#uf

We want to avoid suffering, death, sin, ashes. But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem. We receive his poured-out life, and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others. ↗

— Elisabeth Elliot

#death

I always wondered what it must be like to lose a twin—if somehow Mary felt it like it was happening to her. If she felt physical pain. ↗

— Francesca Lia Block

#death-and-dying #death-of-a-loved-one #empathetic #empathy #loss

If God causes you to suffer much, it is a sign that He has great designs for you, and that He certainly intends to make you a saint. And if you wish to become a great saint, entreat Him yourself to give you much opportunity for suffering; for there is no wood better to kindle the fire of holy love than the wood of the cross, which Christ used for His own great sacrifice of boundless charity. ↗

— St. Ignatius of Loyola

#saints #suffering #design

But Mather's smile faded as he thought of what other provisions the charter contained. What would the godly say when they learned that the electorate was no longer to be limited to members of the Covenant but broadened to include propertied members of every Christian sect this side of papistry? This was a revolutionary innovation, whose consequences would be incalculable. Hitherto the limitation of the privilege of voting to the elect had been the very corner-stone of theocracy. It had been a wise and human provision designed to keep the faithful in control even when, as had long ago become the case, they were heavily outnumbered by lesser men without the Covenant. God who had not designated the majority of men to salvation surely never intended for the damned to rule. Yet now, under the new charter, it very much looked as if they might. ↗

— Marion Lena Starkey

#democracy #suffrage #theocracy #design

Dreams were the brain's way of sorting out things left unsettled in our waking lives ↗

— Hilary Duff

#hilary-duff #dreams

I wish you could see yourself the way I see you. You have no idea how special you are. You can have everything you ever dreamed of. We both can ↗

— Hilary Duff

#hilary-duff #dreams

Stuff your brain with knowledge. ↗

— Karl Lagerfeld

#chanel #designer #educational #karl-lagerfeld #knownledge

There never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers. ↗

— Susan B. Anthony

#equality

This is the testimony of all the good books, sermons, hymns, and memoirs I read--that God's ways are infinitely perfect; that we are to love Him for what He is and therefore equally as much when He afflicts as when He prospers us; that there is no real happiness but in doing and suffering His will; and that this life is but a scene of probation through which we pass to the real life above. ↗

— Elizabeth Payson Prentiss

#suffering #equality

It is our contemporary culture’s tragedy to have lost any sense of suffering as a positive dimension of human existence. Beginning with the premise that life ought to be without pain, we make suffering something to be avoided at all cost. We consider the equation between evil and suffering so self-evident that we make avoiding suffering the equal of fighting evil. No wonder we are the most narcotized generation ever to inhabit the earth, searching for ever more effective addictive patterns to anaesthetize our existence. ↗

— Luke Timothy Johnson

#equality