God promised to make you free. He never promised to make you independent.
Interpretation
True freedom does not equate to complete independence; rather, it emphasizes the importance of reliance on others and the divine.
This quote highlights the distinction between being free and being independent. Freedom can be understood as liberation from constraints, but independence suggests a self-sufficient state. The quote implies that while God grants the ability to be free, there is an inherent need for interdependence and community. The interconnectedness of human relationships is essential, and recognizing this balance can lead to a more enriched and supported life.
In practice
During a motivational speech addressing the importance of community.
Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.
George MacDonald gives me renewed strength during times of trouble--times when I have seen people tempted to deny God--when he says, "The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.
If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are.
I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.
The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.
When we believe in the impossible, it becomes possible, and we can do all kinds of extraordinary things.
Agency, or the power to choose, was ours as spirit children of our Creator before the world was. It is a gift from God, nearly as precious as life itself. Often, however, agency is misunderstood. While we are free to choose, once we have made those choices, we are tied to the consequence of those choices. We are free to take drugs or not. But once we choose to use a habit-forming drug, we are bound to the consequences of that choice. Addiction surrenders later freedom to choose.
These small things - nutrition, place, climate, recreation, the whole casuistry of selfishness - are inconceivably more important than everything one has taken to be important so far.
An opponent is entitled to the same regard for his principles as we would expect others to have for ours. Non-violence demands that we should see every opportunity to win over opponents.
We may, perhaps, imagine that the creation was finished long ago. But that would be quite wrong. It continues still more magnificently, and at the highest levels of the world.
That's what kept us going - a sense of absurdity, rather than humor.
I've been present at birth, and death is just as present and in equal balance. And I've been present at death, and birth is just as present, again in equal balance.
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