Category: Words of Wisdom

“Come now, and let us reason together,” says Yahweh: “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. – Isaiah 1:18, WEB

No matter how good we are or how holy we tried to be, there is some part of ourselves that’s burdened by past mistakes. It is that part that never quite goes away even though we try again and again to cover it or to deny that it even exists.

There is some part in ourselves that need to be forgiven, some part in our hearts that long to be freed from guilt. We need someone else to declare that our sins have indeed been blotted out, that they have been swept away. We need to hear it. We need to know that we are no longer being blamed.

Take heart, O soul. For your God is ever ready to relieve you from pain. Through a repentant heart, you obtain in Him freedom, you obtain forgiveness from all your sins. You are not blamed, you are not condemned. On the contrary, you are embraced, you are welcomed in great delight, you are loved!

It’s toughest to forgive ourselves. So it’s probably best to start with other people. It’s almost like peeling an onion. Layer by layer, forgiving others, you really do get to the point where you can forgive yourself. – Patty Duke

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit. – Peter Ustinov

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.” – Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

We either love a person or we don’t, for love cannot be measured in halves. When you love a person, you care about him, you’d do only the things for his good and not for his harm.

When we love, we allow our beloved to enter a special chamber in our hearts, and in a way, we give something of ourselves, too, and we become a part of each other. And that is why the other person’s happiness becomes also our own, another person’s sorrow finds its way also into our tears.

There is no other way to love than to love completely, with our whole hearts, for only a whole heart can continue to live and beat with love.

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow… – Ecclesiastes 4, WEBBE

“Some people don’t understand the promises they’re making when they make them,” I said.
“Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That’s what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway.”
-John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

Love is a promise. It is a promise you make when everything is good and nice and bright. It is a promise you make when you truly believe it is worth it, that though the rest of the world goes against you both, you will still fight for it because there is never anything else you’d rather look forward to.

Love is a promise. It is a promise that is tested through time and many trials. It is a promise no longer just written or declared by mouth, but testified to by sweat and blood and tears.

Because love is a promise. Love is a promise you keep even when everything seems going the wrong way, even when you could barely see the joy of it or the hope of it. You hope for hope. And you persevere even when all that you can deal with is the present moment. You protect your love in that moment, and from one moment to the next, you keep your promise to love.

Set me as a seal on your heart,
as a seal on your arm;
for love is strong as death…
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a very flame of the LORD.
Many waters can’t quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
–Song of Solomon 8, WEBBE

“So it’s not gonna be easy. It’s going to be really hard; we’re gonna have to work at this everyday, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, everyday. You and me… everyday.” – Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

There are two sides to love. One is the face of happiness, the face of youthful dreams and colorful summers. The face of two people in mutual attraction and admiration, proud of each other’s beauty and strength. This is the face that most people know, the only face that some people are willing to receive.

But there is another face to love. The other face we hardly look upon because we do not have the strength to bear its sorrows. This is the face of suffering, the face of loss, the face of winter. This is that love we bear when we see our beloved suffering, when for one reason or another, our journey with them is no longer as enjoyable as before.

This is not always to our liking, but to reject this face is to reject the fullness of love. To desire summer without suffering the cold is to have but weak feelings, not true affection. To stay only when things are enjoyable is to not have gone to the very depths of compassion, the love that endures, that fights, that triumphs through all life’s troubles.

What kind of love do we really want? What kind of love do we truly possess? Say not that you love if you know only but one face and not the other. For love is both the happiness and the sorrow of it. It is both the light and the darkness of the journey getting there. Love lacks nothing, will always give more than it thought it could and will always believe no matter how great the storm.

“You love me. Real or not real?”
I tell him, “Real.”
– Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

Love… bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love never fails. – 1 Corinthians 13, WEBBE

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be. – Anne Frank

As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants after you, God. – Psalm 42, WEB

The worst feeling in the world is to have no one. It is the utmost poverty and desolation of the heart. It is a wound whose depths only those who have experienced it could ever know.

Some people don’t have the slightest idea what being alone means. Some think that just because you have people around you, you are no longer lonely. They think that it is enough to be seen, to be called, to be heard.

But it isn’t enough. It isn’t enough to be merely seen, we must be seen for who we really are. It isn’t enough to be called, our dignity must also be recognized. It isn’t enough to be heard, we have a longing to be listened to out of the very depths of our soul.

For our souls were never meant to be alone. Our hearts were never meant to be ignored. Deep within us, we have a yearning to love and to be loved, to be taken care of and to take good care of someone.

Blessed are those who have found true friends and true hearts! Blessed are those who are showered each day with love.

Yet even then, there will always be a space within our hearts that will be left aching and longing for more, a space that yearns to be understood completely, to be loved infinitely, to be touched in such a way as to be lifted up from the prison of even our own selves.

Only God can touch this space, this sacred space. Only God can fill this emptiness which no one, not even the best of men can fill.

For who but God can know us more than how we know ourselves? Who but Him can enter the deepest wounds of our souls and heal it? Who but Him can stay with us forever, never to leave us even in our worst and darkest days?

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another. – Thomas Merton

1542… Even among the sisters you will feel lonely. Know then that I want you to unite yourself more closely to Me. I am concerned about every beat of your heart. Every stirring of your love is reflected in My Heart. I thirst for your love. “Yes, O Jesus, but my heart would not be able to live without You, either; for even if the hearts of all creatures were offered to me, they would not satisfy the depths of my heart.” – Divine Mercy in My Soul