A work in progress...
We stand at the crossroads,
Each minute,
Each hour,
Each day,
Making choices.
We choose
The thoughts
We allow ourselves to think,
The passions
We allow ourselves to feel,
And the actions
We allow ourselves to perform.
Each choice
Is made in the context
Of whatever value system
We’ve selected
To govern our lives.
In selecting that value system,
We are,
In a very real way,
Making the most important choice
We will ever make.
Those who believe there is one God
Who made all things
And who governs the world by his providence
Will make many choices different
From those who do not.
Those who hold in reverence
That being who gave the life
And worship Him through
Adoration,
Prayer,
And thanksgiving
Will make many choices different
From those who do not.
Those who believe
in the future state
in which
all that is wrong here
will be made right
will make many choices different
from those who do not.
Those who subscribe
to the morals of Jesus
Will make many choices different
From those who do not.
Since the foundation of all happiness
Is thinking rightly,
And since correct action
Is dependent on correct opinion,
We cannot be too careful
In choosing the value system
We allow to govern
Our thoughts and actions.
And to know that God governs
In the affairs of men,
That he hears and answers prayers,
And that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him,
Is indeed,
A powerful regulator
Of human conduct.
"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. 'He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,' is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. The paradox is the whole principle of courage, even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity and I certainly have not done so, but Christianity has done more. It has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living, and him who dies for the sake of dying, and it has held up ever since, above the European lances, the banner of the mystery of chivalry, the Christian courage, which is a disdain of death."
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