#christmas

Every gift which is given, even though is be small, is in reality great, if it is given with affection. ↗

— Pindar

#affection #even #every #gift #given

Did you know that Christmas Day is absolutely the best day to fly? It is. No crowded airports and crowded planes. I always flew to Australia. That's what Christmas was for me - a plane journey to the next tournament. ↗

— Monica Seles

#always #australia #best #christmas #christmas day

And now brothers, I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without him is the real death, that to die with him the only life? ↗

— Frederick Buechner

#christmas #cross #devotional #easter #jesus

Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we're here for something else besides ourselves." ~ (1912-1992), American newscaster. ↗

— Eric Sevareid

#christmas

This Christmas mend a quarrel. Seek out a forgotten friend. Dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust. Write a letter. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Manifest your loyalty in word and deed. Keep a promise. Forgo a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Apologize. Try to understand. Examine your demands on others. Think first of someone else. Be kind. Be gentle. Laugh a little more. Express your gratitude. Welcome a stranger. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love, and then speak it again. ↗

— Howard W. Hunter

#encouragement #forgive #kindness #love #loyalty

Thus Milton refines the question down to a matter of faith," said Coleridge, bringing the lecture to a close, "and a kind of faith more independent, autonomous - more truly strong, as a matter of fact - than the Puritans really sought. Faith, he tells us, is not an exotic bloom to be laboriously maintained by the exclusion of most aspects of the day to day world, nor a useful delusion to be supported by sophistries and half-truths like a child's belief in Father Christmas - not, in short, a prudently unregarded adherence to a constructed creed; but rather must be, if anything, a clear-eyed recognition of the patterns and tendencies, to be found in every piece of the world's fabric, which are the lineaments of God. This is why religion can only be advice and clarification, and cannot carry any spurs of enforcement - for only belief and behavior that is independently arrived at, and then chosen, can be praised or blamed. This being the case, it can be seen as a criminal abridgement of a person's rights willfully to keep him in ignorance of any facts - no piece can be judged inadmissible, for the more stones, both bright and dark, that are added to the mosaic, the clearer is our picture of God. ↗

— Tim Powers

#clarification #faith #father-christmas #god #john-milton

The light of the Christmas star to you. The warmth of home and hearth to you. The cheer and goodwill of friends to you. The hope of a child-like heart to you. The joy of a thousand angels to you. The love of the Son and God's peace to you. ↗

— Sherryl Woods

#irish-proverbs #family

I'd felt obligated to get Ian a Christmas present. A chunk of coal sat in a brightly wrapped box under the tree, his name written in big bold letters on the front of it. Ian might be family, but he still had been a very naughty boy this year. ↗

— Jeaniene Frost

#ian #family

A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes - and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent ↗

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#depravity #freedom

Thanksgiving was nothing more than a pilgrim-created obstacle in the way of Christmas; a dead bird in the street that forced a brief detour. ↗

— Augusten Burroughs

#humor #thanksgiving #humor