“...and then I remembered this basic religious principle that God isn't there to take away our suffering or our pain but to fill it with his or her presence...”

“If we have never had the experience of taking our commonplace religious shoes off our commonplace religious feet, and getting rid of all the undue familiarity with which we approach God, it is questionable whether we have ever stood in his presence.”

“Jesus didn’t come to make us religious, righteous, or moral. Basically, His ethics involved His proclamation of a God-centered, love-filled life lived in obedience to God.”

“Everything passes away - suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the Earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars? Why?”

“We must remember that the test of our religious principles lies not just in what we say, not only in our prayers, not even in living blameless lives - but in what we do for others”

“The joy is not in the presence of pain, but in the knowledge that God is using our pain to refine us and make us better, not bitter”