15 minutes to a better (but not easier) life

President Obama, in his Valentines Day radio address, attributed to John F. Kennedy the stirring admonition "Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks."

President Kennedy, in turn, borrowed from 19th century Episcopal Bishop Phillips Brooks, in his sermon "Going up to Jerusalem", based on Luke 18:31.

Spend 15 minutes and read the sermon. (The specific passage is here.)

The sermon is more stirring in its entirety. Brooks speaks to fatalism, destiny, and character in the context of every man's "going up to Jerusalem." Here are a few of the passages that I read and re-read in awe:

"The wonders of life are not in deeds, but in characters."

"... we can easily picture to ourselves a human nature which might have been created so that it never should think about the future, but should get all its inspiration out of present things. But that is not our human nature. It always must look forward. The thing which it hopes to become is already a power and decides the thing it is."

"... men who asked, what was the best thing which any man in just those circumstances might set himself to do? These are the men before whom there rises by-and-by a dream, which later gathers itself into a hope, and at last solidifies into an achievement."

"It was not wonderful that Shakespeare should [write Hamlet]. The wonder is that he should be Shakespeare; but, he being Shakespeare, Hamlet is no miracle."

"As Jesus goes up to that Jerusalem, He goes because He is He, and Jerusalem is Jerusalem... When He came there and the cross seized and held him, character and circumstances had perfectly met in their complete result. The Saviour-hood and the world's need of being saved had come together, and here was salvation."

"If your Jerusalem really is your sacred city, there is certainly a cross in it. What then? Shall you flinch and draw back? Shall you ask for yourself another life? 0 no, not another life, but another self. Ask to be born again."