Have we not considered that the greatest sacrifices imaginable arise from the greatest love conceivable which results in the greatest transformations possible. And if this is not our understanding of Christmas, we have no Christmas.

To be ignorant of the sacrifices of others that yielded the blessings I enjoy leaves me exchanging the reality of 'blessing' for the assumption of 'entitlement.' And once that happens, I will forfeit the reality of the former which will destroy the assumption of the latter. And in what terribly dark place will that now leave me?

The greatest gains that we will ever experience arise from the greatest sacrifices that we have ever known.

If I’m asking what kind of ‘return’ I should be expecting on the sacrifices I’m making, I have in that question revealed the need to ‘return’ that question to wherever I found it and have the word ‘return’ edited out of it.

By its very nature, politics appears to be a system that has great difficulty preserving what the patriot dreamt of and died for.

I am thankful that to be attuned to the needs of another attunes us to the world, and that if I stay attuned only to my needs I will always be a stranger to the world.

Far too often, the rewards for our efforts seem to be mere pennies as held against the fortune of time and sacrifice spent attempting to earn them.

The greatest sacrifices of all are those that are done without an audience. And once completed, those selfsame sacrifices are left forever anonymous so as to never gather an audience.

Life doesn’t owe me. However, it liberally gifts me.