James Pettit

“Must one not wonder about people willing to wear a commercial trademark on the outside of their shirts or caps or shoes to let others know who they are? And just think of a world in which little children sing, “I wish I were a [certain kind of] wiener. That is what I really want to be. For if I were [that certain kind of] wiener. Everyone would be in love with me.”
― Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God

“What if the first eighteen years of your life were an Arctic winter? What if all the sunlight in your life comes late, at an oblique angle? What if the sun cyclically disappears from a life for nights that seem like they’ll never end? To grow just one membraned layer under such conditions is a feat. To add another ring—to endure—is an achievement. Some years are longer than others. Don’t compare your sturdy temperate trees to your neighbor’s Arctic forest. You can’t imagine how much implacable energy it took to grow those saplings. You might not be able to fathom what they have endured. You don’t know how ancient that forest is, how much time it has spent enveloped in darkness. Even more importantly: don’t compare the trees of your tundra existence to someone else’s equatorial rain forest. God doesn’t. They live in different conditions. The sun shines upon the just and the unjust, but not at the same angle or with the same intensity. The birch saplings that have punched up through the crust of your prior life are miracles of grace. (Remember when you thought nothing could ever grow there?) They’ve never lived through your winter. They don’t know how long your night has been. By the grace of God, you’ve endured the dark.”
― James K.A. Smith, How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now