Build Up!

Whatever terror and atrocity you have seen in the world, something you desire only to forget because it depresses your courage and your confidence and give you a distaste for life and disgust for living - consider only how love builds up and you are built up for living! There are numerous things to discuss, but there is only one up-building subject: how love builds up. Therefore whatever experience you may have had, however embittering, so much so that you may wish never to have been born and the sooner the better to become silent in death - think only of how love edifies, and you will again be built up to speak!

Søren Kierkegaard in Works of Love

What you allow

Allow yourself to think about difficult realities you cannot explain. Otherwise the spiritual life may become merely an exercise in covering up pain with platitudes.

Too Busy

If you are overly busy, you may be living a fake life.  What are you running from?

 

Limits

Proper adjustment in life can be achieved only on the basis of acceptance of one’s own finiteness…We need not fear failing. Only God never fails and never makes a mistake…Such attempts to build security by our own efforts will always lead to increased anxiety…We are not, cannot be, and need not be God. God does not expect us to be God. Satisfaction and happiness lie in wait for us if we accept this fact; disappointment and frustration if we do not.

                                                      -Millard J Erickson, Christian Theology (3rd ed p 455)

What does it mean to love yourself?

To love God is true self-love.

Soren Kierkegaard