“It is not the critic who counts; 

not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, 

or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

 

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, 

whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; 

who strives valiantly; 

who errs, who comes short again and again, 

because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; 

but who does actually strive to do the deeds; 

who knows great enthusiasms, 

the great devotions; 

who spends himself in a worthy cause;

 

who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, 

and who at the worst, if he fails, 

at least fails while daring greatly, 

so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

― Theodore Roosevelt

"But the noble man 

devises noble plans;

And by noble plans he stands."

Isaiah 32:8

 What does the voice of the Lord sound like? Let's allow the Bible to teach us - 

 “Let my teaching drop as the rain,

My speech distill as the dew,

As the droplets on the fresh grass

And as the showers on the herb.” Deuteronomy 32:2

I love that verse, and we all want to speak to those we love in that way. I read a piece from a book titled Well-Springs of Truth" and he shares his thoughts on how we, as ambassadors for Christ, can illustrate it. 

 “Never is the deep, strong voice of man, 

Or the low, sweet voice of woman, 

Firmer than in the earnest but mellow tones of speech, 

Richer than the richest music, which are a delight while they are heard, 

Which linger still upon the ear in softened echoes, 

And which, when they have ceased, 

Come back to memory like the murmurs of a distant hymn.

Oh, it is very pleasant to listen to such voices, 

Accordant with lofty conceptions and sweet humanities,

The soul breathings that now swell with daring imaginations,

And then sink into the gentleness of sadness or pity. 

I have heard such voices,

Voices that were music from the soul and to it – 

The very melody of thought, 

And of thought that was the very soul of goodness.

Beautiful conceptions sang along the syllables, 

Beautiful feelings came trickling from the heart in liquid tones. 

Very pleasant are such voices, 

Pleasant on the fragrant air of a summer’s evening, 

Pleasant by the fire on a winter’s night, 

pleasant in the palace,

pleasant in the shanty, 

pleasant while they last, pleasant to remember even with sorrow,

when they are silent, 

never again attune and sweeten the common air of earth."  

 Dante getting salty about preachers in his day.

“‘Down there, when you philosophize, you fail to follow one true path, 

so does the love of show preoccupy your mind and carry you away,

 ‘and even this is tolerated here with less wrath than when holy Scripture is neglected or its doctrines are mistaught.

‘There is no thought among you of the blood it costs to sow the world with it, or how acceptable he is who humbly makes his way to it.

‘Each strives to gain attention by inventing new ideas, expounded by the preachers at some length—

but the Gospel remains silent…”

“‘Christ did not say to His first congregation: 

“Go preach idle nonsense to the world,” 

but gave to them a sound foundation. 

‘And that alone resounded from their lips, so that, in their warfare to ignite the faith, they used the Gospel as their shield and lance.

‘Now preachers ply their trade with buffoonery and jokes, their cowls inflating if they get a laugh 

and the people ask for nothing more.”

— Paradiso XXIX by Dante

 It is a blessed effect, then, of sorrow which God appoints for ourselves, 

that it makes us take note of sorrows which others are enduring. 

And if it make us look to Christ's poor with a more tender regard, with a deep and more brotherly affection than hitherto; it is, at the same time, a sign that we are growing in acquaintance and in communion with Him.

— 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐬 𝐒𝐦𝐲𝐭𝐡,

   “No man is the whole of himself until he has developed this capacity to see something in life besides its prose. (Written or spoken language in its ordinary form, dull or shallow, but factual.) 

We can, to be sure, put into prose our business letters, the daily news, the round of family gossip, the quotations of the stock exchange;   the details of factual experience can be set in bare, plain prose.

But no one should suppose that this represents the full truth about anything. 

If one would know the truth about an eagle, he may consult a scientific textbook and learn the ornithological details. 

They will be correct, but they will not be adequate to describe an eagle. 

Let the poet Tennyson, for example, supply some of the lack: 

“He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands, 

Ringed with the azure world, he stands. 

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls, 

And like a thunderbolt he falls.”

That is an eagle! 

Any man’s life has been a failure when its whole story can be told in prosaic (ordinary, commonplace, unromantic, uninspired) indicative sentences. 

The deepest and finest experiences of humankind have always been expressed in poetry, bodied forth in pictures, symbolized in imagination, set to music and sung. 

All of Christmas could not be expressed without evergreen trees, holly, mistletoe, angels, carols and giving. 

The masters of history articulate what we experience but cannot say.” 

Harry Emerson Fosdick.