There is many a soul of noble capacities lying in sluggish darkness for want of some word outside of itself, some little encouragement, and that so slight that perhaps a child might utter it. Author unknown. 

  Most people would succeed in small things, 
if they were not troubled with great ambitions. 
Longfellow. 

Although my heart in earlier youth

  Might be kindled with more warm desire,

Believe me, I have gained in truth

  Much more than I have lost in fire. 

Moore. 

  "Thinkers alone cannot make a great period. The glory of Christ was not that He knew much, but that He loved much." David Swing.

Thou great First cause, least understood,

Who all my sense confined

To know but this, that thou are good,

And that myself am blind.

What conscience dictates to be done,

Or warns me not to do,

This teach me more than hell to shun,

That more than heaven pursue.

What blessings thy free bounty gives

Let me not cast away;

For God is paid when man receives -

To enjoy is to obey.

If I am right, thy grace impart

Sill in the right to stay;

If I am wrong, O teach my heart

To find a better way.

Save me alike from foolish pride

Or impious discontent,

At what thy wisdom has denied,

Or what they goodness lent.

Teach me to feel another's woe,

To hide the fault I see;

That mercy I to others show,

That mercy show to me.

Mean though I am, not wholly so,

Since quickened by thy breath;
Oh lead me where so ever I go,

Through this day's life or death.

Excerpts from Alexander Pope's "Universal Prayer."

  I work with people that have either lived traumatic lives or suffered great crisis, and so I want a church where they will be comfortable and feel accepted, even if they come from a counter culture and have extreme fashion, or lack there of. 
I tell people that if no one is smoking outside before and after church, then the church is probably not reaching out. The same with the children's Sunday school; if they have no vision for the children, then something’s amiss. 
I want to see young women in dresses too short, young men with hair like an abandoned bird's nest, the faint smell of tobacco circulating in the sanctuary, and all types and ages, that's my idea of a healthy church. People being rescued from crisis, the streets, the missions and the house next door. A pulpit where the Pastor preaches like he means it!  I've heard it said this way -

"The sermon wasn’t flowery, ‘twas simple gospel truth;

It fitted poor old men like me, it fitted hopeful youth.
‘Twas full of consolation for weary hearts that bleed;
‘Twas full of invitations to Christ, and not to creed."

  Yes, where Jesus is lifted up as the answer for all our needs and the Holy Spirit's love prevails in the congregation. Nothing for sale in the lobby or behind the pulpit; 
lunch and snacks take place in homes where guests are invited after church, and the keynote singer is Sally from the choir. The talent is weak but the volume is high; Amens and tears outnumber laughs, and a Bible's behind every pew.

Building men

The child needs more than books, 
Judgment he needs, 
And understanding, 
And maturity. 

For these, he looks to you
And you must give them to him.

Let yourself rub off on him, 
Let him sit beside you as you work,
To work with you, 
To study with you, 
To be perplexed with you, 
To analyze with you, 
And to dream with you. 

Give him the impossible task to do, 
The unanswerable question to answer. 
There is no better way to train --
Whether you be Socrates training athenian youth,
or an American man of business. 
Robert W. Murphy. 

Brutes find out where their talents lie:
a bear will not attempt to fly. 
A founder'd horse will oft debate,
Before he tries a five-barr'd gate;
a dog by instinct turns aside,
Who sees the ditch too deep and wide;
But men we find the only creature
Who, led by folly, combats nature;
Who when she loudly cries -- forbear,
With obstinacy fixes there; 
and, where his genius least inclines, 
Absurdly bends his whole design. 
Jonathan Swift

Essay On Man

At ten, a child; at twenty, wild
At thirty, tame, if ever
At forty, wise; at fifty, rich;
At sixty, good or never. 

Anonymous 

The whole period of youth is one essentially of formation, edification, instruction, I use the words with their weight in them; intaking of stores, establishment in vital habits, hopes and faiths There is not an hour of it but is trembling with destinies, -- not a moment of which once past , the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on the cold iron. John Ruskin. 

Maybe too much, maybe not enough, but this is how I lay it out.

Marriage vows to Christ

Do you solemnly swear to put your life in the hands of Christ; so much as you are able at this moment in time?

Will you determine to seek purity and goodness by His strength to guide and enable you?

Will you seek peace and turn from violence, so help you God?

Will you extend your hand to help the poor, the least, the last and the lost?

Will you let the mercy of Christ teach you how to forgive all who have sinned against you?

Do you swear to seek honesty in all your ways, so help you God?

Will you seek justice, show mercy and be faithful to all? Beginning with family, friends and to the stranger so much as lies within you?

If you have said yes, I pronounce you a child of God, washed in His blood, forgiven, clean and blameless, born again and adopted into the kingdom of God.

  "I would teach a child, in defiance even of reason, that God is the one Power that loves and understands him through thick and thin, that He punishes with anguish and sorrow; that He exults in forgiveness and mercy; that He rejoices in innocent happiness; that He loves courage, and brightness, and kindness, and cheerful self-sacrifice; that things mean and vile and impure and cruel, are things that He does not love to punish, but sad and soiling stains that He beholds with shame and tears. This, is seems to me, is the Gospel teaching about God, impossible only because of the hardness of our hearts. 

 I remember a terrible lecture which I heard as a bewildered boy at school; given by a worthy Evangelical clergyman, with large spectacles, and a hollow voice, and a great relish for spiritual terrors! 

The subject was "the exceeding sinfulness of sin." Arthur Benson.  

 How do we know Christianity is real and truth? 

                              

   As for me, I always want to know the truth, whether it is the one I've discovered or if it refutes the one I've discovered. It is too big and too important of an issue to be casually bantered around like the latest fashion.

 I want something that will hold the heaviest burden, will lift the darkest heart; will break into freedom those in the strongest chains; like slavery, addiction, victims of trauma, neglect and abuse, and all the deepest questions and thoughts of the heart. 

Not a dogma, not a theory or rhetoric, creed or party, but something that gets into the deepest, darkest valleys of human frailty.

 So, if someone shows me a way of great nobility, a way of deep sacrificing compassion; a way that demonstrates sacrificial love that I have never seen, then, and only then, will they get my full and focused attention. 

 When I watched the documentary of Mother Teresa's work in Calcutta with the dying wretches that laid in the street with maggot filled wounds, and watched this little woman of faith carry them back to her home for the dying, and even though she knew that they were dying, she offered them unconditional love, regardless of caste, religion or race, and gave them the gift of 'dying with dignity and love,' I knew I saw truth in action. 

These things are what I have come to know as "Truth" these are the deeds of God, the mercies of Christ.