Want millennials back in the pews? Stop trying to make church "cool." When I left church at age 29, full of doubt and disillusionment, I wasn't looking for a better-produced Christianity. I was looking for a truer Christianity, a more authentic Christianity.
A crown is placed over our heads that for the rest of our lives we are trying to grow tall enough to wear.
One of the hardest things we must do sometimes is to be present to another person's pain without trying to 'fix' it, to simply stand respectfully at the edge of that person's mystery and misery.
Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day that whispers, I'll try again tomorrow.
Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.
So, it was you all along. Everyone I ever loved, it was you. Everything decent or fine that ever happened to me, everything that made me reach out and try to be better, it was you all along.
We cannot discover our failure to keep God’s law except by trying our very hardest (and then failing). Unless we really try, whatever we say, there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that, if we try harder next time, we shall succeed in being completely...
Genuine, untarnished, long-lasting living begins and is sustained when we know without a doubt that we can try, fail, try, fail, try, fail…and that God accepts and understands us. from Being Me