Whenever I allow anything but tenderness and compassion to dictate my response to life--be it self-righteous anger, moralizing, defensiveness, the pressing need to change others...I am alienated from my true self. My identity as a child of God becomes ambiguous,...
Down, down, down into the darkness of the graveGently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
We are in danger of being stern where God is tender, and tender when God is stern.
The world needs strong women. Women who will lift and build others, who will love and be loved. Women who live bravely, both tender and fierce. Women of indomitable will.
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet Whose hands can strike with such abandon That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness That the haughty neck is happy to bow And the...
By all appearances, it is a Good Friday world. But by the light of Easter, through the thick darkness covering the nations, we can dimly discern a "Yes, but" kind of message. Yes, fear and self-righteousness, indifference and sentimentality kill; but love never dies,...
So what, then, does Christianity have to offer in the midst of hardships and heartache? The answer, I think, is consolation, including the consolation that comes from being part of a Christian community--people who walk alongside us as we journey through grief,...
To wait with openness and trust is an enormously radical attitude toward life. It is choosing to hope that something is happening for us that is far beyond our own imaginings. It is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life. It is living with...
Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant with the weak and wrong…because sometime in your life you will have been all of these.
Sometimes joy is compounded of many elements: a touch of sadness, a whimper of pain, a harsh word tenderly held until all its arrogance dies, the casting of the eye into the face that understands, the clasp of a hand that holds, then releases, a murmur of tenderness...