In the Darwinian world, self-preservation is the ultimate shiny good.

Every four years, I'll watch figure skating, but I'm no closer to buying tights.

Your life is your own, your glory is your glory, but you will lose it if you keep it for yourself. Grasp it for the sake of others.

Do not fear the shadowy places. You will never be the first one there. Another went ahead and down until He came out the other side.

Here Spring just grows and greens and warms, spreading life, wrapping us in her arms, until suddenly we realize that she's not a girl anymore. She's a woman. A woman named Summer.

God is a God of galaxies, of storms, of roaring seas and boiling thunder, but He is also the God of bread baking, of a child's smile, of dust motes in the sun. He is who He is, and always shall be. Look around you now. He is speaking always and everywhere. His personality can be seen and known and leaned upon. The sun is belching flares while mountains scrape our sky while ants are milking aphids on their colonial leaves and dolphins are laughing in the surf and wheat is rippling and wind is whipping and a boy is looking into the eyes of a girl and mortals are dying.

Tom had traveled around the sun eleven times when the delivery truck brought his mother's newest fridge, but a number doesn't really describe his age.