Love always involves responsibility, and love always involves sacrifice. And we do not really love Christ unless we are prepared to face His task and to take up His Cross.
So often we have a kind of vague, wistful longing that the promises of jesus should be true. The only way really to enter into them is to believe them with the clutching intensity of a drowning man.
Joy has nothing to do with material things, or with a man's outward circumstance ... A man living in the lap of luxury can be wretched, and a man in the depths of poverty can overflow with joy.
When we believe that god is father, we also believe that such a father's hand will never cause his child a needless tear. We may not understand life any better, but we will not resent life any longer.
