Friday Peace Quotes

I wonder if you know yet that you’ll leave me. That you are a child playing with matches and I have a paper body. You will meet a girl with a softer voice and stronger arms and she will not have violent secrets or an affection for red wine or eyes that never stay dry. You will fall into her bed and I’ll go back to spending Friday nights with boys who never learn my last name. I have chased off every fool who has tried to sleep beside me You think it’s romantic to fuck the girl who writes poems about you. You think I’ll understand your sadness because I live inside my own. But I will show up at your door at 2 am, wild-eyed and sleepless. and try and find some semblance of peace in your breastbone and you will not let me in. You will tell me to go home.

But there was a cost. Being near Ethan was just... incendiary. Part animosity, part ridiculous chemistry, neither conducive to a peaceful home environment. And this was only my first night under his thumb. Not a good sign of things to come.

Oh! It’s Friday again. Share the love that was missing during the week, In a worthy moment of peace and bliss.

Who can prophesy peace, or vow Futurity for any but armed insects

We focus on Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, but we forget to pause in the stillness of the days between. Find time today to be present in that place of waiting. There is treasure to be found in the sacred peace that comes as you breathe in that place of quiet surrender. Don’t rush through the space called “Between.

What's your source of inner peace? asked the Imam today at the Friday Prayer. I smiled wide instantly and whispered, 'Knowing that she is mine'.

This wasn’t what I’d intended to happen in the beginning. I had imagined finding a way for me to heal too while I helped him. It was a way for me to find peace. But we had become something more. Something I never imagined. Falling in love with West Ashby had not been part of my plan.

May your Good Friday be blessed with the presents of Jesus on your lips, and his never ending grace in your heart. May his grace surround your family, and fill your lives with peace, health and happiness.

The country does not wait to do its wild things just because you have not pulled into the driveway yet; it doesn’t wait for Friday evenings, or cease on Sundays at five o’clock.

All I know is I was possibly the only woman in the world dedicated to inner peace and tranquility who would end up with varicose veins of the neck from shouting.

People working together can overcome many obstacles, often within themselves, and by doing so can make the world a better place.

Saeed went with his father to pray on the first Friday after the curfew's commencement, and Saeed prayer for peace and Saeed's father prayed for Saeed and the preacher in his sermon urged all the congregants to pry for the righteous to emerge victorious in the war but carefully refrained from specifying on which side of the conflict he thought the righteous to be.

War, as a legitimate means of shaping the world, died with Christ on Good Friday. Jesus refuted the war option when he told Peter to put up his sword. Killing in order to liberate Jesus and his followers from the violent injustice of Caiaphas, Herod, and Pilate would have been a just war—but Jesus refused to engage in a just war. He chose instead to bear witness to the truth, forgive, and die. Jesus took the death of a world framed by war into his body and he and it both died together. Jesus was buried and with him was buried the old world devoted to sin and death. On the third day Jesus was raised and a new world was born. Of course the old world of death still lingers around us, but in the midst of it, the world to come is being born.

careful reconstruction of the British war-cabinet meetings between Friday, 24 May and Tuesday, 28 May, five days that could have changed the world. Lukac’s conclusion is inescapable: never was Hitler as close to total control over Western Europe as he was during that last week of May 1940. Britain almost presented him with a peace agreement which he would probably have accepted, and only one man was finally able to stand in the way: Churchill. Besides Churchill, the British war cabinet in those days had four other members, at least two of whom could be counted among the ‘appeasers’: Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax. The other two, Clement Atlee and Arthur Greenwood (representing Labour), had no experience in government at that time. On

It is difficult when you pass that way, especially when you are peacefully recovering from sea-sickness with the plush cushions of a boat-train carriage under your bum, to believe that anything is really happening anywhere. Earthquakes in Japan, famines in China, revolutions in Mexico? Don't worry, the milk will be on the doorstep tomorrow morning, the New Statesman will come out on Friday.

The Scripture says, “Let the Lord be magnified, who has pleasure in the prosperity of His servant” (Psalm 35:27 NKJV). I say this respectfully, but we have to fight the religious spirit that says we’re supposed to be poor, broke, and defeated to prove to everyone that we’re really humble. When we’re poor, broke, and defeated, all that proves is that we’re poor, broke, and defeated. Nobody will want what we have. I can be poor, broke, and defeated without serving God. We’re supposed to be examples of what it means to live for the Most High God. We should be so blessed, so prosperous, so kind, so generous, so happy, and so peaceful that people will want what we have. If you think you’re showing God how holy you are and how humble you are by not wearing your blessings and not taking that promotion, your own thinking is what is keeping God from doing something new in your life.

Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids (Daum, Meghan) - Your Highlight on page 22 | Location 368-369 | Added on Friday, May 1, 2015 11:17:34 PM I was never particularly opposed to the idea of having kids—let no one say that I don’t love kids! It always seemed like an interesting future possibility, the same way that joining the Peace Corps someday seemed like an interesting future possibility.

