Chesterton on the reality of Atheism

A man who has lived and loved falls down dead and the worms eat him. That is Materialism if you like. That is Atheism if you like.

-- Quoted in Battling For the Modern Mind by Thomas Peters; p. 105  from "Science and Religion" in All Things Considered, p. 147.

The habit of turning to God...

And perhaps, as those who do not turn to God in petty trials will have no habit or such resort to help them when the great trials come, so those who have not learned to ask Him for childish things will have less readiness to ask Him for the great ones. We must not be too high-minded. I fancy we may sometimes be deterred from small prayers by a sense of our own dignity rather than of God’s.

This was from a Mockingbird (March 7,2012) quote of C.S. Lewis' Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer.

Understanding the Brevity of Life

All this is temporary...

One of my best friends in college died when he was twenty-five, just a few years after we had finished Mississippi State University. I as in law school, and he called me one day and wanted to get together. So we had lunch, and he told me that he had terminal cancer.

I couldn't believe it. I asked him, "What do you do when you realize that you are about to die?"

He said, "It's real simple. You get things right with God, and you spend as much time with those you love as you can. Then you settle up with everybody else."

That left an impression on me.

-- John Grisham; Promises to Keep; August 8; p. 255