Words to live by

Once again, one of my favorite columnists in the Virginian-Pilot comes thru with a great column. Saturday’s Issues of Faith by Betsy Wright Rhodes is not a list of New Year’s resolutions. Instead, she provides us a list of things words to live by. No doubt some of these belong on my favorite quotes page. Her list follows. Add your own in the comments.

• God does not call the qualified; he qualifies the called.

• A true friend laughs at your stories even when they’re not so good and sympathizes with your troubles even when they’re not so bad. (Irish proverb)

• Our mission field is not in the four walls of the church. It is in the shadow of the steeple. (Ken Barnes)

• If anyone says to you, “Why are you doing this?” just say this, “The Lord needs it done.” (The Gospel of Mark 11:3)

• Regret is the cancer of life. Even God cannot change the past. (Abigail Van Buren)

• In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, love. (Moravian proverb)

• The Journey is Home. (the Rev. Myrna Jones of Phillips Theological Seminary)

• No man has a right in America to treat any other man tolerantly, for tolerance is the assumption of superiority. (Wendell Willkie)

• The Jesuitisms of clergymen and devout ladies no longer have any hold on me now. You see, for me that God of the clergy is as dead as a doornail. But does that make me an atheist? Clergymen consider me one – so be it – but you see, I love, and how could I feel love if I were not alive myself, or if others were not alive; and if we are alive there is something wondrous about it. Now call that God or human nature or whatever you like, but there is a certain something I cannot define systematically, although it is very much alive and real, and you see, for me that something is God or as good as God. (Vincent van Gogh)

• A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word “darkness” on a wall. (C.S. Lewis)

• If you see injustice and say nothing, you have taken the side of the oppressor. (Desmund Tutu)

• Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each one of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. (Robert F. Kennedy)

• Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either. (Golda Meir)

• Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”

• Above all things, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. (1 Peter 4:8)

• The mission of a decent columnist is to provoke thought, and if you’re not going to provoke thought or debate, you’re not worth the paper you’re printed on. (Former Pilot columnist Charlise Lyles)