Tag: sentences on hope

Hope completes Faith

If I do not hope in His love for me, I will never really know Christ. I hear of Him by faith. But I do not achieve the contact that knows Him, and thereby knows the Father in Him, until my faith in Him is completed by hope and charity: hope that grasps His love for me and charity that pays Him the return of love I owe.

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope

Faith without hope
is light without sight
warmth too far away to feel
music that can’t be heard
over the dry, drafty doctrine
that being correct is a higher calling
than simply being loved.

p.s. I’ve written about this before with similar sentiment. I wish I had learned this lesson much earlier in my life.

Tags doctrine, faith, faith without hope, hope, Jesus, No Man is an Island, sentences on hope, Thomas Merton

Music Other Writings

Am I convinced?

Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness.

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope

From one kind of sublime to, well, a something different…

I just happened to hear Andy Grammer’s Wish You Pain this morning.

Thomas Merton and Andy Grammer in the same post???

Get over it 🙂

p.s. my better half took me to an Andy Grammer concert a couple of weeks back. I have to admit I’m a snob when it comes to musical style…and I found Andy’s positive message so spot on…well, who needs to be a snob anyway?

Grace and peace to you…

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Tags Andy Grammer, complacency, despair, finding God, forgiveness, mercy, No Man is an Island, sentences on hope, Thomas Merton, Wish You Pain

hope Other Writings Poetry

I cannot be humble

I cannot be humble unless I first know that I am good, and know that what is good in me is not my own, and know how easy it is for me to substitute an evil of my own choice for the good that is God’s gift to me.

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope

The point in my life
where I began to believe
I was better than you
was the point where I forgot
or no longer believed
that God made us both
to be his children.