Faith quotes, explained

Even while being executed, Jesus asks God to forgive the people responsible, because they do not understand what they are doing.

The song of the angels to the shepherds on the night Jesus was born. It praises God and announces peace and goodwill to people on earth.

Tiny Tim, a sick little boy from a poor family, asks God's blessing on everyone at the Christmas table. Dickens ends the whole book with it, turning a child's grace into a blessing on the reader.

Einstein rejected the idea that quantum mechanics is fundamentally random. “God” was his way of talking about the laws of nature, not a personal God.

The greatest love a person can show is to give up their life for others. Jesus says it at the Last Supper, the night before his death.

Part of a poem praising a wise, hard-working, generous woman. Her children and husband honor her because her life has blessed them.

One of the Ten Commandments: treat your parents with respect and care. It is the first commandment that comes with a promise, a long life in the land.

The poet lists the ways she loves her husband: as deeply as her soul can reach, in everyday needs, freely, purely, with all her life, and, if God allows, even more after death.

Scrooge, shown his own lonely grave, promises to live by the spirit of Christmas, meaning generosity and kindness, every day of the year, not just on December 25.

Paul tells a young church facing hardship to keep giving thanks whatever happens. The point is gratitude in every situation, not pretending bad things are good.

Washington, at the request of Congress, set aside a day for Americans to thank God for the country's blessings, above all the chance to set up a new government peacefully.

Paul describes the kind of love that should hold a community together: patient, kind, humble and enduring. It was written to a quarreling church, not a couple.

A shortened form of 1 Timothy 6:10, which warns against the love of money, not money itself. Dropping “the love of” changes the meaning.

Donne, seriously ill and hearing a funeral bell, reflects that every person is part of humanity, so every death diminishes us all. The same passage ends with “for whom the bell tolls.”

A call to thank God because he is good and his faithful love never runs out. It works as a refrain, repeated at the start of several psalms.

Arrogance leads to ruin. The popular saying shortens a two-part verse from the Book of Proverbs, which pairs pride with destruction and a haughty spirit with a fall.

A prayer to understand how short life is, so that we spend our days wisely.

In the middle of the Civil War, Lincoln asked Americans to give thanks for good harvests and for the country's blessings, and to pray for widows, orphans and the healing of the nation.

Everyone makes mistakes; forgiving them is what lifts us toward the divine. Pope wrote it to urge critics to be generous to struggling writers.

Life moves through opposite seasons, birth and death, weeping and laughing, and each has its proper time. The passage is both comforting and a reminder that we do not control the timing.

The habits and values children learn early stay with them for life, so guide them well while they are young.

A promise of total loyalty: wherever you go, I go; your people will be my people, and your God my God.

Replying to an eight-year-old who asked if Santa was real, Church argued that love, generosity and wonder are real even though no one can see them, and that Santa Claus is real in the same way.