Divine designer or not. As an agnostic, what impresses me first of all is the woeful limits of our human knowledge. I respect the power of reason, but I also respect those aspects of religious faith that are compassionate and consoling. Many people could not live their lives without the consolation of faith. The virtues of religion should not be dismissed lightly. The Christian testament has a beautiful phrase for our limited human understanding: “For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”13 Believers trust the biblical promise that all our questions will be answered when we meet God face-to-face in eternity. That promise is the heart of religious faith. For an agnostic, that promise is a reminder that our knowledge in this life is incomplete. We are well into the twenty-first century, and we marvel at the spectacular achievements of science. But science still does not know how the universe was created or how life began. The Book of Proverbs contains a warning that speaks to us in our uncertain state: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”14 Those who believe they are changing the world, or saving the planet, or transforming the human race, are intoxicated with self-aggrandizing pride. As secular “redeemers,” a haughty spirit is their second nature. Consequently, they are deaf to this biblical wisdom. The secularists are confident that the nonexistence of God is a self-evident fact. It infuriates them that religionists (or “irrationalists,” as Bill Maher calls them) resist what they think is obviously, indisputably true. Believing they know a truth that cannot be known, and that others resist, they are prepared to use any means necessary to silence their opponents and achieve their goals.

Then, as Mag worried the crock into her basket, trying not to squash goats' eyes and violets, the young man reached across the counter and seized her hand. She gazed at him in wonder. He had thick, moist fingers, and she needed her hand to shift the eyes. 'Mag,' he said huskily. His heavy, earnest face was sheened with sweat and the bluish shadow of his first beard. 'How can you not see how we belong to one another? We've grown up together, like night and day. You are moon to my sun, you are silver to my aspiring gold - You would complete me -' 'Wait,' she pleaded. 'The crock is on the violets.' 'Marry me. Together we would become the marvel we seek, the transmutation of time into eternity -' She snorted inelegantly, and felt something peculiar flowing through her bones, an unaccustomed panic, a desperate urgency she barely knew words for. He thought he recognized her as human. 'You are mistaken,' she said coldly. 'And from what I've seen of both alchemy and marriage, all the marvels lie in the expectation.

Clotho: [Be content with this: beyond the Short-Time levels of existence and the Long-Time levels on which Lachesis, Atropos, and I exist, there are yet other levels. These are inhabited by creatures we could call All-Timers, beings which are either eternal or so close to it as to make no difference. Short-Timers and Long-Timers live in overlapping spheres of existence – on connected floors of the same building, if you like – ruled by the Random and the Purpose. Above these floors, inaccessible to us but very much a part of the same tower of existence, live other beings. Some of them are marvellous and wonderful; others are hideous beyond our ability to comprehend, let alone yours. These beings might be called the Higher Purpose and the Higher Random . . . or perhaps there is no Random beyond a certain level; we suspect that may be the case, but we have no real way of telling. We do know that it is something from one of these higher levels that has interested itself in Ed, and that something else from up there made a countermove. That countermove is you, Ralph and Lois.]

On this side of eternity, Christmas is still a promise. Yes, the Savior has come, and with him peace on earth, but the story is not finished. Yes, there is peace in our hearts, but we long for peace in our world. Every Christmas is still a “turning of the page” until Jesus returns. Every December 25 marks another year that draws us closer to the fulfillment of the ages, that draws us closer to . . . home. When we realize that Jesus is the answer to our deepest longing, even Christmas longings, each Advent brings us closer to his glorious return to earth. When we see him as he is, King of kings and Lord of lords, that will be “Christmas” indeed! Talk about giving Christmas gifts! Just think of this abundance . . . You do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. (1 Cor. 1:7) And carols? You’re about to hear singing like you’ve never heard before. Listen . . . Then I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.” (Rev. 19:6, nasb) Christmas choirs? Never was there a choir like the one about to be assembled . . . They held harps given them by God and sang . . . the song of the Lamb: “Great and marvelous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, King of the ages.” (Rev. 15:2–3) True, Main Street in your town may be beautifully decorated for the season, but picture this . . . The twelve gates [of the city] were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of pure gold, like transparent glass. (Rev. 21:21) Oh, and yes, we love the glow of candles on a cold winter’s night and the twinkling of Christmas lights in the dark, but can you imagine this? There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. (Rev. 22:5) Heaven is about to happen. The celebration is about to burst on the scene. We stand tiptoe at the edge of eternity, ready to step into the new heaven and the new earth. And I can hardly wait.

One of the strangest things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live for ever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender, solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one's head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange, unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun - which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone's eyes.

