There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.) And as I lay there, it occurred to me that God is up there somewhere.

People who live great stories know failure isn’t a judgment, it’s an education.

I took William Zinsser's advice that you write to yourself and you hope that there are people out there who are like you.

We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn't mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It's a good calling, then, to speak a better story. How brightly a better story shines. How easily the world looks to it in wonder. How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them.

Great stories move through fear.

Instead of asking what it feels like to follow God or be used by God, we should be asking who God is, and whether we really know Him. Everything else will take care of itself.

It's something you can actually control. With writing, it feels like it's given to you, and when the good stuff hits, it feels like it's coming from some other planet.And you're just channeling it.