Quotables...

For a long time I was in the habit of writing verses or really good quotes in my planner so that I can chew on them later and put scripture in my head throughout the day. I haven't been doing this as much since I quit working full time and stopped being a student. But when I was in the habit, it was cool to flip back to see what I was thinking about or struggling with as it was contained in the quotes written on the margins of my planners.

As we've been downsizing of our lives we're throwing out what isn't essential, which includes all my old planners. But before they met their bitter end, I flipped my planners nostalgically looking at old appointments, homework assignments, to-do lists, grocery lists, scrawled phones numbers/emails and the quotes and verses from several years worth of calendars. Here's a few that brought back some memories:

The objects of the present life fill the human eye with a false magnification because of their immediacy. William Wilberforce
I actually had this one on a post-it and moved it each month leading up to our wedding.

Most people plot and plan themselves into mediocrity, while now and again someone forgets himself into greatness. E. Stanley Jones

You did not choose me, but I choose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit --fruit that will last. John 15:16

Questions everyone has:
1) Why are we here?
2) What are we doing here?
3) Why is it so messed up?
4) Where are we going?

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

The difference between great and average and lousy in any job is, mostly, having the imagination and zeal to re-create yourself daily. Tom Peters

The more words you have for something the better you can describe it. Dr. Young

A community of memory and hope. This must be the church. I'm pretty sure Dr. K said it first.

"Unseen but sure"
"Eager to live under his direction and for his glory"
"Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with my God"

"My days have passed, my plans are shattered and so are the desires of my heart." Job 17:11
It was a depressing month.

"Run 1 minute, walk 90 seconds, Repeat 8 times."
This was just one part of an 8 week plan to work my way up to running in 30 minute increments. Unfortunately it took more like 4 years and I'm still only able to run 1 mile before walking, not 30 minutes total. But all in all...not bad...I will consider it a mark of forgetting myself into excellence instead of planning myself into mediocrity.

"Blessed is the man whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty. For he wounds, but he also binds up; he injures, but his hand also heals." Job 5:17-18
I was moving away from depressed to a more hopeful state of accepting God's work in my life for what it was.

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense." Emerson

"Early on we learn how to get...we have to learn to give away."

"For the Lord will not abandon His people on account of His great name, because the Lord has been pleased to make you a people for Himself...Only fear the Lord and serve Him in truth with all your heart; for consider what great things He has done for you." 1 Samuel

"Every time you choose you are taking the central part of you that chooses and turning it into something else --either a heavenly or hellish creature." C.S. Lewis

"And without Faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him...
Noah - Holy Fear
Abel - Offered a better sacrifice
Enoch - One who pleased God
Abe - Obeyed and went
All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised, they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted they were aliens and strangers on earth." Hebrews 10

And now to follow Emerson's advice, I am finishing this day and am done with it...I will set my absurdities aside until tomorrow, when I pick up the new absurdities that await. Hopefully tomorrow's absurdities will not include a series of 8 CCed emails related to matchbooks at the church picnic.