At the point that Jesus shows up in the storm, He and I become the storm.

When it comes to the challenges that we’re facing, they’re not necessarily as small as we would like them to be, but they’re probably not as big as we fear them to be.

I simply cannot afford to be ignorant of the monumental challenges that constantly batter and beset the world around me. But neither can I afford to be ignorant of the cancer of pessimism that constantly rallies the entire weight of its defeatist character in an all-out effort to convince me that the abilities inherent in mankind are far, far too inadequate to challenge the challenges. And it might be that the greatest challenge of all is to challenge this sort of thinking.

The only way to achieve a dream worth dreaming is to accept the reality that each victory that we experience along the way will be preceded by innumerable failures chronically deep and frequently painful. And our ability to deal with these realities are certain to test both the merit of our dream and the depth of our commitment to it.

My vision need not be bigger than the obstacles. It just needs to be more determined.

Our imagination is God’s ingenious gift that hands us the privilege of romping and playing in realities that we can’t see only because we’ve yet to create them.

Will we abandon the dream to the brutality of the road that we must walk in order to bring the dream to reality? Or will we lay ourselves before God as the author of dreams and leveler of roads?

Can I do something?” is a far different question from “will I do something?” For the first is a question of ability, while the second is a question of ability rendered irrelevant by passion.

Too often ‘reality’ is the excuse that we use to abandon our dreams, when in fact ‘reality’ is simply the thing that’s sitting there waiting to be overcome by our dreams and all the while wondering why it’s taking so long.