If, in the end, you have not chosen Jesus Christ it will not matter what you have chosen.

Patience is tied very closely to faith in our Heavenly Father. Actually, when we are unduly impatient, we are suggesting that we know what is best—better than does God. Or, at least, we are asserting that our timetable is better than His. We can grow in faith only if we are willing to wait patiently for God's purposes and patterns to unfold in our lives, on His timetable.

God's extraordinary work is most often done by ordinary people in the seeming obscurity of a home and family.

Sir Thomas More was a victim of injustice and irony. Generously and meekly, just as he was about to be martyred, he said:

Paul . . . was present, and consented to the death of St. Stephen, and kept their clothes that stoned him to death, and yet be they [Stephen and Paul] now both twain Holy Saints in heaven, and shall continue there friends for ever, so I verily trust and . . . pray, that though your lordships have now here in earth been judges to my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together, to our everlasting salvation.

There are certain mortal moments and minutes that matter. Certain hingepoints in the history of each human. Some seconds are so decisive they shrink the soul, while others are spent, so as to stretch the soul.

The submission of one's will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God's altar. The many other things we 'give' are actually the things He has already given or loaned to us.