Like humility, generosity comes from seeing that everything we have and everything we accomplish comes from God's grace and God's love for us . . . Certainly it is from experiencing this generosity of God and the generosity of those in our life that we learn gratitude and to be generous to others.
Christ's indwelling presence has freed us from exclusive orientation toward ourselves and opened us up in two directions: toward God, to receive the good things in faith, and toward our neighbor, to pass them on in love.
The good four. Honest with ourselves and with whatever is friend to us; courageous toward the enemy; generous toward the vanquished; polite-always that is how the four cardinal virtues want us.
Yes, creation is moving toward us; life is moving toward us all the time. We back away, but it keeps pushing toward us. Why not step forward and greet it.
It is only as we remember and embrace His generous grace toward us that we can extend it to others.
That's the sacred intent of life, of God--to move us continuously toward growth, toward recovering all that is lost and orphaned within us and restoring the divine image imprinted on our soul.
God wants us to be in joy, God wants us to be happy. Because of this extraordinary consciousness and this great ability for wonder and marvel, and without denying any of the terrors and horrors of the world, we also have an obligation toward joy and toward miracle and excitement.
I see how loving my parents are toward each other, toward my family and toward me. And that's just a glimpse of Jesus' love for us.
We translate into reality thoughts of poverty just as quickly as we do thoughts of riches. But when our attitude toward ourselves is big, and our attitude toward others is generous and merciful, we attract big and generous portions of success.
God’s perspective on us is remarkable, almost unbelievable. He delights in us and loves us as a caring Father. He’s running toward us, ready to embrace and forgive us. He’s for us in all the pain of life and can sustain us in every challenge. as i learn to see from God’s perspective, my perspective on everything else shifts. i realize that my failures don't disqualify me. i’m aware of the security i already have in God’s grace. i trust that nothing will separate me from the love of God in Christ.
we are continually overflowing toward those who preceded us, toward our origin, and toward those who seemingly come after us. ... It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again “invisibly,” inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.
You cease to move into yourself, away from others. You give up your antagonism. You begin to move toward others in love. God moved toward you in gracious, outgoing love, and you move toward others in that same outgoing love.
Energy always flows either toward hope, community, love, generosity, mutual recognition, and spiritual aliveness or it flows toward despair, cynicism, fear that there is not enough, paranoia about the intentions of others, and a desire to control.
We are all, by nature, clearly oriented toward the basic human values of love and compassion. We all prefer the love of others to their hatred. We all prefer others’ generosity to meanness. And who is there among us who does not prefer tolerance, respect and forgiveness of our failings to bigotry, disrespect, and resentment?
Most people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, frightfully objective sometimes--but the task is precisely to be objective toward oneself and subjective toward all others.
...if God is truly the greatest good on this earth, would He be loving us if He didn't draw us toward what is best for us (even if that happens to be Himself)?