We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions.

The cross is suffering with Christ.

Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Not only do the followers of Jesus renounce their rights, they renounce their own righteousness too. They get no praise for their achievements or sacrifices. They cannot have righteous– ness except by hungering and thirsting for it (this applies equally to their own righteousness and to the righteousness of God on earth ), always they look forward to the future righteousness of God, but they cannot establish it for themselves. Those who follow Jesus grow hungry and thirsty on the way.

If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders, I can't, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe, then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.

There is a wrong way of staying in the world and a wrong way of fleeing from it. In both cases we are fashioning ourselves according to the world.

If you set out to seek freedom, then learn above all things to govern your soul and your senses . . . only through discipline may a man learn to be free.

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.