Oscar Wilde, was an Irish poet, brilliant wit and dramatist who was imprisoned for two years for ‘indecency’ and ruined as a result. Oscar uttered his last words in Room 16 of the Hôtel d’Alsace in Saint-Germain-des-Prés on Friday, November 30th, 1900. The wittiest man of his epoch was said to have quipped, ‘My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us must go.’ Sadly, Oscar lost the ‘duel’ and died shortly afterwards.

The whole of Christ’s life was a continual passion; others die martyrs, but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha, where he was crucified, even in Bethlehem, where he was born; for to his tenderness then the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after, and the manger as uneasy at first as the cross at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas Day and his Good Friday are but the evening and the morning of one

I will keep the baby born on Friday,” the mom wept to the monk, “but I am giving the Saturday one to you. Saturday babies are stubborn. They don’t listen. I have three more children at home. I can only take one more. I can only have ones who are well behaved.” “I understand.” The monk nodded kindly then added, to Rosie’s shock, “This baby is mine now.” “Thank you,” the mom wept, clasping his hand to her forehead. “Thank you, thank you.” The monk dipped a bundle of twigs in a pan of water and sprayed it over both babies and their mother. He said a great many things Rosie did not understand, which caused the mother to cry even harder and to which K merely nodded along. Then the monk told the mother, “I have blessed this baby and spoken with him. He will be a good baby and well behaved always. I wonder if you would take care of him for me? I promise he will be a good boy.” “Yes, oh yes,” the mother sobbed. “Thank you, thank you. I would be honored to take care of him for you. We will take him into our family as our own.” Dispelling fear, Rosie thought. Choosing peace and calm instead of battle.

KA: What is your basic process working with a writer? LB: I read a manuscript very quickly first, then I sit down the second time and start reading very carefully and do the detail work, the minute hammering on every page. At this point, I know where the story goes so I’m looking for holes. I’m looking for anything that doesn’t add up. The best way to edit is to live entirely in the world as much as you can. Before I had a child I would edit ten hours on Friday ten hours on Saturday and ten hours on Sunday (obviously I had no hobbies or any nee to go outdoors). You knew everything about the book. You were in tune with every character. You have the voice in your head. Then the author gets a hugely marked up manuscript with all these little scribbles. I’m asking them every question that occurs to me. I give them as much time as they want to sit and digest it. Again, this is one of the reasons I like working far in advance. I have time with the manuscript and they have time with the manuscript. I’m happy to let them work in peace and quiet. Then we go back and forth as long as is helpful to them. They do the revision and it lands on my desk again. I read it again beginning to end. I assume it doesn’t need a line edit at that point, although I tend to read with a pencil in my hand. There could be one big thing still sticking in your craw that didn’t get fixed, so you just roll up your sleeves…

People were patient with each other in the Grand Mosque, and communal—everyone washing his or her feet in the same fountain, with no shoving or prejudice. We were all Muslims in God’s house, and it was beautiful. It had a quality of timelessness. I think this is one reason Muslims believe that Islam means peace: because in a large, cool place full of kindness you do feel peaceful. But as soon as we left the mosque, Saudi Arabia meant intense heat and filth and cruelty. People had their heads cut off in public squares. Adults spoke of it. It was a normal, routine thing: after the Friday noon prayer you could go home for lunch, or you could go and watch the executions. Hands were cut off. Men were flogged. Women were stoned.

From the Birmingham jail, King, who had been arrested on Good Friday 1963, wrote an epistle to a group of ministers that illuminated the forces in play. "I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom," King wrote, "is not the White Citizens' Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to `order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods'; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a 'more convenient season.

Peace cannot require Palestinians to acquiesce to the denial of what was done to them. Neither can it require Israeli Jews to view their own presence in Palestine as illegitimate or to change their belief in their right to live there because of ancient historical and spiritual ties. Peace, rather, must be based on how we act toward each other now. It is unacceptable for a Palestinian to draw on his history of oppression and suffering to justify harming innocent Israeli civilians. It is equally unacceptable for an Israeli to invoke his belief in an ancient covenant between God and Abraham to justify bulldozing the home and seizing the land of a Palestinian farmer. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which proposes a political framework for a resolution to the conflict in Ireland, and which was overwhelmingly endorsed in referendums, sets out two principles from which Palestinians and Israelis could learn. First “[i]t is recognized that victims have a right to remember as well as to contribute to a changed society.” Second, whatever political arrangements are freely and democratically chosen for the governance of Northern Ireland, the power of the government “shall be exercised with rigorous impartiality on behalf of all the people in the diversity of their identities and traditions and shall be founded on the principles of full respect for, and equality of civil, political, social, and cultural rights, of freedom from discrimination for all citizens, and of parity of esteem and of just and equal treatment for the identity, ethos, and aspirations of both communities.” Northern Ireland is still a long way from achieving this ideal, but life has vastly improved since the worst days of “the Troubles” and it is a paradise on earth compared to Palestine/Israel.

