Old cranks have practiced all their lives, just as old saints have likewise practiced all their lives. They just practiced different life principles.

God isn't calling us to a lonely, joyless existence with the promise of a delayed reward. God is calling us to live, to love and enjoy the challenge. God's formulas are roadmaps to freedom and peace. God is saying to us: "The only way to live is to be free. So save your heart for love and save your love for persons. Don't ever let any 'thing' own you. Don't let money or fame or power or the pursuit of pleasure put a ring in your nose and lead you around. Love persons and use things." And of course, this is the only way to live, to be free.

By afflictions God is spoiling us of what otherwise might have spoiled us. When he makes the world too hot for us to hold, we let it go.

Loneliness is the prison of the human spirit. When we are lonely, we pace back and forth in small, shut-in worlds.

The real gift of love is self disclosure.

A life of love is difficult, but it is not a bleak or unrewarding life. In fact, it is the only true human and happy life, for it is filled with concerns that are as deep as life, as wide as the whole world, and as far reaching as eternity. It is only when we have consented to love, and have agreed to forget ourselves, that we can find our fulfillment. This fulfillment will come unperceived and mysterious like the grace of God, but we will recognize it and it will be recognized in us.

Each child is sent into this world by God with a "Unique Message" to deliver, a new personal act of love to bestow