As a drop in the ocean you take part in the current, ebb and flow. You swell slowly on the land and slowly sink back again in interminably slow breaths. You wander vast distances in blurred currents and wash up on strange shores, not knowing how you got there. You mount the billows of huge storms and are swept back again into the depths. And you do not know how this happens to you. You had thought that your movement came from you and that it needed your decisions and efforts, so that you could get going and make progress. But with every conceivable effort you would never have achieved that movement and reached those areas to which the sea and the great wind of the world brought you. From endless blue plains you sink into black depths; luminous fish draw you, marvellous branches twine around you from above. You slip through columns and twisting, wavering, dark-leaved plants, and the sea takes you up again in bright green water to white, sandy coasts, and a wave foams you ashore and swallows you back again, and a wide smooth swell lifts you softly and leads you again to new regions, to twisting plants, to slowly creeping slimy polyps, and to green water and white sand and breaking surf. But from far off your heights shine to you above the sea in a golden light, like the moon emerging from the tide, and you become aware of yourself from afar. And longing seizes you and the will for your own movement. You want to cross over from being to becoming, since you have recognized the breath of the sea, and its flowing, that leads you here and there without your ever adhering; you have also recognized its surge that bears you to alien shores and carries you back, and gargles you up and down. You saw that was the life of the whole and the death of each individual. You felt yourself entwined in the collective death, from death to the earth’s deepest place, from death in your own strangely breathing depths. Oh – you long to be beyond; despair and mortal fear seize you in this death that breathes slowly and streams back and forth eternally. All this light and dark, warm, tepid, and cold water, all these wavy, swaying, twisting plantlike animals and bestial plants, all these nightly wonders become a horror to you, and you long for the sun, for light dry air, for firm stones, for a fixed place and straight lines, for the motionless and firmly held, for rules and preconceived purpose, for singleness and your own intent.

SECTION XI.--The Strength of Simplicity. The soul in the state of abandonment knows how to see God even in the proud who oppose His action. All creatures, good or evil, reveal Him to it. __________________________________________________________________ The whole practice of the simple soul is in the accomplishment of the will of God. This it respects even in those unruly actions by which the proud attempt to depreciate it. The proud soul despises one in whose sight it is as nothing, who beholds only God in it, and in all its actions. Often it imagines that the modesty of the simple soul is a mark of appreciation for itself; when, all the time, it is only a sign of that loving fear of God and of His holy will as shown to it in the person of the proud. No, poor fool, the simple soul fears you not at all. You excite its compassion; it is answering God when you think it is speaking to you: it is with Him that it believes it has to do; it regards you only as one of His slaves, or rather as a mask with which He disguises Himself. Therefore the more you take a high tone, the lower you become in its estimation; and when you think to take it by surprise, it surprises you. Your wiles and violence are just favours from Heaven. The proud soul cannot comprehend itself, but the simple soul, with the light of faith, can very clearly see through it. The finding of the divine action in all that occurs at each moment, in and around us, is true science, a continuous revelation of truth, and an unceasingly renewed intercourse with God. It is a rejoicing with the Spouse, not in secret, nor by stealth, in the cellar, or the vineyard, but openly, and in public, without any human respect. It is a fund of peace, of joy, of love, and of satisfaction with God who is seen, known, or rather, believed in, living and operating in the most perfect manner in everything that happens. It is the beginning of eternal happiness not yet perfectly realised and tasted, except in an incomplete and hidden manner. The Holy Spirit, who arranges all the pieces on the board of life, will, by this fruitful and continual presence of His action, say at the hour of death, "fiat lux," "let there be light" (Gen. i, 14), and then will be seen the treasures which faith hides in this abyss of peace and contentment with God, and which will be found in those things that have been every moment done, or suffered for Him. When God gives Himself thus, all that is common becomes wonderful; and it is on this account that nothing seems to be so, because this way is, in itself, extraordinary. Consequently it is unnecessary to make it full of strange and unsuitable marvels. It is, in itself, a miracle, a revelation, a constant joy even with the prevalence of minor faults. But it is a miracle which, while rendering all common and sensible things wonderful, has nothing in itself that is sensibly marvellous.

With the formed state having finished its course, high history also lays itself down weary to sleep. Man becomes a plant again, adhering to the soil, dumb and enduring. The timeless village and the "eternal" peasant reappear, begetting children and burying seed in Mother Earth—a busy, easily contented swarm, over which the tempest of soldier-emperors passingly blows. In the midst of the land lie the old world-cities, empty receptacles of an extinguished soul, in which a historyless mankind slowly nests itself. Men live from hand to mouth, with petty thrifts and petty fortunes, and endure. Masses are trampled on in the conflicts of the conquerors who contend for the power and the spoil of this world, but the survivors fill up the gaps with a primitive fertility and suffer on. And while in high places there is eternal alternance of victory and defeat, those in the depths pray, pray with that mighty piety of the Second Religiousness that has overcome all doubts forever. There, in the souls, world-peace, the peace of God, the bliss of grey-haired monks and hermits, is become actual—and there alone. It has awakened that depth in the endurance of suffering which the historical man in the thousand years of his development has never known. Only with the end of grand History does holy, still Being reappear. It is a drama noble in its aimlessness, noble and aimless as the course of the stars, the rotation of the earth, and alternance of land and sea, of ice and virgin forest upon its face. We may marvel at it or we may lament it—but so it is.

