He who hopes in God trusts God, Whom he never sees, to bring him to the possession of things that are beyond imagination.
Interpretation
Trusting in God leads to hope for unimaginable blessings and experiences.
This quote by Thomas Merton emphasizes the importance of faith and trust in God, even when one cannot perceive Him directly. By placing hope in a higher power, a person is open to receiving unimaginable gifts and experiences that come from that faith, suggesting that true belief brings forth rewards beyond human understanding.
In practice
A church sermon discussing the impact of faith on personal growth.
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
The pleasures of the palate deal with us like Egyptian thieves who strangle those whom they embrace.
Just go with it. It won't hurt.' I stared at him. Adults only ever said that when it, whatever it happened to be, was going to hurt so much.
Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned.
I'm not alone, I'm free. I no longer have to be a credit, I don't have to be a symbol to anybody; I don't have to be a first to anybody.
Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.
The acknowledgment of our weakness is the first step in repairing our loss.
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