We repeatedly discard the very things that we ‘need’ in the maddening pursuit of that which we ‘want.’ And if this behavior persists, in the end we will stand holding neither.

If we chase the things that ‘tickle our ears,’ we’ll probably end up finding out that they’re going to ‘torture our lives.

How is it that my prayers have devolved into a laundry list of requests verses an endless litany of praises? It may be that I’ve replaced the magnificence of God’s divinity with the baseness of my desires.

I am far too often the author of terribly poor decisions. Yet I must rest in the unalterable fact that God says I am far better than what the sum total of those decisions would ever suggest.

Christmas embodies everything that I need. However, everything that I need is often made up of a lot of stuff I don’t want.

Death is rendered tragic when it finds us having expended ourselves in the endeavor of having lived for ourselves. For when it finds us at the end of such a life as this, it finds us in the company of no one other than ourselves. And that alone may be worse than death itself.

Although I too often see myself as powerless, the fact is the New Year is what I make it. And whatever I make it is what it makes me.

What excites us the most or likewise scares us the most is when something is exactly what it says it is. And when it comes to Christmas, we’re going to end up finding ourselves on one side of that line or the other.

If I am not transforming those around me it is because I have chosen not to transform that which is within me.