Years ago, when I used to wander of an evening from the fireside to the pleasant land of fairy-tales, I met a doughty knight and true. Many dangers had he overcome, in many lands had been; and all men knew him for a brave and well-tried knight, and one that knew not fear; except, maybe, upon such seasons when even a brave man might feel afraid and yet not be ashamed. Now, as this knight one day was pricking wearily along a toilsome road, his heart misgave him and was sore within him because of the trouble of the way. Rocks, dark and of a monstrous size, hung high above his head, and like enough it seemed unto the knight that they should fall and he lie low beneath them. Chasms there were on either side, and darksome caves wherein fierce robbers lived, and dragons, very terrible, whose jaws dripped blood. And upon the road there hung a darkness as of night. So it came over that good knight that he would no more press forward, but seek another road, less grievously beset with difficulty unto his gentle steed. But when in haste he turned and looked behind, much marveled our brave knight, for lo! of all the way that he had ridden there was naught for eye to see; but at his horse’s heels there yawned a mighty gulf, whereof no man might ever spy the bottom, so deep was that same gulf. Then when Sir Ghelent saw that of going back there was none, he prayed to good Saint Cuthbert, and setting spurs into his steed rode forward bravely and most joyously. And naught harmed him. There is no returning on the road of life. The frail bridge of time on which we tread sinks back into eternity at every step we take. The past is gone from us forever. It is gathered in and garnered.

... man is generous with the word "fool" and is ready to serve it up to his neighbor twenty times a day. It is enough to have one stupid side out of ten to be accounted a fool, aside from the nine good ones ... in the world chronicle of mankind there are many whole centuries which, it would seem, should be crossed out and abolished as unnecessary. There have been many errors in the world which, it would seem, even a child would not make now. What crooked, blind, narrow, impassable, far-straying paths mankind has chosen, striving to attain eternal truth, while a whole straight road lay open before it, like the road leading to a magnificent dwelling meant for a king's mansions! Broader and more splendid than all other roads it is, lit by the sun and illumined all night by lamps, yet people have flowed past it in the blind darkness. So many times already, though guided by a sense come down from heaven, they have managed to waver and go astray, have managed in broad daylight to get again into an impassable wilderness, have managed again to blow a blinding fog into each other's eyes, and, dragging themselves after marsh-lights, have managed finally to reach the abyss, only to ask one another in horror: where is the way out, where is the path? The current generation now sees everything clearly, it marvels at the errors, it laughs at the folly of its ancestors, not seeing that this chronicle is all overscored by divine fire, that every letter of it cries out, that from everywhere the piercing finger is pointed at it, at this current generation; but the current generation laughs and presumptuously, proudly begins a series of new errors, at which their descendants will also laugh afterwards.

Observe the condescension of this fact. This Man, who towers above all other men, holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners--this Man receiveth sinners. This Man, who is no other than the eternal God, before whom angels veil their faces--this Man receiveth sinners. It needs an angel's tongue to describe such a mighty stoop of love. That any of us should be willing to seek after the lost is nothing wonderful--they are of our own race; but that he, the offended God, against whom the transgression has been committed, should take upon himself the form of a servant, and bear the sin of many, and should then be willing to receive the vilest of the vile, this is marvellous. "This Man receiveth sinners;" not, however, that they may remain sinners, but he receives them that he may pardon their sins, justify their persons, cleanse their hearts by his purifying word, preserve their souls by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and enable them to serve him, to show forth his praise, and to have communion with him. Into his heart's love he receives sinners, takes them from the dunghill, and wears them as jewels in his crown; plucks them as brands from the burning, and preserves them as costly monuments of his mercy. None are so precious in Jesus' sight as the sinners for whom he died. When Jesus receives sinners, he has not some out-of-doors reception place, no casual ward where he charitably entertains them as men do passing beggars, but he opens the golden gates of his royal heart, and receives the sinner right into himself--yea, he admits the humble penitent into personal union and makes him a member of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. There was never such a reception as this! This fact is still most sure this evening, he is still receiving sinners: would to God sinners would receive him.