You have heard the good Talks which our Brother (George Morgan) Weepemachukthe [The White Deer] has delivered to us from the Great Council at Philadelphia representing all our white Brethern who have grown out of this same Ground with ourselves for this Big [Turtle] Island being our common Mother, we and they are like one Flesh and Blood." -Chief Cornstalk to Mingo representatives at a conference at Fort Pitt [Pittsburgh], Friday, June 21st, 1776 [response] "We are sprung from one common Mother, we were all born in this big Island; we earnestly wish to repose under the same Tree of Peace with you; we request to live in Friendship with all the Indians in the Woods...We call God to Witness, that we desire nothing more ardently than that the white and red Inhabitants of this big Island should cultivate the most Brotherly affection, and be united in the firmest bands of Love and friendship." -Morgan Letterbrook, "American Commissioners for Indian Affairs to Delawares, Senecas, Munsees, and Mingos" Pittsburgh, 1776

And then England—southern England, probably the sleekest landscape in the world. It is difficult when you pass that way, especially when you are peacefully recovering from seasickness with the plush cushions of a boat-train carriage underneath you, to believe that anything is really happening anywhere. Earthquakes in Japan, famines in China, revolutions in Mexico? Don’t worry, the milk will be on the doorstep tomorrow morning, the New Statesman will come out on Friday. The industrial towns were far away, a smudge of smoke and misery hidden by the curve of the earth’s surface. Down here it was still the England I had known in my childhood: the railway-cuttings smothered in wild flowers, the deep meadows where the great shining horses browse and meditate, the slow-moving streams bordered by willows, the green bosoms of the elms, the larkspurs in the cottage gardens; and then the huge peaceful wilderness of outer London, the barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the posters telling of cricket matches and Royal weddings, the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the red buses, the blue policemen—all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs.

Billy ran around with a rare old crew And he knew an Arsenal from Tottenham blue We'd be a darn sight better off if we knew Where Billy's bones are resting now Billy saw a copper and he hit him in the knee And he took him down from six to five foot three Then he hit him fair and square in the do-re-mi That copper won't be having any family Hey Billy son where are you now? Don't you know that we need you now? With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow Where are Billy's bones resting now? Billy went away with a peace-keeping force 'Cause he liked a bloody good fight, of course Went away in an old khaki van To the banks of the River Jordan Billy saw the Arabs and he had 'em on the run When he got 'em in the range of his sub-machine gun Then he had the Israelis in his sights, went a rat-tat-tat And they ran like shites Hey Billy son where are you now? Don't you know that we need you now? With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow Where are Billy's bones resting now? One night Billy had a rare old time, Laughing and singing on the Lebanon line Came back to camp not looking too pretty Never even got to see the holy city Now Billy's out there in the desert sun And his mother cries when the morning comes And there's mothers crying all over this world For their poor dead darling boys and girls Hey Billy son where are you now? Don't you know that we need you now? With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow Where are Billy's bones resting now? Have a Billy holiday… Born on a Monday Married on a Tuesday Drunk on a Wednesday Got plugged on a Thursday Sick on a Friday Died on a Saturday Buried on a Sunday. "Billy's Bones

Every day we have plenty of opportunities to be upset, to be frustrated, and to be offended. Maybe the day’s plans didn’t work out, or somebody was rude at the office, or a job that should have taken one hour took three. Life is full of inconveniences. There will always be interruptions and difficult people. We can’t control all our circumstances, but we can control our reactions. I’ve heard it said that life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you respond. Go into each day positive, hopeful, and expecting God’s favor. But at the same time be realistic, knowing that most days will not go exactly as you planned. If you become stressed because you are off schedule, frustrated because someone offended you, or upset because your child wouldn’t eat breakfast, you are giving away your power. It’s good to have plans, but at the first part of every day submit those plans to God and just say, “God, this is what I would like to accomplish today. But I know You’re in control, so I submit my plans to You. And I’ve decided in advance that no matter what comes my way, I will stay in peace, knowing You are directing my steps and that all things will work together for my good.” But too many people these days have the wrong approach to life. They think they can’t be happy unless they control all their circumstances and everything goes their way. But that’s not realistic. You have to come to the place where you can say, “I don’t have to have my way to have a good day. My plans don’t have to work out for me to be happy. Everybody doesn’t have to treat me right for life to be enjoyable. I have already made up my mind: No matter what does or doesn’t happen, I will stay in peace and enjoy this day.” The Scripture says that “no one will take away your joy” (John 16:22 NIV). No circumstance can take your peace. No interruption can take your enthusiasm. You have to give it away. The next time you’re tempted to be upset and frustrated, ask yourself, Is this worth giving my power away? Or, This man is rude to me on the phone. I don’t even know him. Is it worth giving him my joy? Or, This coworker left me out of a meeting; is it worth giving away my peace? You may not have the victory, not because you can’t, but because you keep giving it away. Life is too short to be upset and offended. If you allow your circumstances to control your joy, there will always be some reason to be discouraged.

