True and false love (again)

Beauty, talent, and passion are not as valuable as love. Evil often talks about love and attempts to imitate it, but true love doesn't show off. False love is flashy, sappy, and sickeningly sweet, like the fragrance of a poisonous plant attracting prey. True love is reflected in God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit.

Paradoxes

Experiencing illness and the death of loved ones will change a person.

Yet as I lose innocence, I hope to become even more innocent. As I experience sorrow, may I abound in joy more than ever before. As I feel weak, may I become strong.

The inescapable sadness of the world

As time passes, holidays become painful reminders of loved ones who are no longer here. This world is so chaotic, unpredictable, and sad. Even a life devoted to God contains a strange sadness. Indeed, sadness casts a shadow over everything in this fallen world.

Spiritual light

"This spiritual and divine light does not consist in any impression upon the mind, as though one saw anything with the bodily eyes. It is no imagination or idea of an outward light or glory, or any beauty of form or countenance, or a visible luster or brightness of any object. The imagination may be strongly impressed with such things; but this is not spiritual light. Indeed when the mind has a lively discovery of spiritual things, and is greatly affected by the power of divine light, it may and probably very commonly doth, much affect the imagination; so that impressions of an outward beauty or brightness may accompany those spiritual discoveries. But spiritual light is not that impression upon the imagination, but an exceedingly different thing. Natural men may have lively impressions on their imagination, and we cannot determine but that the devil, who transforms himself into an angel of light, may cause imaginations of an outward beauty, or visible glory, and of sounds and speeches, and other such things; but these are things of a vastly inferior nature to spiritual light." -Jonathan Edwards

Too often, I look at the outside rather than the inside. Though people are always judging each other, God allows me to be who I am without having to impress anyone. People may reject me, but I am accepted by God, and that is what matters.