If we believe that God does his best for every man and woman, we must also believe that God knows every person’s needs, and will, for love’s sake, not spare one pang that may serve to purify the soul of one of his children.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 21
God seems to take pleasure in working by degrees. The progress of the truth is as the permeation of leaven, or the growth of a seed.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 19
God is against sin. While those who resist him remain one with their sin, he is against them — against their desires, their aims, their fears, and their hopes. And thus he is altogether and always for them.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 17
One thing we’ve all learned along the way is that reinvention seems always to require some painful elements of rejection and tearing down. But as we change, so do all things change. To hold on tight is to miss out on opportunities for growth and movement. Letting go, stepping forward into the unknown, we discover our capacities for resilience and faith, and we begin to glimpse our unique potential, to realize it in ways we couldn’t have begun to imagine just a short time ago.
— Katrina Kenison, The Gift of an Ordinary Day, p. 172
God wants to build you a house whereof the walls shall be goodness; you want a house whereof the walls shall be comfort. But God knows that such walls cannot be built; that kind of stone crumbles away in the foolish workman’s hands.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 16
God gave man power to thwart his will, that, by means of that same power, he might come at last to do his will in a higher kind and way than would otherwise have been possible to him.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 12
It is the kindest thing God can do for his children sometimes, to let them fall in the mire. They would not hold by their Father’s hand; they struggled to pull away; he let them go, and there they lay. But when they stretch forth the hand to him again, he will take them, and clean, not their garments only, but their heart, and soul, and consciousness. Pray to your Father, my child. He will change your humiliation into humility, your shame into purity.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 6
Does it seem inconsistent with the character of God that in order that sin should become impossible he should allow sin to come into the world? Is it not possible that, in order that his creatures should choose the good and refuse the evil, in order that they might become such with their whole nature infinitely enlarged, as to turn from sin with a perfect repugnance of the will, he should allow them to fall? Why would he not, in order that, from being sweet childish children they should become noble, childlike men and women, let them try to walk alone?
— George MacDonald, Wisdom To Live By: Nuggets of Insight from All Collected Works, edited by Michael Phillips, p. 4
As with physical exercise, much of the benefit of prayer comes as a result of consistency, the simple act of showing up. The writer Nancy Mairs says she attends church in the same spirit in which a writer goes to her desk every morning, so that if an idea comes along she’ll be there to receive it. I approach prayer in the same way. Many days I would be hard-pressed to describe a direct benefit. I keep on, though, whether it feels like I am profiting or not. I show up in hopes of getting to know God better, and perhaps hearing from God in ways accessible only through quiet and solitude.
— Philip Yancey, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? quoted in Grace Notes, p. 39
The concept of sin does not exist so that people who may need therapy more than theology can be convinced that they are evil and beyond hope. It is meant to encourage people to believe that they are made in the image of God and to act accordingly. Hope is the heart of it, and the ever-present possibility of transformation.
— Kathleen Norris, Acedia and Me, p. 114