The US traded its manufacturing sector’s health for its entertainment industry, hoping that Police Academy sequels could take the place of the rustbelt. The US bet wrong. But like a losing gambler who keeps on doubling down, the US doesn’t know when to quit. It keeps meeting with its entertainment giants, asking how US foreign and domestic policy can preserve its business-model. Criminalize 70 million American file-sharers? Check. Turn the world’s copyright laws upside down? Check. Cream the IT industry by criminalizing attempted infringement? Check. It’ll never work. It can never work. There will always be an entertainment industry, but not one based on excluding access to published digital works. Once it’s in the world, it’ll be copied. This is why I give away digital copies of my books and make money on the printed editions: I’m not going to stop people from copying the electronic editions, so I might as well treat them as an enticement to buy the printed objects. But there is an information economy. You don’t even need a computer to participate. My barber, an avowed technophobe who rebuilds antique motorcycles and doesn’t own a PC, benefited from the information economy when I found him by googling for barbershops in my neighborhood. Teachers benefit from the information economy when they share lesson plans with their colleagues around the world by email. Doctors benefit from the information economy when they move their patient files to efficient digital formats. Insurance companies benefit from the information economy through better access to fresh data used in the preparation of actuarial tables. Marinas benefit from the information economy when office-slaves look up the weekend’s weather online and decide to skip out on Friday for a weekend’s sailing. Families of migrant workers benefit from the information economy when their sons and daughters wire cash home from a convenience store Western Union terminal. This stuff generates wealth for those who practice it. It enriches the country and improves our lives. And it can peacefully co-exist with movies, music and microcode, but not if Hollywood gets to call the shots. Where IT managers are expected to police their networks and systems for unauthorized copying – no matter what that does to productivity – they cannot co-exist. Where our operating systems are rendered inoperable by “copy protection,” they cannot co-exist. Where our educational institutions are turned into conscript enforcers for the record industry, they cannot co-exist. The information economy is all around us. The countries that embrace it will emerge as global economic superpowers. The countries that stubbornly hold to the simplistic idea that the information economy is about selling information will end up at the bottom of the pile. What country do you want to live in?

Chapter 115 Elias– The Final Word   A man will do anything for a wife he adores. Remember that and do not judge him. Do not judge him when you see Vivi, see Nitsa, and notice the way both women stand, the way both women walk. Do not judge him when you see a picture of his own grandmother and see Nitsa all over her face. Peace is expensive, eh? Peace is expensive, but it is good. Remember that.   The End

Merkel's day-trip to Moscow last Friday, with lightweight Hollande in tow, was no bold bid for peace. It was an act of desperation -- and Putin undoubtedly knew it.

Friday, January 30 God Has a Plan For I know the thoughts and plans that I have for you, says the Lord, thoughts and plans for welfare and peace and not for evil, to give you hope in your final outcome. JEREMIAH 29:11 AMP When Jeremiah wrote this, Israel was already in captivity in Babylon. Things looked pretty bleak, and many held no hope of returning to the land God had given them generations before under Joshua’s leadership. It was because they refused to listen to the prophets, telling them to repent of their sin of consistently turning away from God’s plan and living the way they wanted to, that they were in this predicament. After the majority of the Jews were taken to Babylon, Jeremiah wrote them a letter telling them to accept where they were. Since they were going to be there the full seventy years God had predicted, they were to settle down, build houses, establish communities, plant gardens, marry, die, celebrate their special days—in other words, live life to the fullest while they were there. The sooner they accepted God’s punishment, the sooner they could begin living again. The letter concluded with a reminder that God had not forgotten them. He still had plans for His people. Good plans, not evil. He wanted to give them hope that this punishment wasn’t for forever. God still has a plan for each one of His children. They are still plans for peace and good, hope-filled plans. Father, thank You for the thoughts and plans You have for each of Your children. Help us to live life to the fullest in the hope of those plans.