 A consistent theme of the New Testament is that we have been bought. Paul tells it to the Corinthians twice, in two different contexts (1 Corinthians 6:20 and 7:23). Paul calls himself a servant, a bondservant, or a slave of Christ in nearly every epistle that he wrote. Both Peter and Paul tell us that the church and individual believers are a possession of God (Titus 2:14 and 1 Peter 2:9). Regardless of whether the context is personal freedom, sexual morality, life in the fellowship of believers, or anything else, we are not our own. We belong to Another. When that really sinks into a believer’s heart, it is a profound revelation. A living sacrifice—in other words, a true worshiper—does not claim his own rights. He does not complain about slights and grievances, because he knows that his Master has ordained them and may even be using them for marvelous purposes. He bypasses the world and its desires. He throws his own personal agenda in the trash, no matter how many goals and dreams and preferences are on it. He does not make out his own schedule, he does not consider any possession his own, he does not make decisions from human reasoning, and he does not maintain any self-interest in his relationships with other people. He disregards the cultural warnings that too much selflessness is unhealthy, because his health is not the issue. God alone is the issue. His will, His character, His plans, and His providence are paramount. IN DEED   We know better than to assume any of us have lived up to that ideal. But it’s still the goal, isn’t it? A heart that truly worships another is a heart that has completely abandoned itself. Most of the stresses of life come from threats to our self-interest. But if we have no self-interest, where is the stress? The heart that has abandoned itself to God is at rest. It has learned to love the eternal over the world. It lives in peace forever.

Finally, I would like to point out that now in the age of English, choosing a language policy is not the exclusive concern of non-English-speaking nations. It is also a concern for English-speaking nations, where, to realize the world’s diversity and gain the humility that is proper to any human being, people need to learn a foreign language as a matter of course. Acquiring a foreign language should be a universal requirement of compulsory education. Furthermore, English expressions used in international conferences should be regulated and standardized to some extent. Native English speakers need to know that to foreigners, Latinate vocabulary is easier to understand than what to the native speakers is easy, child-friendly language. At international conferences, telling jokes that none but native speakers can comprehend is inappropriate, even if fun. If native speakers of English – those who enjoy the privilege of having their mother tongue as the universal language – would not wait for others to protest but would take steps to regulate themselves, what respect they would earn from the rest of the world! If that is too much to ask, the rest of the world would appreciate it if they would at least be aware of their privileged position – and more important, be aware that the privilege is unwarranted. In this age of global communication, some language or other was bound to be come a universal language used in every corner of the world English became that language not because it is intrinsically more universal than other languages, but because through a series of historical coincidences it came to circulate ever more widely until it reached the tipping point. That’s all there is to it. English is an accidental universal language. If more English native speakers walked through the doors of other languages, they would discover undreamed-of landscapes. Perhaps some of them might then begin to think that the truly blessed are not they themselves, but those who are eternally condemned to reflect on language, eternally condemned to marvel at the richness of the world.

One morning he read to her at breakfast, something he had written during the night "Very rough," he said. "Half of it I've crossed out. And this was supposed to be the clean copy." He cleared his throat. "So.'Things happen for reasons that are hidden from us, utterly hidden for as long as we think they must proceed from what has come before, our guilt or our deserving, rather than coming to us from a future that God in his freedom offers to us.' My meaning here is that you really can't account for what happens by what has happened in the past, as you understand it anyway, which may be very different from the past itself. If there is such a thing. 'The only true knowledge of God is borne of obedience,' that's Calvin, 'and obedience has to be constantly attentive to the demands that are made of it, to a circumstance that is always new and particular to its moment.' Yes. 'Then the reasons that things happen are still hidden in the mystery of God.' I can't read my own writing. No matter. 'Of course misfortunes have opened the way to blessing you would never have thought to hope for, that you would not have been ready to understand as blessings if they had come to you in your youth, when you were uninjured, innocent. The future always finds us damaged.' So then it is part of the providence of God, as I see it, the blessing or happiness can have very different meanings from one time to another. 'This is not to say that joy is a compensation for loss, but that each of them, joy and loss, exists in its own right and must be recognized for what it is. Sorrow is very real, and loss feels very final to us. Life on earth is difficult and grave, and marvelous. Our experience is fragmentary. Its parts don't add up. They don't even belong in the same calculation. Sometimes it is hard to believe they are all parts of one one thing. Nothing makes sense until we understand that experience does not accumulate like money, or memory, or like years and frailties. Instead, it is presented to us by God who is not under any obligation to the past except in His eternal, freely given constancy.' Because I don't mean to suggest that experience is random or accidental, you see. 'When I say that much the greater part of our existence is unknowable by us because it rests with God, who is unknowable, I acknowledge His grace in allowing us to feel that we know any slightest part of it. Therefore we have no way to reconcile its elements, because they are what we are given out of no necessity at all except God's grace in sustaining us as creatures we can recognize as ourselves.' That's always seemed remarkable to me, that we can do that. That we can't help but do it.'So joy can be joy and sorrow can be sorrow, with neither of them casting either light or shadow on the other.

