It is only when human beings see themselves simply as human beings, no longer as gods, that they are in a position to perceive the wholly other nature of God.

That is why faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in man. Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.

The present time of believers is no longer determined by the past. It takes its definition from the future.

To reinvent your own country you need a great audacity of hope.

As time goes on we become old, the future contracts, the past expands...But by future we don't just mean the years ahead; we always mean as well the plenitude of possibilities which challenge our creativity...In confrontation with the future we can become young if we accept the future's challenges.

There are various names for this 'Spirit of Life' because there are various life experiences.

Despair can be like an iron band constricting the heart.