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In The Visitor, Walter Vale—a disconnected economics professor—returns to his New York apartment to find immigrants Tarek and Zainab living there illegally. He could call the police. Instead, he lets them stay. Tarek teaches him to play the djembe drum; life enters Walter's gray existence.
In Adam's family stood Cain; in Christ's family, Judas; in the earliest Church, deceivers.
Neither Ezra nor Nehemiah originated this gathering—they obeyed "a popular impulse which they had not created." This is extraordinary because Ezra, who had labored thirteen years in Jerusalem fighting corruptions among the returned captives, had never before promulgated the law...
The Holy Spirit recorded a mystery of consolation: healing came through the *pistis* (faith) of others.
God's purpose is explicit: "God hath sent His Son into the world, that the world through Him might be saved." Yet formidable obstacles obscure this gracious design.
Rocky Balboa is not the most talented boxer—he knows it, everyone knows it. But he has something fear cannot defeat: heart. "It ain't about how hard you hit.
These unnamed men, bearing no vision, no command from Jerusalem, no precedent to guide them—only truth in their minds and the impulses of Christ's love in their hearts—solved the question that had vexed the apostles: whether salvation belonged to Gentiles.
Little sins are peculiarly offensive to God precisely because they are little—we risk offending Him for what we ourselves care very little about and expect insignificant return from.
In The Impossible, the Belon family is separated by the 2004 tsunami. Maria and Lucas are swept miles away; Henry searches with the younger boys. Against all odds, they reunite. What survived the wave? Not their possessions—family, love, determination to find each other.
The repetition *houtos* (this very one) marks a decisive moment in Israel's history.
Upon this eternal, self-existent fidelity we can repose with safety.
First, as an intellectual gift, the Scriptures answer mankind's deepest inquiries about the origin and history of the world in ways that satisfy the reasoning mind.
First, consider the effect of the gospel truly preached.
First, recognize what we desperately need: the King of Glory dwelling within.
Man's untamed spirit spurns the Redeemer's love, and no truer picture of the altogether intractable exists than this creature traversing the desert according to its own nature alone.
These phases repeat with such regularity that he compares them to *the white and red lights and darkness reappearing in a revolving lighthouse lantern, or figures recurring in a circulating decimal fraction*.
In Lawrence of Arabia, T.E. Lawrence crosses the Nefud Desert—the Sun's Anvil—where no water exists for days. Men die of thirst; mirages taunt survivors. When they finally reach the well, the drinking is almost religious.
When worldly distractions fade and darkness surrounds us, the soul engages in its most consequential work—calling upon departed friends, recalling the past, foreboding the future, and wrestling with its deepest longing: communion with God.
When Socrates drank hemlock in Athens and Caesar fell upon the Roman senate floor, their deaths remained final.
From infancy's peril to age's afflictions, human existence demands deliverance.
We treat the present as though it shall never end, and eternity as though it shall never begin.
Man's true wisdom is a pattern of God's wisdom.
Had the Judaisers prevailed, the faith would have collapsed into merely another Jewish sect.
Not the hermit's withdrawal, nor pride's cold refusal, nor sentiment's complaint of misunderstanding.