day no. 16,036: honestly and earnestly

“No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing?" -- G.K. Chesterton

America... can you hate it enough to want to change it and yet love it enough to imagine it worth changing? Can you love your homeland enough to be a patriot, but hate it enough to be a rebel? 

Reformation and repentance require eyes and hearts wide open. If you close your eyes in order to keep your heart, you will tolerate all kinds of wickedness. If you close your heart in order to open your eyes, you will persecute all kinds of goodness. If you close your heart and your eyes, you abandon the whole mess for someone else to clean up when they stumble into aisle six. But if you keep your eyes and heart open, you can see the problems and seek solutions, you can admit the errors while working to correct them, you can examine something honestly and exhort it earnestly, you can confess its sins while sincerely desiring its forgiveness.

2 Corinthians 6:11

We have spoken freely to you; our heart is wide open.