There are many who profess to be religious and speak of themselves as Christians, and, according to one such, “as accepting the scriptures only as sources of inspiration and moral truth,” and then ask in their smugness: “Do the revelations of God give us a handrail to the kingdom of God, as the Lord’s messenger told Lehi, or merely a compass?” Unfortunately, some are among us who claim to be Church members but are somewhat like the scoffers in Lehi’s vision—standing aloof and seemingly inclined to hold in derision the faithful who choose to accept Church authorities as God’s special witnesses of the gospel and his agents in directing the affairs of the Church. There are those in the Church who speak of themselves as liberals who, as one of our former presidents has said, “read by the lamp of their own conceit.” (Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine [Deseret Book Co., 1939], p. 373.) One time I asked one of our Church educational leaders how he would define a liberal in the Church. He answered in one sentence: “A liberal in the Church is merely one who does not have a testimony.” Dr. John A. Widtsoe, former member of the Quorum of the Twelve and an eminent educator, made a statement relative to this word liberal as it applied to those in the Church. This is what he said: “The self-called liberal [in the Church] is usually one who has broken with the fundamental principles or guiding philosophy of the group to which he belongs. . . . He claims membership in an organization but does not believe in its basic concepts; and sets out to reform it by changing its foundations. . . . “It is folly to speak of a liberal religion, if that religion claims that it rests upon unchanging truth.” And then Dr. Widtsoe concludes his statement with this: “It is well to beware of people who go about proclaiming that they are or their churches are liberal. The probabilities are that the structure of their faith is built on sand and will not withstand the storms of truth.” (“Evidences and Reconciliations,” Improvement Era, vol. 44 [1941], p. 609.) Here again, to use the figure of speech in Lehi’s vision, they are those who are blinded by the mists of darkness and as yet have not a firm grasp on the “iron rod.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, when there are questions which are unanswered because the Lord hasn’t seen fit to reveal the answers as yet, all such could say, as Abraham Lincoln is alleged to have said, “I accept all I read in the Bible that I can understand, and accept the rest on faith.” . . . Wouldn’t it be a great thing if all who are well schooled in secular learning could hold fast to the “iron rod,” or the word of God, which could lead them, through faith, to an understanding, rather than to have them stray away into strange paths of man-made theories and be plunged into the murky waters of disbelief and apostasy? . . . Cyprian, a defender of the faith in the Apostolic Period, testified, and I quote, “Into my heart, purified of all sin, there entered a light which came from on high, and then suddenly and in a marvelous manner, I saw certainty succeed doubt.” . . . The Lord issued a warning to those who would seek to destroy the faith of an individual or lead him away from the word of God or cause him to lose his grasp on the “iron rod,” wherein was safety by faith in a Divine Redeemer and his purposes concerning this earth and its peoples. The Master warned: “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better … that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matt. 18:6.) The Master was impressing the fact that rather than ruin the soul of a true believer, it were better for a person to suffer an earthly death than to incur the penalty of jeopardizing his own eternal destiny.

November 1 “Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.” 1 Thessalonians 5:24 WHAT will he do? He will sanctify us wholly. See the previous verse. He will carry on the work of purification till we are perfect in every part. He will preserve our “whole spirit, and soul, and body, blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” He will not allow us to fall from grace, nor come under the dominion of sin. What great favours are these! Well may we adore the giver of such unspeakable gifts. Who will do this? The Lord who has called us out of darkness into his marvellous light, out of death in sin into eternal life in Christ Jesus. Only he can do this: such perfection and preservation can only come from the God of all grace. Why will he do it? Because he is “faithful,” – faithful to his own promise which is pledged to save the believer; faithful to his Son, whose reward it is that his people shall be presented to him faultless; faithful to the work which he has commenced in us by our effectual calling. It is not their own faithfulness, but the Lord’s own faithfulness, on which the saints rely. Come, my soul, here is a grand feast to begin a dull month with. There may be fogs without, but there should be sunshine within.

First, indwelling sin remains to make us wonder how such a weak sinner’s faith has been sustained. Indwelling sin should cause us to marvel when we awake each morning with a remaining spark of hope and faith in Jesus. A sinner living with sustained faith and assurance of eternity in the presence of God is the sure mark of grace. This faith-sustaining grace proves the power, wisdom, faithfulness, and love of God toward us. How can it not? Faith survives in the most unlikely of places: within us! The gracious purposes to which the Lord makes the sense and feeling of our depravity subservient, are manifold. Hereby his own power, wisdom, faithfulness, and love, are more signally displayed. His power, in maintaining his own work in the midst of so much opposition, is like a spark burning in the water.30

