"We didn't want to support any more adultery scenes. There's enough on television." - 84 year-old Iowa farmer, Aaron Howell, explaining why his family rejected Warner Bros.' lucrative offer to rent their property for the filming of The Bridges of Madison County (Premiere, 2/95)

"One in four adults in your church has been involved in an extramarital affair…"

"Studies of married Americans reveal that approximately one in three men and one in six women enter an affair sometime during their wedded lives…"

"Affairs usually don't just happen, as television and popular romances would lead us to believe. And affairs are not the cause of marriage trouble, but a response to it…"

"When the cupboard is full at home, you don't go someplace else to eat…" -- Anonymous

"Adultery is never a sudden, spontaneous, and totally unexpected act. Therefore, the strongest protection against adultery in a marriage is an attitude of total commitment toward each other. The marriage vow commits one to the satisfaction and happiness of the partner. Sexual satisfaction becomes a gift to the other. In an extramarital friendship, there always comes a point of 'maybe' when there is the realization that the friendship could become something more. By closing the door to anything beyond friendship, each partner should try to see friends through the spouse's eyes. When adultery has occurred, forgiveness is the tool to restore the marriage. There will be feelings of anger, hatred, guilt, pain (physical as well as emotional) humiliation (adultery is a statement that the spouse's lovemaking was of little or no value) and confusion. To begin healing, find a trusted and wise friend, and express your feelings where it will not hurt anyone. Accept no excuses, rationalizations, promises, or defensiveness. Only accept genuine repentance." - Walter Wangerin, Jr. U.S. Catholic, March 1988, pages 27-31.

Adultery

"Adversity introduces a man to himself. - Anonymous

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." - Thomas Paine, 1776

"God is always testing us, and his testing does not come when we are warned and ready. Anyone can pass a test then…
God's tests catch us unprepared, off-guard. It is when we are confronted with some simple situation no one will know about that the tests of life really come. When you are relaxing at home and the phone rings and suddenly you are confronted with a call for help, or a demand for a response - and you had planned to relax and enjoy yourself all afternoon - what happens then? That's the test." - Ray C. Stedman in Man of Faith

"One reason God created time was so there would be a place to bury the failures of the past." - James Long

"If I have learned anything, I owe it neither to precepts nor to books, but to a few opportune misfortunes. Perhaps the school of misfortune is the very best." - Louise Honorine De Choiseul (1734-1801)

"Many people quench the Spirit by being down in the mouth rather than rejoicing, by planning rather than praying, by murmuring rather than giving thanks, and by worrying instead of trusting in him who is faithful." - Cameron Townsend, founder of Wycliff Bible Translators

"Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties." - C. H. Spurgeon, quoted in Streams in the Desert

"The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking as when we created them." - Albert Einstein

"If you do not wish to be full of regrets when you are forced to lie still, work while you can. If you desire to make a sickbed as soft as it can be, do not stuff it with mournful reflections that you wasted time when you were in health and strength." - Charles Spurgeon (quoted in Pulse, Feb. 21, 1997, page 5)

"While expounding on the value of suffering, a saintly old preacher extended his long finger toward the congregation and thundered, 'Brother, if God sends you tribulation, He expects you to tribulate!'" - Sam Cathey, Amarillo Bible Conference

"[Rabbi Harold] Kushner's book [When Bad Things Happen to Good People] was a best seller not only because it is so well written, but also because it caters to a narcissistic age. For us, any suffering, confusion or tragedy is intently unfair and undeserved because we stopped trusting a God whose presence makes suffering, confusion and tragedy bearable." - William H. Willimon in the 'Christian Century' (Feb. 22, 1989), Christianity Today, Vol. 34, #9.

"God created man something on the order of a rubber band. A rubber band is made to stretch. When it is not being stretched, it is small and relaxed, but as long as it remains iin that shape, it is not doing what it was made to do. When it stretches, it is enlarged; it becomes tense and dynamic, and it does what it was made to do. God created you to stretch." - Charles Paul Conn in 'Making It Happen', Christianity Today, Vol. 35, #1.

"No trouble seems pleasant at the time. Yet in God's economy, it is this pain which brings forth new faith. How often we hear, 'I thank God for that hard time; it was the best thing that every happened to me.' Even when we may not find the grace to thank God for our tribulation, we can thank Him for the good that comes from our fire." - Virginia Law Shell in 'Good News', (Nov.-Dec. 1990), Christianity Today, Vol. 35, #11.

"We grow and mature spiritually through adversity - not when everything is going smoothly…in a time of adversity of trouble, the Christian has the opportunity to know God in a special and personal way." - C. Everett Koop

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us." - Helen Keller in The Faith of Helen Keller

"God loves us in good times and bad… but he is even more real in our lives when we are having tough times." - Joe Gibbs, former head coach of the Washington Redskins

Adversity

"When people do succeed in breaking free from belief in God, they simply create another religious belief to replace it. We always assimilate religion or God to a specific image, to specific rites or groups, to a specific conception, and when we banish these…we think we have achieved freedom of thought. But we then proceed to an apotheosis of reason or science and we have new gods." - Jacques Ellul in What I Believe

"God and I have a covenant. We leave each other alone." - Catch 22, author Joseph Heller, George, February 1998

Agnostic

"Absence or inefficiency of the supreme power, political disorder, absence or non-recognition of authority in any sphere; moral or intellectual disorder. This is a remarkable achievement of modern liberalism-anarchy amidst, and resulting from, a surfeit of government". - Oxford English Dictionary

Anarchy