QUOTES FOR REFLECTION
“Trust thyself […] Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, American writer and philosopher, in “Self-Reliance”
“I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.”
~William Ernest Henley, English poet and writer, in “Invictus”
“I have got so much to do and life is so short, I am going to hustle.”
~Thomas Edison, American inventor
“The opportunity cost of going to sleep is too high. If you go to sleep, you won’t be with your 20 AI coding agents.”
~Marc Andreessen, American venture capitalist and entrepreneur
“The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.”
~W.C. Fields, American actor and comedian
“Sleep is a parable that God is God and we are mere men. God handles the world quite nicely while a hemisphere sleeps. Sleep is like a broken record that comes around with the same message every day: Man is not sovereign. Man is not sovereign. Man is not sovereign.”
~John Piper, American Baptist pastor and theologian
“We are able to have children because our hope is in God, who makes it possible to do the absurd thing of having children. In a world of such terrible injustice, in a world of such terrible misery, in a world that may well be about the killing of our children, having children is an extraordinary act of faith and hope. But as Christians we can have hope in the God who urges us to welcome children.”
“Nothing is more hopeful than the birth of a child. Such births defy the unknown, claiming that we can in fact trust in God. […] What we are about as Christians is the having of children. That must come first, and then we must subject other aspects of our lives to that reality. I am not suggesting that children become an end in themselves, but rather that children are the way we remember that it is God that matters, not making the world safe or rich.”
“Christians, single and married, are parents. ‘Parent’ names an office of the Christian community that everyone in the community is expected faithfully to fulfill. […] God has not willed the church to be reproduced through biology but through witness and conversion.”
~ Stanley Hauerwas, American theologian and Christian ethicist
SERMON PASSAGE
Psalm 127 (ESV)
Psalm 127
1 Unless the Lord builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain.
2 It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.
3 Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one’s youth.
5 Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
Luke 12
22 And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. 23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. 24 Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them.… 27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.… Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
Psalm 3
5 I lay down and slept;
I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.
6 I will not be afraid of many thousands of people
who have set themselves against me all around.
Jeremiah 29
4 “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.… 11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Matthew 16
18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
