Being formed into a nation takes some doing.

We were an extraordinary paradox. We are finite creatures made for the infinite.

When you are in love you strive to do the things that will please your lover.

I have heard and seen many examples of the cruelty that we are able to visit on one another during my time. . . I have also seen incredible forgiveness and compassion. Yes, each of us has the capacity for great evil. But for every act of evil there are a dozen acts of goodness in our world that go unnoticed. It is only because we believe that people should be good that we despair when they are not. Indeed, if people condoned the evil, we would be justified in losing hope. But most of the world does not. We know that we are meant for better.

In the end what matters is not how good we are but how good God is. Not how much we love Him but how much He loves us. And God loves us whoever we are, whatever we’ve done or failed to do, whatever we believe or can’t.

We have an incredible capacity for the worst possible evil, all of us, it was that we also have this incredible capacity for good. And that is why we are all of us appalled when something bad happens. Because if the bad was the norm, we would just shrug our shoulders and say "well tough luck, this is how the cookie crumbles" kind of thing but none of us does that.

Peace without justice is an impossibility.