All Things New

She loved him, and her heart was breaking. If she had known how much it hurt to love someone, she never would have given away her heart. But it wasn't a question of giving as much as falling.

Bitterness is one of the deadliest emotions we ever feel. You can't look forward when you're bitter, only backward - thinking about what you've lost, stuck in the past, despairing because it's gone. In the end, it devours all hope.

Prayer isn’t just about asking for things. It’s taking time to hear what God is saying, too, just like any good conversation. Once we finally stop talking and demanding and begging for things, it’s easier to hear what God is trying to say to us.

Because there’s a big difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is external and can change when your circumstances change. If you believe that money will make you happy, for instance, and then you lose all your money, you’ll be very unhappy. But joy is deep inside us and isn’t dependent on circumstances.

Even after the war, Eugenia, do you still put people into categories the way you were taught to do—rich and poor, socially acceptable and not, black and white?” “I haven’t placed them there. Life has.” “But people are all the same in God’s eyes, don’t you think? Or do you believe there will be segregated divisions in heaven like the ones we’ve created here on earth?

When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: then said they among the heathen, The Lord hath done great things for them. The Lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad. Turn again our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the south. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.” ~ Psalms 126 “…whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. 8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. 9 And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” ~ Galatians 6:8-9 Now everybody here knows, if you plant cotton seeds in the ground, you get cotton. Put corn seeds, and a corn plant grows. And like that verse just said, if you sow hatred year after year you’re going to reap a war like the one that just ended. Now I know it seems like the only seeds we slaves ever get are things like hard work and pain and suffering. But if we give them to God, he can do a miracle under that ground. We see it every day. Put in a tiny seed, get a big green plant with blossoms and leaves and cotton. We can’t do it ourselves; we’ve got to trust the almighty. But today we can take all our suffering and give it to God and you know what we’ll reap when the time comes, joy. They can burn our school and take everything else away from us, but they can’t take away Jesus. He’s with us always, and he promised us a better life with Him in heaven someday. Today we’re here to pray, and bring all our trials to Him, but don’t be planting seeds of hatred. Give Jesus our tears and someday we’ll reap a harvest of joy.

God had told the survivors of Sodom and Gomorrah not to look back after they’d been rescued from death and destruction, and if Jo’s family continued to gaze into the past, they were going to become stuck in place like pillars of salt, too.