Learn That Your Feelings Are as Important as Theirs. Some of us can’t see our own feelings because we have learned somewhere along the way that other people’s feelings are more important than ours. For example, it was always assumed that your father would move in with your family when his health began to fail. But now that he has, his constant demands and crankiness are beginning to take a toll, especially on top of managing his medications and frequent doctor’s visits. You are exhausted and frustrated, and wonder why your brother isn’t willing to do his share. Yet you don’t raise it with parent or sibling. “It’s hard, but it’s not that hard,” you reason. “Besides, I don’t want to rock the boat.” Your girlfriend calls and says she can’t have dinner on Friday after all. She’s wondering whether Saturday is okay. She says a friend of hers is in town and wants to see a movie on Friday. You say, “Sure, if that’s better for you.” Although you said yes, Saturday is actually not as good for you, because you had planned to go to a baseball game. Still, you’d rather see your girlfriend, so you give your ticket away. In each of these situations, you’ve chosen to put someone else’s feelings ahead of your own. Does this make sense? Is your father’s frustration or your brother’s peace of mind more important than yours? Is your girlfriend’s desire to see a movie with her friend more important than your desire to see a baseball game? Why is it that they express their feelings and preferences, but you cope with yours privately? There are several reasons why you may choose to honor others’ feelings even when it means dishonoring your own. The implicit rule you are following is that you should put other people’s happiness before your own. If your friends or loved ones or colleagues don’t get their way, they’ll feel bad, and then you’ll have to deal with the consequences. That may be true, but it’s unfair to you. Their anger is no better or worse than yours. “Well, it’s just easier not to rock the boat,” you think. “I don’t like it when they’re mad at me.” If you’re thinking this, then you are undervaluing your own feelings and interests. Friends, neighbors, and bosses will recognize this and begin to see you as someone they can manipulate. When you are more concerned about others’ feelings than your own, you teach others to ignore your feelings too. And beware: one of the reasons you haven’t raised the issue is that you don’t want to jeopardize the relationship. Yet by not raising it, the resentment you feel will grow and slowly erode the relationship anyway.

Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Highlight at location 221-228 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:41:32 Those who are introduced to the Quran only through the media, generally have the impression that the Quran is a book of jihad, and jihad to them is an attempt to achieve one’s goal by means of violence. But this idea is based on a misunderstanding. Anyone who reads the Quran for himself will easily appreciate that its message has nothing to do with violence. The Quran is, from beginning to end, a book which promulgates peace and in no way countenances violence. It is true that jihad is one of the teachings of the Quran. But jihad, taken in its correct sense, is the name of peaceful struggle rather than of any kind of violent action. The Quranic concept of jihad is expressed in the following verse, ‘Do greater jihad (i.e strive more strenuously) with the help of this [Quran]’ (25:52). Obviously, the Quran is not a weapon, but a book which gives us an introduction to the divine ideology of peaceful struggle. The method of such a struggle, according to the Quran, is ‘to speak to them a word to reach their very soul’ (4:63). ========== Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Note at location 228 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:41:45 jihad ========== Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Highlight at location 232-235 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:43:12 It is true that there are certain verses in the Quran, which convey injunctions similar to the following, ‘Slay them wherever you find them’ (2:191). Referring to such verses, there are some who attempt to give the impression that Islam is a religion of war and violence. This is totally untrue. Such verses relate, in a restricted sense, to those who have unilaterally attacked the Muslims. The above verse does not convey the general command of Islam. ========== Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Highlight at location 239-244 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:44:16 This division of commands into different categories is a natural one and is found in all religious books. For instance, the Gita, the holy book of the Hindus, pertains to wisdom and moral values. Yet along with this is the exhortation of Krishna to Arjuna, encouraging him to fight (Bhagavad Gita, 3:30). This does not mean that believers in the Gita should wage wars all the time. Mahatma Gandhi, after all, derived his philosophy of non-violence from the same Gita. The exhortation to wage war in the Gita applies only to exceptional cases where circumstances leave no choice. But for general day-to-day existence it gives the same peaceful commands as derived from it by Mahatma Gandhi. ========== Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Highlight at location 244-245 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:44:39 Similarly, Jesus Christ said, ‘Do not think that I came to bring peace on Earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.’ (Matthew, 10:34). ==========

The peace and the eventual victory-beyond-hopelessness that I gained were through no achievement of my great faith. When you’re down on your back, when everything of your circumstance is surrounded by darkness, and when the voice seeking to capture your attention sneers against God and seeks to smash your soul with despair—it’s at those moments we’re called to remember another Voice. It’s the voice of Jesus, calling us from the other side of His Cross, where He experienced everything that pain, suffering, hopelessness, hate, death and hell could deal Him. And He’s saying, “Call on Me—I know the way through Fridays like yours, and I will bring you through!” There is hope—for any and every hopeless day. We each need not only to listen to His call but also to understand the pathway He has carved beyond hopelessness and unto hope. So I invite you to join me in listening to His voice as Jesus lives through a bad day—indeed, not only through the worst day in His life, but also the ultimate worst day that humans or demons could ever conspire to work.

