I'm for everybody. You may not agree with me, but to me it's not my job to try to straighten everybody out. The Gospel is called the good news. My message is a message of hope, that's God's [message] for you. You can live a good life no matter what's happened to you.
Does God have a reason for wanting us to be charitable, to take care of those who can't take care of themselves? Either God does or God doesn't, it's just logic. If God has a reason then there is a reason independent of God and whatever God's reason is we should figure it out for ourselves. There is a reason and God doesn't really ground morality at all. God wants us to give charity because it's the right thing to do.
Coincidence obeys no laws and if it does we don't know what they are. Coincidence, if you'll permit me the simile, is like the manifestation of God at every moment on our planet. A senseless God making senseless gestures at his senseless creatures. In that hurricane, in that osseous implosion, we find communion.
I don't think that anything happens by coincidence... No one is here by accident... Everyone who crosses our path has a message for us. Otherwise they would have taken another path, or left earlier or later. The fact that these people are here means that they are here for some reason".
Not all coincidence has to be loaded with meaning. Sometimes, things simply recur because that's how it is in life, that's how the mood gets in. It's good to subtly overdo it too, as Nabokov does, as Sebald does. It's a good way to intensify that region of localized weather that we call a novel.
God does things that fly completely in the face of what we've all been taught that He is supposed to do and every time He does this, we all just say, 'Oh, well, I guess there must be some good reason why He did that.
God does things that fly completely in the face of what we've all been taught that He is supposed to do and every time He does this, we all just say, 'Oh, well, I guess there must be some good reason why He did that.'
You can think whatever you want to and laugh, but I believe if I would have never learned to put my stuff back on the right grocery store shelves, and I would have never learned to put my cart back where God told me to, I don't believe I would be standing here today preaching this message to you. And I think there are literally millions of people who miss the will of God for their life because they think little things don't make any difference.
Nature, the handmaid of God Almighty, does nothing but with good advice, if we make research into the true reason of things.
The Gospel is called the good news. My message is a message of hope, that's God's [message] for you.
I think there are strands in all of our lives that can be seen if we step back to recognize them. Coincidence is probably as close as I'll get to having spirituality. I do see patterns in my life sometimes, and I am thrilled by what I see. I don't think I'm going to have any further shot at it after death, and I don't think there's anybody upstairs orchestrating it for me, but I do think it happens. If there are miracles in my life, they are rooted in the fact of coincidence.
The Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or — if they think there is not — at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.
No one has a life where everything that happened was good. I think the thing that made life good for me is that I never looked back. I've always been positive, no matter what happened.
Music does a lot of things for a lot of people. It's transporting, for sure. It can take you right back, years back, to the very moment certain things happened in your life. It's uplifting, it's encouraging, it's strengthening.
There's good in this world. I mean I'm not at all blind to that. God is a good God himself. There are good things. He gives good gifts to His children. But within this world there's a harshness and some of it is unanswered. I don't think I'm trying to provide an answer as much as I am begging people to walk with me in awareness so that we can push back the darkness.
The truth is, everything that's happened was supposed to happen. That doesn't mean I don't look back and think, God, I wish I hadn't had to go through some of those things.