Brian Westerbur

“...when Paul says in Romans 4:3, 5, 9, and 22 that 'faith is counted as righteousness,' he does not mean that our faith is our righteousness. He means that our faith unites us to Christ so that God's righteousness in Christ is reckoned to us.”
― John Piper, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy