"Choose life."

That's God's call for us, and there is not a moment in which we do not have to make that choice.
Life and death are always before us.
In our imaginations, our thoughts, our words, our gestures, our actions ... even in our nonactions.
This choice for life starts in a deep interior place.
Underneath very life-affirming behaviour I can still harbour death-thoughts and death-feelings.
The most important question is not "Do I kill?" but "Do I carry a blessing in my heart or a curse?"
The bullet that kills is only the final instrument of the hatred that began being nurtured in the heart long before the gun was picked up.

-- Henri Nouwen