At three o’clock in the morning of Friday, 14th September 1941, I died peacefully in my bed from pneumonia. Friday was a good day to die, because on that day Lieutenant Bruning left early for Athens and did not get back until night–so it gave a man a decent twelve hours to be buried in.

a temporary solution to the city’s sectarian bloodletting. Now they were a permanent feature of its geography—indeed, their number, length, and scale had actually increased since the signing of the Good Friday accords. On Springfield Road the barricade was a transparent green fence about ten meters in height. But on Cupar Way, a particularly tense part of the Ardoyne, it was a Berlin Wall–like structure topped by razor wire. Residents on both sides had covered it in murals. One likened it to the separation fence between Israel and the West Bank. “Does this look like peace to you?” asked Keller. “No,” answered Gabriel. “It looks like home.” Finally, at half past one, Keller turned into Stratford Gardens. Number 8, like its neighbors, was a two-level redbrick house with a white door and a single window on each floor. Weeds flourished in the forecourt; a green rubbish bin lay toppled by the wind. Keller pulled to the curb and switched off the engine.

Our Lady of Peace to Pedro Regis: “The prophets who have gone will return to announce the day of the great Warning. God will give you a chance to repent.” 21 “The Calvary of humanity will begin on a Friday (March 25, 2016), but the victory of God will come afterwards…” 22 “Know that the Lord will act in your favor. He will manifest his goodness to you. It will allow you to see all your life. Everything will be shown as in a mirror. God will give you the chance of repentance. He wants to save you. Courage. An extraordinary phenomenon from heaven will be experienced on this earth. It is a warning from God. Pray. Only through prayer will you understand the thoughts of God for yourselves.” 23 “The day will come when people will receive a great grace. A great miracle of God will transform hardened hearts. Each one will see his errors and will receive the grace of repentance. It will be a great opportunity that the Lord will give to His wayward children.” 24 “The day is coming when mankind will have a great chance to repent. God will show a great sign and mankind will have no explanation.

Look at you. You're young. You're scared. Why are you so scared? Stop being paralyzed. Stop swallowing your words. Stop caring what other people think. Wear what you want. Say what you want. Listen to the music you want to listen to. Play it loud as fuck and dance to it. Go out for a drive at midnight and forget you have work the next day. Stop waiting for Friday. Live now. Do it now. Take risks. This life is yours.

He read of Lincoln's second inaugural address and of the broad peace Lincoln hoped to gain, and, a page later, he read of the bullet that had slain Lincoln on Good Friday evening in 1865. He clicked his tongue between his teeth at the thought of a President dying at an assassin's hands. Then, all at once, he shivered as if suddenly seized by an ague. He had seen Lincoln in Louisville that Good Friday, had listened to him plead without avail for Kentucky to stay in the Union, had even spoken with him. He shivered again. In defeat in the world he knew, Lincoln had wanted to martyr himself for the United States. In the other world, where there was no need for it, he had been made a martyr in the hour of his greatest triumph.

As this is the official start of the holiday shopping season, it stands to reason that the spirit of the holidays should be present: kindness, love, compassion, generosity, joy, peace. These are the hallmarks of this magical time. And they can bring big light into Black Friday.

Jewish Ideas Daily In Defense of the Nation-State By Diana Muir Appelbaum Friday, October 5, 2012 In [Daniel Gordis’] new book, The Promise of Israel: Why Its Seemingly Greatest Weakness Is Actually Its Greatest Strength, Gordis weaves the work of political theorists and historians into a compelling case for the nation-state in general and Israel in particular. … the governments that have produced human rights such as personal liberty and the rule of law have most often been ethnically based nation-states … Gordis quotes intellectual historian Mark Lilla, who notes that while Western Europeans have forgotten “all the long-standing problems that the nation-state, as a modern form of political life, managed to solve,” … [Zionism] remembers the wisdom of borders and the need for collective autonomy to establish self-respect and to demand respect from others. … European and American opposition to Israel … reflects the fact that Israel is the archetypal nation-state, and nation-states have fallen from favor in intellectual circles. Until recently, republics have arisen only in small city-states and, usually, only briefly. Apart from these cases, in all of human history only a few ways have been found to organize political life. There is the intense and appalling tribalism of Afghanistan. There are empires in which conquering Herrenvolk oppress conquered peoples. There are dictatorships and monarchies in which individuals may have comforts or privileges but not rights. There has been the universalizing ideology of Marxism, which has produced brutality and death on an unimaginable scale. Then there is the nation-state. The nation-state gives no assurances of the universal peace and justice promised by Marxism, Islam, or the human rights movement. It claims merely that it will attempt to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for its citizens. The nation-state does not claim it will bring peace or justice to the whole world, only that it will work to bring these benefits to a particular people living on a particular piece of land.

May God Make you like Ephraim and Menashe and Sarah, Rivka, Rachel, and Leah. May Adonai bless you and guard you. May Adonai lift the divine face towards you and be gracious unto you. May Adonai’s face smile at you and grant you peace.

after the accident, you went to stay in the country with Mrs. Waite so that you could have some peace and quiet.” “Peace and quiet! This isn’t exactly JFK on a Friday night.

Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays I set aside for worrying about other people’s opinions as much as my mind demanded; Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays were days when I would greet such thoughts and ask them to return on the following day, when they would be pondered, even entered into a journal. Eventually my brain’s emotional circuits noted that I was just as safe in the world on the “no speculating about what others think” days as I was on other days; moreover the “no speculating” days were far more peaceful, with more time to focus on worthwhile thoughts and activities.

just like Friday night dinners at the café, I’d never go fishing alone again. Because what I’d thought was peace was just an illusion. Today, with Georgia and Roe, I learned what peace truly felt like.

According to Shirts’s account, Lee sent messengers south to Santa Clara to bring more Paiutes to the Meadows. By Friday, September 11, there were also “a good many whites come along.” That morning, the militiamen gathered near the besieged wagons and raised a white “flag”—a handkerchief on a stick—signaling they were there to help.18 The emigrants allowed Lee into their corral for negotiation. Hoag remembered how Lee relayed the story to the Harmony congregation. The emigrants’ spokesman asked Lee if “he meant what he showed by the flag.” “Yes,” Lee answered, he “meant peace.” “Do you give us peace?” Lee asked in return. “Yes,” the negotiator replied, but another emigrant protested, “No!” “All I wish,” Lee insisted, is for you “to surrender your arms and we will see that you go unhurt.” “If you give up your arms you are a fool,” the protesting emigrant urged their spokesman. “I don’t know,” the negotiator hesitated. “He promises peace.” “Don’t you be such [a] god damned fool as that,” a third man jumped in. “If you do you are dead men.” “No, I will promise you peace,” Lee assured. “All I want is your arms.”19 After a tense parley, the emigrants finally surrendered their guns on Lee’s promise to protect them back to Cedar City.

We are mad if we imagine that the God of love revealed in Jesus will bless us in waging war. That is madness! But it’s a pervasive and beloved madness. And I know from experience that it’s hard to oppose a crowd fuming for war. When we have identified a hated enemy, we want to be assured that God is on our side as we go to war with our enemy. And we believe that surely God is on our side, because we feel so unified in the moment. Everyone knows the nation is most unified in times of war. Nothing unites a nation like war. But what’s so tragic is when Christian leaders pretend that a rally around the war god is compatible with worshipping the God revealed in Jesus Christ. We refuse to face the truth that waging war is incompatible with following Jesus. We forget that God is most clearly revealed, not in the nascent understanding of the ancient Hebrews but in the Word made flesh. We forget that “being disguised under the disfigurement of an ugly crucifixion and death, the Christform upon the cross is paradoxically the clearest revelation of who God is.”6 We forget that “the worst day in history was not a Tuesday in New York, but a Friday in Jerusalem when a consortium of clergy and politicians colluded to run the world on our own terms by crucifying God’s own Son.”7 We forget that when we see Christ dead upon the cross, we discover a God who would rather die than kill his enemies. We forget all of this because the disturbing truth is this—it’s hard to believe in Jesus. When I say it’s hard to believe in Jesus, I mean it’s hard to believe in Jesus’s ideas—in his way of saving the world. For Christians it’s not hard to believe in Jesus as the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity—all the Christological stuff the church hammered out in the first five centuries. That’s not hard for us. What’s hard is to believe in Jesus as a political theologian. It’s hard because his ideas for running the world are so radically different from anything we are accustomed to. Which is why, I suspect, for so long, the Gospels have been treated as mere narratives and have not been taken seriously as theological documents in their own right. We want to hear how Jesus was born in Bethlehem, died on the cross, and rose again on the third day. We use these historical bits as the raw material for our theology that we mostly shape from a particular misreading of Paul. In doing this we conveniently screen out Jesus’s own teachings about the kingdom of God and especially his ideas about nonviolence and enemy love.

Saeed went with his father to pray on the first Friday after the curfew's commencement, and Saeed prayed for peace and Saeed's father prayed for Saeed and the preacher in his sermon urged all the congregants to pry for the righteous to emerge victorious in the war but carefully refrained from specifying on which side of the conflict he thought the righteous to be.

When she’s gone, I look over and see Friday on the couch. I walk over to sit down at her feet, just like I was before, but she looks me in the eye and says, “Don’t even think about it.” She looked so peaceful before Kelly got here. Now she’s not. Now she’s not peaceful at all. I’m afraid to push it because I get the feeling that if she got her fingertips near my neck now, she’d use those hands to choke me. What the fuck did I do?

