“Thinking about My Purpose POINT TO PONDER: There is more to life than just here and now. VERSE TO REMEMBER: “This world is fading away, along with everything it craves. But if you do the will of God, you will live forever.” 1 JOHN 2:17 (NLT) QUESTION TO CONSIDER: Since I was made to last forever, what is the one thing I should stop doing and the one thing I should start doing today?”

“Starting a business is like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. In mid air, the entrepreneur begins building a parachute and hopes it opens before hitting the ground.”

“A thing may be morally neutral and yet the desire for that thing may be dangerous.”

“While life on earth offers many choices, eternity offers only two: heaven or hell. Your relationship to God on earth will determine your relationship to him in eternity.”

“The march of humanity, springing as it does from an infinite multitude of individual wills, is continuous.”

“It was only in South Africa that I got over this shyness, though I never completely overcame it. It was impossible for me to speak impromptu. I hesitated whenever I had to face strange audiences and avoided making a speech whenever I could. Even today I do not think I could or would even be inclined to keep a meeting of friends engaged in idle talk. I must say that, beyond occasionally exposing me to laughter, my constitutional shyness has been no disadvantage whatever. In fact I can see that, on the contrary, it has been all to my advantage. My hesitancy in speech, which was once an annoyance, is now a pleasure. Its greatest benefit has been that it has taught me the economy of words. I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. And I can now give myself the certificate that a thoughtless word hardly ever escapes my tongue or pen. I do not recollect ever having had to regret anything in my speech or writing. I have thus been spared many a mishap and waste of time. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. Proneness to exaggerate, to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man, and silence is necessary in order to surmount it. A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word. We find so many people impatient to talk. There is no chairman of a meeting who is not pestered with notes for permission to speak. And whenever the permission is given the speaker generally exceeds the time-limit, asks for more time, and keeps on talking without permission. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.”

“Though we have less to worry about than previous generations, we have more worry. Though we have it easier than our forefathers, we have more uneasiness. Though we have less real cause for anxiety than our predecessors, we are inwardly more anxious.”

“We suffer much agony because we try to get from people what only God can give us, which is a sense of worth and value. Look to God for what you need, not to people.

“It is a known fact that the third class traffic pays for the ever-increasing luxuries of first and second class travelling. Surely a third class passenger is entitled at least to the bare necessities of life.”

“I came to understand that very day that I was always angry because I was selfish. I felt that someone was always infringing on my rights, getting in my space, messing with my things, disregarding my positions, and so on, which offended me, leading to inappropriate behavior. Through wisdom provided by God it dawned on me that I should step outside of the center of the circle so that everything wasn’t always about me.”

“The deeper the difficulty in fulfilling a dream, the brighter the outcome of its fulfillment and the sweeter the celebration thereof. Persist to the end; don't give up!”

“Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”

“love is the only thing that can change the unchangeable.” 

“Shield!” the old woman snapped. “You well know the weakness there! Shield your son too much, Jessica, and he’ll not grow strong enough to fulfill any destiny.”

“Don't let the mistakes and disappointments of the past control and direct your future.”