They just looked at his past. And when we're still looking at ourselves through our past, we're not seeing what God has done. What He can do! We're not seeing the little things that happen in our...
He told me a story. A man buried his wife. At the gravesite he stood by the Reb, tears falling down his face. I loved her, he whispered. The Reb nodded. I mean…I really loved her. The man broke...
But what if someone from another faith won't recognize yours? Or wants you dead for it?That is not faith. That is hate. He sighed. And if you ask me, God sits up there and cries when that happens.
The next morning, shortly after sunrise, the Reb was awakened for a sponge bath. It was quiet and early. The nurse bathed him gently, and he was singing and humming to her, alive with the day. Then...
When a Catholic priest from across the street insulted one of our members, you demanded he apologize. When he did, you accepted, as his penance, a gesture. You waited until the Catholic schoolkids...
Some of our greatest problems in ministering to people is that they knew us back before we came to the Lord
A eulogy is no more than a summation of memories, and we will never forget you, because we cannot forget you, because we will miss you every day. To imagine a world without you in it is to imagine a...
The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they might be related to one another in ways frowned on by the Old Testament.
By the way, Reb, about the singing. What gives? Walt Whitman sang the body electric. Billie Holiday sang the blues. You sang…everything. You could sing the phone book. I would call and say how are...
In any conversation, I was taught, there are at least three parties: you, the other person, and the Lord.
The Reb once did a sermon on how the same things in life can be good or evil, depending on what, with free will, we do with them. Speech can bless or curse. Money can save or destroy. Science can heal...
with a little faith, people can fix things, and they truly can change, because at that moment, you could not believe otherwise.
And he would wake sometimes in grief, sometimes with the old sense of joy and release; the pillow sometimes wet, sometimes the sheets.
On the other hand, Napoleon once dismissed religion as "what keeps the poor from murdering the rich." Meaning, without the fear of God-or literally the hell we might have to pay-the rest of us would...
Now. My turn. Look, if you say that science will eventually prove there is no God, on that I must differ. No matter how small they take it back, to a tadpole, to an atom, there is always something...
Back in the sanctuary, the Reb concluded his taped message by saying, Please love one another, talk to one another, don't let trivialities dissolve friendships… Then he sang a simple tune, which...
voice. And while they deepen with age, voices are, to one destined to listen for eternity, as distinct as a fingerprint.
There was a sermon where he brought a squash and a piece of wood, then slammed each with a knife to show that things which grow quickly are often more easily destroyed than those which take a long...
Life ... is only heavy and none else; there is only the one trip, all heavy. Heavy that leads to the grave. For everyone and everything.
Putting Mr. Polopetsi in charge of the investigation is like putting a rabbit in charge of the airport.
You loved to teach. In time, you tried the rabbinate. And you failed. But a great Jewish scholar said two words you would later invoke many times with many of us: "try again." And you did. Thank God...
Mitch, that's what faith is. If they spit in your face, you say it must be raining. But you still come back tomorrow.
We move through places every day that would never have been if not for those who came before us. Our workplaces, where we spend so much time--we often think they began with our arrival. That's not...
We all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle.
There are different forms of seduction, and the kind I have witnessed in Persian dancers is so unique, such a mixture of subtlety and brazenness, I cannot find a Western equivalent to compare it to. I...
What would they do to me, he asked in confidential tones, if I refused to fly them?We'd probably shoot you, ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen replied.We? Yossarian cried in surprise. What do you mean, we? Since...
Anything or anyone that asks you to be other than yourself is not holy, but is trying only to fill its own need.
And by making that plan you have differentiated yourself from more than ninety percent of the population. You are one of the few, who has a clear direction, a decisive plan of action.
I have often thought how much happier I should have been if, instead of accepting a command under such Circumstances, I should have taken my musket upon my Shoulder & entered the Ranks or … had...
I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.
For I am not Eternity, but a human being-a part of the whole, as an hour is part of the day. I must come like the hour, and like the hour must pass!
She thought the flat would be all the better for some photographs, not only to serve as reminders of those who were loved, or reflections of happy times spent in company, but to act as mirrors, where...
When we fail to acknowledge God as the Source of all good things, we fail to give Him the recognition and glory He deserves. We separate God from joy, which is like trying to separate heat from fire...
The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they...
What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you...
Why are they going to disappear him? I don't know. It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good...
Havermeyer was a lead bombardier who never missed. Yossarian was a lead bombardier who had been...
Keep in mind that when we talk of a great painting we are not really talking about anything great....
Read me back the last line. 'Read me back the last line,' read back the corporal who could take...
Inscribed on the back was a line from Virgil in Latin: Audentes fortuna juvat. Fortune favors the...
It isn't even good grammar. What the hell does it mean when they disappear somebody?
The rain was pattering hypnotically on the plane's exterior.