Repentance is a rescuing, not a dour, doctrine.

If we are not serving Jesus, and if he is not in our thoughts and hearts, then the things of the world will draw us instead to them! Moreover, the things of the world need not be sinister in order to be diverting and consuming.

Sir Thomas More was a victim of injustice and irony. Generously and meekly, just as he was about to be martyred, he said: Paul . . . was present, and consented to the death of St. Stephen, and kept their clothes that stoned him to death, and yet be they [Stephen and Paul] now both twain Holy Saints in heaven, and shall continue there friends for ever, so I verily trust and . . . pray, that though your lordships have now here in earth been judges to my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together, to our everlasting salvation.

We should not assume; however, that just because something is unexplainable by us, it is unexplainable.

We can learn that at the center of our agency is our freedom to form a healthy attitude toward whatever circumstances we are placed in! Those, for instance, who stretch themselves in service- though laced with limiting diseases-are often the healthiest among us! The Spirit can drive the flesh beyond where the body first agrees to go!

When at length we tire of putting people down, this self-inflicted fatigue can give way to the invigorating calisthenics of lifting people up.

Patient endurance permits us to cling to our faith in the Lord and our faith in His timing when we are being tossed about by the surf of circumstance. Even when a seeming undertow grasps us, somehow, in the tumbling, we are being carried forward, though battered and bruised.