I began to tell the Lord how beautiful His creation was. Of course He was already aware of that, so I described how marvelous were the works of His hands and how utterly fantastic it was that each tiny snowflake was different. I described how wonderful the colors of the rainbow were and how they represented His covenant with man. The Lord was patient and allowed me to carry on in this fashion for several minutes, but alas, I was not really able to accurately answer His simple request. Then He spoke to me and gave me the revelation to what I was seeing. The Lord said, “My son, what you are seeing are the souls of unsaved men and women of earth who are dying and going to hell at this very moment.” Those words penetrated my spirit like a sharp two-edged sword. I fell to my knees and began to weep as a passion that I had never known began to well up from some mysterious and hidden place deep within my spirit. “Oh, God, look at all of those souls,” I said, breaking the silence. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with a strange compulsion to watch for a long time as thousands upon thousands of tiny flakes fell through the bright sunbeam. Their short fall was full of spectacular color and glory, but when they hit the ground, it was all over. The Lord was revealing to me a prophetic picture of the brevity of our short lives on an eternal scale. Our days on earth are but a vapor! (See Psalm 39:5 and James 4:14.) I was pierced through to the very heart. “Lord!” I cried out. “What can I possibly do?” He replied, “Just do what I ask, and preach the Cross of Christ.” “I can do that Lord. I will do that, my God, but I will need Your help.” I stayed upon my knees for a long time gazing at this spectacle. During this encounter, God birthed within me a holy passion and hunger to witness souls saved and people totally healed and delivered. I was absorbed in witnessing the array of tiny cascades of colors that luxuriated in the glory of God. I contemplated the ramifications of what I had been told. What a beautiful and glorious God He is. How can we as humankind turn our backs upon Him and such a great salvation that is so easily ours? I pondered all of the events that had been unfolding over the past few days, realizing that I would never be the same. I also realized that God would have to bring all the things that He had birthed in my heart to pass. I purposed to surrender my life and destiny to His will, and to Him. I “altared” my destiny into the hands of God. It was also during this encounter that the Lord instructed me to travel to Africa as an “armor bearer,” to preach His Gospel there and to pray for the sick. I was actually terrified by the prospect of traveling to Africa. I couldn’t imagine that in reality I could go there, considering my current financial situation and my lack of training to preach or minister in healing. However, I soon learned that with God nothing is impossible. Perhaps my obedience to walk with God in minus 12 degree temperatures opened the door to Africa to me? It was still another seemingly bizarre and peculiar gesture of obedience to the Spirit of God. ENTERTAINING ANGELS IN AMERICA After my return to the United States from Canada, I was radically transformed. I could no longer settle for a form of godliness. I began to wait on God, and He began to release supernatural provision

Until the gospel events of Good Friday and Easter and the gospel promises of justification and eternal life lead you to behold and embrace God himself as your highest joy, you have not embraced the gospel of God. You have embraced some of his gifts. You have rejoiced over some of his rewards. You have marveled at some of his miracles. But you have not yet been awakened to why the gifts, the rewards, and the miracles have come. They have come for one great reason: that you might behold forever the glory of God in Christ, and by beholding become the kind of person who delights in God above all things, and by delighting display his supreme beauty and worth with ever-increasing brightness and bliss forever.2 John Piper,

10:12; 14:17). ‹‹    DAY 5    ›› II. The purpose of God’s calling is fully revealed in the New Testament: A. God’s calling is according to His predestination (Eph. 1:4-5), His purpose (2 Tim. 1:9; Rom. 8:28), and His grace (2 Tim. 1:9-10). B. God’s calling is in Christ (1 Pet. 5:10) and through the gospel (2 Thes. 2:14). C. The New Testament reveals various aspects of the purpose of God’s calling: 1. God has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Pet. 2:9): a. Darkness is a sign of sin and death; it is the expression and sphere of Satan in death. b. When God calls us, He opens our eyes and turns us from darkness to light and from the authority of Satan to Himself; to be turned to God means to be turned to the authority of God, which is God’s kingdom of light (Acts 26:18). 2. God’s calling is that His chosen ones may be separated and made holy unto God, to be the holy ones, the saints (Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:2). ‹‹    DAY 6    ›› 3. God has called us so that we may enter into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, to partake of and enjoy His all-inclusive riches (vv. 9, 30). 4. God has called us into the sufferings of Christ (1 Pet. 2:20-21). 5. For the Body of Christ, God has called us into the peace of Christ (Col. 3:15). 6. God has called us for the purpose of obtaining the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ; He has called His chosen ones unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth so that they might obtain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thes. 2:13-14). 7. God’s calling is by His own glory and with the goal of our entering into the eternal glory of God (2 Pet. 1:3; 1 Pet. 5:10): a. God has called us not only by His glory but also to His glory. b. In order that we might enter into His eternal glory, the God of all grace is ministering to us the riches of the bountiful supply of the divine life in many aspects and in many steps of the divine operation on and in us in God’s economy (v. 10; 2 Pet. 1:3). 8. God has called us into His kingdom (1 Thes. 2:12): a. The kingdom of God is an organism constituted with God’s life as a realm of life for His ruling, in which He reigns by the divine life and expresses Himself in the divine life (John 3:3, 5-6; Matt. 6:10, 13). b. Today we, the called ones, should live in the church as the kingdom of God so that we may grow and develop in the life of God unto full maturity; through this growth and development, the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly supplied to us (Rom. 14:17; 2 Pet. 1:5-11).