You don’t have to hide your happiness, your peace, your victory, or your possessions. You don’t have to dress down and look poor and pitiful and depressed to show people you are humble. When you wear your blessings well, giving God all the credit, talking about His goodness, thanking Him for what He has done, that’s what really brings honor to our God. If God has blessed you with financial success or helped you through a challenge in a relationship, a job, your health, or your finances, wear that blessing well. Tell everyone what God has done for you. If they make fun of you like they make fun of me and ask why you are so happy, just tell them, “I’m wearing my blessing well. God has been so good to me I can’t keep it to myself. I’ve got to tell somebody. I once was lost, but now I’m found. I should be dead, but I’m still alive. Look what the Lord has done.” Some critics and doubters may tell you to calm down or chill out on the happiness stuff. Let that go in one ear and out the other. Keep wearing your blessings well, and over time, instead of them affecting you, you will inject them. You will help them come up higher. When you dress your best, you’re wearing your blessings well. When you step up and take that promotion, you’re wearing your blessings well. When God opens the door and you move into that new house you’ve been believing for, others may be critical. But don’t allow those who are negative, jealous, judgmental, bitter, angry, and nonsmiling to bring you down. If you want to please God and live in happiness, don’t drag around broke, defeated, or depressed. Wear your blessings well. Step up to a new level. Enjoy God’s favor. Be proud of who you are and of what God has done in your life.

In Great Britain, the bastion of Islamism in Europe, a figure of ‘British Islam’, Abu Hamza al-Masri,[71] who, according to the Americans, is linked to terrorist networks, is the guru of the Grand Mosque (with a seating capacity of 1,500) in Finsbury Park in north-central London. He openly preaches jihad, and his Friday sermons are sold on cassettes and transmitted into every Muslim country through the Internet. Here are examples of some of his remarks: ‘It is the duty of every Muslim to fight every law that is not inspired by God [therefore only shariah is valid, not European law]; we must fight every kuffar [non-Muslim], without distinction, and there will be a special reward and a privileged place in paradise for those who volunteer to fight, while Muslims who stay at home without fighting will have only a small place.’ This information, which is in perfect agreement with the Qur’an, pulverises the belief in a difference between a ‘peaceful’ Islam and an ‘aggressive Islamism’. The following comes from other speeches by Abu Hamza: ‘I do not preach Islam as the West would like it to be, but as God wants it to be. Some imams want to “moderate” Islam in order to please the West, but not me. I expound Islam as it is, that is, fighting against the West. . . . I do not belong to Bin Laden’s networks, but I share some of their views. My sympathies and my prayers go to the Taliban and that is not a crime.’[72

For hundreds of years, the church would fast twice a week: Wednesdays and Fridays. That was just what you did if you were a Christian. In the fourth century, when the church developed the practice of Lent, it was originally a fast similar to Islam’s Ramadan. As a lead-up to Easter, followers of Jesus would wake and go without food until sunset. For forty days. Every year. Please note: go without food.

Rogers’s belief that a ruler’s power, like King Friday’s, is ultimately dependent upon complicity or cooperation from those he or she rules, and that when the governed begin to withdraw their cooperation, as Lady Aberlin and Daniel Striped Tiger did, the power of the ruling authority begins to crumble.

You don’t have to respond to every critic. You don’t have to prove yourself to them. Just stay on the high road and let God fight your battles for you. Some who will cross your path simply don’t want peace with you. No matter what you say or do, they will not be won over. Even if you were to change, they would still find some reason to be critical. You have to accept the fact that no matter what you do, some people will never be at peace with you.

When Jesus sent His disciples out into certain homes, He told them to speak peace over each person in each house. And He said, in effect, “If they don’t receive it, then the peace you’re offering them will come back to you” (see Luke 1-:5—6). That tells me if you do your best to be at peace with people—even if they won’t take your peace—the good news is that peace will just come back to you anyway. You’ll not only enjoy your peace, but you’ll be given their share as well. When you do the right thing when the wrong thing is happening, God sees it and He rewards it.

The violence of the cross is not what God does, the violence of the cross is what God endures. The cross is not what God inflicts upon Christ in order to forgive. This is what N.T. Wright has called a “paganized soteriology.”[7] The cross is not the violent appeasement of a pagan deity, but what God in Christ suffers as God pardons the world. God does not employ and inflict violence; God absorbs and forgives violence. The cross is where God in Christ transforms the hideous violence of Good Friday into the healing peace of Easter Sunday. The silent witness of every crucifix bears testimony to this, though I sadly admit we have been very slow to learn this lesson; at times the church has forgotten it all together.

Gibbs’ coat fell open to reveal a blue frilled shirt, tight leather pants, blue suede shoes and a large ‘Peace’ sign medallion. Everyone went quiet. Moran frowned. ‘So you really think that sort of outfit is suitable for a senior detective, DI Gibbs?’ ‘Sorry, guv. I did a gig in Camden town with my band last night then stayed at the girlfriend Tamara’s pad. Thankfully I’d added her phone number to my out of hours contact list at the old station. I didn’t want to waste time by going home to change when I got the call out, so after a quick dash of Adidas aftershave, I came straight to the scene by cab.