I Can’t Stop Thinking Big

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“In a world where I feel so small I can’t stop thinking big” (Rush) “What was after the universe? Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began? It could not be a wall; but there could be a thin thin line there all round everything. It was very big to think about everything and everywhere. Only God could do that. He tried to think what a big thought that must be; but he could only think of God. God was God's name just as his name was Stephen. DIEU was the French for God and that was God's name too; and when anyone prayed to God and said DIEU then God knew at once that it was a French person that was praying. But, though there were different names for God in all the different languages in the world and God understood what all the people who prayed said in their different languages, still God remained always the same God and God's real name was God.” James Joyce, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” (1916)
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"God does not stand behind a heavenly door with arms full of presents ready to hand out to those Christians who learn the ritual of some religious 'open sesame.' He is not a force that we may avail ourselves of if only we learn the techniques of postive thinking or (if we live on the West Coast) the routines of possibility thinking. He is the God who tells us what to do and what not to do. He is not only the God of 'shoulds' and 'oughts', but the God of 'musts!'"

Adams, Jay. A Theology of Christian Counseling. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979. p. 49

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