Entitled leaders act as if the world revolves around them. Their thinking goes something like this: I’ve been blessed. I have gifts and influence. I have worked hard and deserve to be treated well. This is what I refer to as “power over” others leadership. The opposite of an entitled leader is a grateful leader. Grateful leaders continually marvel at all they have received from God. But as a leader’s sense of gratitude shrinks, their sense of entitlement grows in equal measure. While the world practices a “power over” strategy characterized by dominance and win-lose competitiveness, Jesus taught a “power under” strategy characterized by humility and sacrificial service. In the world, says Jesus, leaders throw their weight around, “[but it is] not so with you. . . . Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant” (Mark 10:42 – 43). While Jesus is the invisible God who holds all things together — Almighty, eternal, immortal, and infinite — he became human, temporal, mortal, and finite. Jesus demonstrated his power not by force or control, but by choosing to come under us, humbly washing feet and dying for our sins. He carefully stewarded his power: “[Christ Jesus,] who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant” (Philippians 2:6 – 7).

God gave Jesus “power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life” to all who come to Him. By His power to deliver our bodies from disease, He shows His power to release our souls from sin. “For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith He to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house. And he arose, and departed to his house. But when the multitude saw it, they marveled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.” Matt. 9:5-8.  Some of the most striking miracles of Jesus were done on the Sabbath day, and we wish to call special attention to them now.

The most important vision one can be enlightened with is a glimpse of our own true, inherent divinity, an inkling of our eternal potential, our marvelous capabilities, our unbreakable strength, our enduring choice, and our infinite, divine, worth. To feel a permeating sense of the awe-inspiring inexplicable, indescribable Love and its Light burning ever bright and warm, like an eternal Ember at our deepest core, is a life-enhancing, defining and as positively, mind- altering and fulfilling of an experience as there ever was. It is nothing less than a miracle, a glorious paradigm shift...and that’s just the beginning.

Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations. Psalm 100:4-5 NKJV And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. Colossians 3:17 HCSB I will thank you, Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all the marvelous things you have done. I will be filled with joy because of you. I will sing praises to your name, O Most High. Psalm 9:1-2 NLT And those who have reason to be thankful should continually sing praises to the Lord. James 5:13 NLT SHADES OF GRACE Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Grace evokes gratitude like the voice of an echo. Gratitude follows grace as thunder follows lightning. Karl Barth A PRAYER FOR TODAY Heavenly Father, Your gifts are greater than I can imagine. May I live each day with thanksgiving in my heart and praise on my lips. Thank You for the gift of Your Son and for the promise of eternal life. Let me share the joyous news of Jesus Christ, and let my life be a testimony to His love and His grace. Amen

Isaac’s humility did not discriminate between man and man and scarcely between man and watch. In his thought men were much like their watches. The passage of time was marked as clearly upon a man’s face as upon that of his watch and the marvelous mechanism of his body could be as cruelly disturbed by evil hazards. The outer case varied, gunmetal or gold, carter’s corduroy or bishop’s broadcloth, but the tick of the pulse was the same, the beating of life that gave such a heartbreaking illusion of eternity.

I know that men are children who chase away their despair with anger, their fear with love; they respond to the void by building castles and temples. They cling to stories, they shove them in front of them like banners; everyone makes some story his own so as to attach himself to the crowd that shares it. You conquer people by telling them of battles, kings, elephants, and marvelous beings; by speaking to them about the happiness they will find beyond death, the bright light that presided over their birth, the angels wheeling around them, the demons menacing them, and love, love, that promise of oblivion and satiety. Tell them about all of that, and they will love you; they will make you the equal of a god. But you will know, since you are here pressed against me, you ill-smelling Frank whom chance has brought to my hands, you will know that all this is nothing but a perfumed veil hiding the eternal suffering of night.

By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. –2 Peter 1:3

Heaven is that marvelous place where we divest ourselves of all that God is not, and we live eternally in the presence of all that he is.

You haven't failed, In a moment of sadness. You haven't lost, In a moment of defeat. You are not a statue Standing in an eternal contrapposto. You are a thing in motion: A rising tide, a cresting wave. Your vast depths witness Every marvel, every wonder: You are, then, marvelous, And wonderful. So: Don't fight the moon. Allow every tide. And give all your wrecked ships The space to hide.

How to be an ocean You haven’t failed, In a moment of sadness. You haven’t lost, In a moment of defeat. You are not a statue Standing in an eternal contrapposto. You are a thing in motion: A rising tide, a cresting wave. Your vast depths witness Every marvel, every wonder. You are, then, marvelous, And wonderful. So: Don’t fight the moon. Allow every tide. And give all your wrecked ships The space to hide.

He spent much of the summer rereading the classical and medieval Latin poets, and especially their poems upon death. He wondered again at the easy, graceful manner in which the Roman lyricists accepted the fact of death, as if the nothingness they faced were a tribute to the richness of the years they had enjoyed; and he marveled at the bitterness, the terror, the barely concealed hatred he found in some of the later Christian poets of the Latin tradition when they looked to that death which promised, however vaguely, a rich and ecstatic eternity of life, as if that death and promise were a mockery that soured the days of their living.

