Quotes About Perspective

The abstract point of this is that we don't do anything to anybody else, anyway. Actually, people do things to themselves, and we are merely the environment in which they do it when they are ready.

What you feel is most important may not be seen as most important to someone else. This is a very complex society we are a part of. Stay in the world, do your part, raise your children, earn your living, and assume your responsibility at every level.

A man said to Maharajji, "You've promised for years to visit my home and you have never come. I'm not going to come to see you anymore, because you won't visit my home." Maharajji said, "Oh, I didn't understand! It's your home. I had thought it was my home and so I didn't need to visit.

When you have started to awaken and see that there are other planes of reality that are equally valid to the one which presently exists, you learn how to live more or less with more and more planes simultaneously, which is what freedom is about. It's not totally standing in one plane, it's not standing anywhere at all.

It is a very good exercise, at least from a historian's point of view, to imagine oneself a devout pagan while reading various Christian writings.

We tend to start with Earth and reason up toward Heaven, when instead we should start with Heaven and reason down toward Earth.

Matthew Henry, the Puritan preacher and Bible commentator, made this statement after a thief stole his money: "Let me be thankful first because I was never robbed before; second, although they took my purse, they did not take my life; third, because, although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed.

For every American who believes he's going to Hell, there are 120 who believe they're going to Heaven.

A Greek philosopher said, 'All men think it is only the other man who is mortal'. The way we scurry about accumulating things is testimony to our unspoken doctrine that we are exceptions to the law of death. The events of September 11, 2001, were a shocking reminder to millions of Americans of something we should have already understood - our mortality.

Most of us find it very difficult to want "Heaven" at all—except in so far as "Heaven" means meeting again our friends who have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world. Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it. C. S. Lewis

Anyone who waits for happiness will never be happy.

If we realize we're undeserving, suddenly the world comes alive. Instead of whining about everything that goes wrong, we're surprised at God's many kindnesses, and our hearts overflow with thanks.

Now think, my brother, you will be in Heaven very soon. Since last year a great number have gone home: before next year many more will have ascended to glory. Sitting up in those celestial seats, how shall we wish that we had lived below?" —Charles Spurgeon

We are all theologians, either good ones or bad ones. I'd rather be a good one. Wouldn't you?

C. S. Lewis put it this way: We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.5 Even many Christians have settled for a life of unsatisfying material acquisitions, like making mud pies in a slum.

If you hope for happiness in the world, hope for it from God, and not from the world." —David Brainerd

Lord Foulgrin: You must not let him see Charis as a place of learning, exploration, duties, travel, companionship, banquets, celebrations, and productive work. A low view of heaven is our ace in the hole. (conspiring to bring Fletcher down after salvation)

Once we understood that we were giving away God's money to do God's work, we discovered a peace and joy we never had back when we thought it was our money!

Our degree of happiness in life largely depends on: the amount of happiness we believe should be rightfully ours our ability to find delight in a fallen world God will redeem our ability to see the little things—the ten thousand reasons for happiness that surround us that we easily ignore

The single greatest contributor to our inability to see money and possessions in their true light—and our tendency to ignore the law of rewards—is our persistent failure to see our present lives through the lens of eternity.

Our minds are so much set on Earth that we are unaccustomed to heavenly thinking. So we must work at it.

I have no room for a God who lets children die." "The innkeeper had no room, but it did not thwart God's plan. Who is Ben Fielding to have no room for God? Shall the dog decide whether there is room in the house for the Master? Shall the cricket decide whether there is room in the forest for the Lion?

God uses suffering and impending death to unfasten us from this earth and to set our minds on what lies beyond.

God's ownership and sovereignty offer a life-changing and freeing perspective when the house is robbed (or burns to the ground), the car is totaled, the laptop computer is stolen . . . or the diagnosis is terminal cancer.