"To express the religion of Christ in precise words would be a mighty task; but it may be said that is was not merely a system, nor primarily a creed; it was a message to individual hearts, bewildered by the complexity of the world and the intricacy of religious observances.

Christ bid people to believe that their Creator was also a Father, that the only way to escape from the overwhelming difficulties presented by the world was the way of simplicity, sincerity, and love; that a person should keep out of their life, all that insults and hurts the soul, and that they should hold the interests of others as dear as they hold their own.

It was a protest against all ambition, and cruelty, and luxury, and self-conceit. It showed that a person should accept their temperament and their place in life, as gifts from the hands of their Father, and that they should then be peaceful, pure, humble, and loving.

  Christ brought into the world an entirely new standard; He showed that many respected and reverenced persons were very far indeed from the Father, while many obscure, sinful, miserable outcasts found the secret, which the respectable and contemptuous missed. Never was there a message, which cast so much hope abroad in rich handfuls to the world.

The astonishing part of the revelation was that it was so absolutely simple; neither wealth, nor intellect, nor position, nor even moral perfection, were needed. The simplest child, the most abandoned sinner, could take the great gift as easily as the most honored statesman, the wisest sage-- indeed more easily, for it was the very complexity of affairs, of motives, of wealth, that entangled the soul and prevented it from realizing its freedom." A.C. Benson.  

"In societies, the order of reformation will be found to begin from a solitary point deep-buried and unnoticed, first to the circumjacent region, and then over the whole surface; from the native force an inspired insight of some individual mind, that kindles, first itself, and then by its irresistible intensity, a wider and wider sphere of souls." Martineau.

What will my influence be? 

I want to share this prayer request we got at the jail this week. It really struck me how this woman is so in tune with the other women there, some people see what others miss. She has been busy doing the work of Christ in jail, where she is a fellow inmate, and it humbles and inspires me the way she is so connected to the other inmates. Imagine, just imagine if we all were so vigilante to care for others.....

  "First I would ask that you pray for my new friends here at WCCC Gyla, taloy, Jesse, Gyla for her Agorahphobia that when she leaves here we remain as good of friends and become the best of. Taloy that she figure out how to keep herself out of trouble here that she don't feel the need to be so mischevious LOL so she can stay here and not go back across the street,(isolation) she just needs guidence. For Jesse that she finds a little peace in life and that she get back to her son as she misses him greatly and Vice Versa. For Charlene she just began her new meds and it is a scary things as I just had a friend take her own life and I pray that it doesn’t have the affect her in a similar fasion for my friend Alnya she is not w/her children and really struggling w/relationships and legally and I want to pray for her to have strength and that she to find peace, and for my friend Brittany that she go to court and she make it here w/an open heart and that she maybe restored to sanity and reality and remember she was wanting to get clean and get her heart and head and life right and that,she is given the Plethorah of oppurtunities, I am here, and lastly I pray for my new found friends I have met in the five of you I thank you for your time and love and hope and encouragement and just for being you."

  "There is a story of a young man that came up with a little handful of men to attack a king who was invading their land and who had a great army of 3,000 men. The young man had only 500, and the king sent a messenger to the young man, saying that he need not fear to surrender, for he would treat him mercifully. The young man called up one of his soldiers and said: "Take this dagger and drive it to your heart;" and the soldier took the dagger and drove it to his heart. And calling up another, he said to him, "Leap into yonder chasm," and the man leaped into the chasm. The young man then said to the messenger, "Go back and tell your king I have 500 men like these. We will die, but we will never surrender. And tell your king another thing, that I will have him chained with my dog inside of half an hour." And when the king herd that, he did not dare to meet them, and his army fled before them like chaff before the wind, and within twenty-four hours he had that kind chained with his dog."  Moody.

That'll preach!

  "Children of God, we are not without something of God's creative spirit in our hearts. The power is there to separate the light from the darkness within us, and to set in the fires of the soul, lights to guide and gladden us for every season of life, power to make the very leaves and grass green beneath our feet, and to bring happiness into existence around our path, and power to mold the clay of our earthily nature into the likeness of God. But sometimes we are forced into quietude, in pauses of exhaustion or of grief; stretched upon the bed of pain, before we are able to hear the Spirit within." 

  "Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation. He recounts the decency and regularity of former times, and celebrates the discipline and sobriety of the age in which his youth was passed; a happy age, which is now no more to be expected, since confusion has broken in upon the world and thrown down all the boundaries of civility and reverence." - Samuel Johnson 1700's.

 "That morning the shape and hue of the flowers were full of gracious mystery; the green pasture seemed a place where a middle-aged man might almost venture to dance. The sharp chirping of the birds in the shrubbery seemed like a concert arranged for my ear. There was no room in my heart for anything but the joy of earth and the beauty of it. What did the weary days before or behind matter?"  Arthur Benson.