We have loved these people since the day we arrived. When you love something... you protect it.

I thought Chaos all howling, random creativity,” said Corum. “This is worse.” “It is what becomes of a place when Chaos exhausts its invention,” Jhary told him. “Ultimately, Chaos brings a more profound stagnation than anything it despises in Law. It must forever seek more and more sensation, more and more empty marvels, until there is nothing left and it has forgotten what true invention is.

The room contains a few dozen living human bodies, each one a big sack of guts and fluids so highly compressed that it will squirt for a few yards when pierced. Each one is built around an armature of 206 bones connected to each other by notoriously fault-prone joints that are given to obnoxious creaking, grinding, and popping noises when they are in other than pristine condition. This structure is draped with throbbing steak, inflated with clenching air sacks, and pierced by a Gordian sewer filled with burbling acid and compressed gas and asquirt with vile enzymes and solvents produced by the many dark, gamy nuggets of genetically programmed meat strung along its length. Slugs of dissolving food are forced down this sloppy labyrinth by serialized convulsions, decaying into gas, liquid, and solid matter which must all be regularly vented to the outside world lest the owner go toxic and drop dead. Spherical, gel-packed cameras swivel in mucus-greased ball joints. Infinite phalanxes of cilia beat back invading particles, encapsulate them in goo for later disposal. In each body a centrally located muscle flails away at an eternal, circulating torrent of pressurized gravy. And yet, despite all of this, not one of these bodies makes a single sound at any time during the sultan’s speech. It is a marvel that can only be explained by the power of brain over body, and, in turn, by the power of cultural conditioning over the brain.

What were the subjects which made me seek the authors I love, which permitted me to be influenced, which formed my style, my character, my approach to life? Broadly these: the love of life itself, the pursuit of truth, wisdom and understanding, mystery, the power of language, the antiquity and the glory of man, eternality, the purpose of existence, the oneness of everything, self-liberation, the brotherhood of man, the meaning of love, the relation of sex to love, the enjoyment of sex, humor, oddities and eccentricities in all life's aspects, travel, adventure, discovery, prophecy, magic (white and black), art, games, confessions, revelations, mysticism, more particularly the mystics themselves, the varieties of faith and worship, the marvelous in all realms and under all aspects, for 'there is only the marvelous and nothing but the marvelous.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.” Albert Einstein

I’ve spent eons marvelling at the immaculate design of single snowflakes, which exist for but a few moments, only to be lost forever in the snow of eternity.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality.” ― Albert Einstein, 2 May 1955, Life Magazine

Hurry-Up Crowe. Yet there was something more, something intangible, that endowed Crowe with the ability to drive his crews at a clip that bowed to almost no obstacle, not a killing cold spell nor suffocating desert heat nor the boundaries of human endurance. Perhaps the secret was his ability to communicate a shared goal. Men choking on gasoline fumes in an underground tunnel nearly a mile long, or suspended on ropes two thousand feet in the air from the rim of a gorge, drills in hand, or sunk to their ankles in wet concrete under a remorseless desert sun might well question from time to time whether the work was worth the four or five dollars they earned for a punishing eight-hour shift. Frank Crowe made them understand the honor of participating in the creation of something eternal. “I’m proud that I had a hand in it,” said Tex Nunley, whose myriad jobs in Boulder Canyon included painting white crosses on solid rock walls to mark the center line of the tunnels the drillers were to drive through them. “Yes I am. I think it was a marvelous piece of work.

Makina had never seen snow before and the first thing that struck her as she stopped to watch the weightless crystals raining down was that something was burning. One came to perch on her eyelashes; it looked like a stack of crosses or the map of a palace, a solid and intricate marvel at any rate, and when it dissolved a few seconds later she wondered how it was that some things in the world—some countries, some people—could seem eternal when everything was actually like that miniature ice palace: one-of-a-kind, precious, fragile.

Imagine the marvels we would experience if we believed in the things in which we don’t believe.

When I consider the brief span of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and behind it, the small space that I fill, or even see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces which I know not, and which know not me, I am afraid . . . I marvel that people are not seized with despair at such a miserable condition. — French mathematician/philosopher Blaise Pascal (born 1623)

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating. Simone Weil

But then Paul puts forth a marvelous truth at the end of Romans 5:20: “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” What does the apostle mean by this? The more that sin and death reigned on the earth, the more that “grace” had an opportunity to “reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 5:21). This is astonishing. Paul is saying that the more that murder, lies, theft, rape, cruelty, carnage, death, and calamity proliferate, the more that God’s undeserved mercy is extended to the perpetrators of these evils. Consequently, his glory and grace are unleashed in ways in which they could not be otherwise.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has Its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be In awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity. - Albert Einstein (From “Death of a Genius,” by William Miller, LIFE Magazine, May 2, 1955 © 1955 Time Inc.)