It is good to have an intellectual awareness of our dependence upon God - to understand how great He is and how very small we are in His sight.
Interpretation
Recognizing our own smallness in relation to God's greatness fosters humility and appreciation.
This quote emphasizes the importance of understanding our dependence on a higher power, specifically God, and highlights the contrast between His vastness and our human frailty. By cultivating an intellectual awareness of this relationship, we can develop humility, reverence, and a deeper appreciation for the divine.
In practice
In a sermon about faith, one might quote this to illustrate the importance of humility before God.
I am not like a pebble on the beach - a grain of sand on the seashore or just one of millions of human beings past, present and future. No, I am a unique human being loved by God as if I were an only child - the only fruit of his creative powers.
I must not permit the evil capabilities of human nature to sour my faith in the tremendous good that is possible despite the frailty of that nature.
The sinner who suddenly realizes God's love for him and then looks at his rejection of that love feels a loss similar to the death of a loved one. A deep void is created in the soul and a loneliness akin to the agony of death.
Our memories are our own, and we cannot blame anything or anyone in the past for any pain dwelling there. If we open the door to them or keep hashing over past incidents in our minds, we have only ourselves to blame.
Man can and does rationalize his sins. He finds reasons for all his weakness, invents excuses that first calm and then deaden his conscience. He blames God, society, education, and environment for his wrong doing.
Love has been defined, analyzed, explained and excused. It has been the cause of wars, feuds, heroism, martyrdom, inordinate passion, and beautiful friendships. It pulls two people of opposite temperaments together into a married state and permits them to live happily. It makes friends understand each other without the necessity of words.
There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling, except in the infinite; for the soul, except in the divine.
Ethics evolve naturally, and we trample upon them with laws created by reason and experience.
Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him.
The moderation of people in prosperity is the effect of a smooth and composed temper, owing to the calm of their good fortune.
The moral truth here is obvious: anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supersede the interests of a child with a spinal cord injury has had his moral sense blinded by religious metaphysics.
A few hours of mountain climbing make a blackguard and a saint two rather similar creatures.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.