Mirror of Grace

My wife is ... a mirror. When I have sinned against her, my sin appears in the suffering of her face. Her tears reflect with terrible accuracy my selfishness. ...

Grace Beyond Measure

Who can estimate the value of God's gift, when He gave to the world His only begotten Son? It is something unspeakable and incomprehensible. It passes ...

A Clear Conscience or None at All

There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball,

And that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.

Resurrection, not Bookkeeping

You're worried about permissiveness--about the way the preaching of grace seems to say it's okay to do all kinds of terrible things as long as ...

Phantom Guilt

Amputees often experience some sensation of a phantom limb. Somewhere, locked in their brains, a memory lingers of the nonexistent hand or leg. Invisible ...

The Beginning of Hatred

He longed to revenge himself on everyone for his own shortcomings. He suddenly recalled how he had once been asked: "Why do you hate so and so, so ...

Offending the Guilty

I find it impossible to avoid offending guilty men, for there is no way of avoiding it but by our silence or their patience; and silent we cannot be because ...

Confess Sins to God Directly

"It is not confession to man but to God, who is the true Priest of souls, that is the great need of sinful man. Private confession and the whole ...

Guilt Is a Warning

In The New Yorker, (5/15/95) Sara Mosle recounts that on March 18, 1937, a spark ignited a cloud of natural gas that had accumulated in the basement of ...