With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Steven Weinberg

How many times have we heard unbelievers reject Christianity because there were “too many hypocrites in the church?” And the standard response has been that, regardless of the behavior of Christians, our decision determines where we spend eternity — point and counterpoint. I’ve yet to hear anyone acknowledge the fact that hypocrisy is a serious issue in the church.

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To travel hopefully is better than to arrive.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Hope is a state of mind.  It sets the course of our day or days to come.  It embraces the anticipation of things ahead.  Hope sets the desire that something good will happen (I hope I get that raise.) or that something bad won’t happen (I hope it’s not cancer.).

The antithesis of hope is despair.  The killer of hope is apathy.  I don’t care what tomorrow brings.  Or I have no hope, just the monotony of my pitiful life.

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Yep. There it was, in the inspirational book rack. No time to thumb through it, but immediately my mind began to wonder. If it was easy, wouldn’t it quickly lose its purpose? Isn’t the reason for fasting that it is a concentrated time period in which we give up food to focus on something, someone — our lives, God? Wouldn’t making it easy diminish its effect, undermine its purpose?

Now, I weigh 300+ pounds, so there are many that would recommend that I begin fasting — and soon! I believe that’s called dieting, and even that makes me shudder, although I realize that addressing eating habits and exercise is in order.

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