Inspiration

We were driving our three-year-old son to his Grandma's home when we stopped at a store. Once inside, our son decided he wanted one of those large gumballs.

I told him he couldn't have one, and he began to pout. I leaned over to him and said, "This is a fact of life: You don't always get everything you want."

"I know," he replied. "Just don't tell Gramma."

"The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less."

- Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

While I sat in the reception area of my doctor's office, a woman rolled an elderly man in a wheelchair into the room. As she went to the receptionist's desk, the man sat there, alone and silent.

Just as I was thinking I should make small talk with him, a little boy slipped off his mother's lap and walked over to the wheelchair. Placing his hand on the man's, he said, "I know how you feel. My mom makes me ride in the stroller, too."

"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."

- Nelson Mandela