God comes into the very midst of evil and of death, and judges the evil in us and in the world. And by judging us, he cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with his grace and love. He makes us happy as only children can be happy.

When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.

Often we combat our evil thoughts most effectively if we absolutely refuse to allow them to be expressed in words.

The fact that we do not speak it but sing it only expresses the fact that our spoken words are inadequate to express what we want to say, that the burden of our song goes far beyond all human words.

If we look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed, this seems actually to be a psychological and sociological law: the power of some needs the folly of others. It is not that certain human capacities, intellectual capacities for instance, become stunted of destroyed, but rather that the upsurge of power makes such an overwhelming impression that men are deprived of their independent judgment, and...give up trying to assess the new state of affairs for themselves.

If you reject God's commanding word, you will not receive God's gracious word.

The time is short. Eternity is long. It is the time of decision.