Reluctance to Forgive

Forgiveness, Growth, Joy 0

The inability, or reluctance, to forgive is our greatest failing. It is the cause of the majority of personal strife as well as global war. When you hold on to your anger, resentment, or disappointment in other people, you sabotage your own happiness. You use your precious spiritual energy on those negative emotions, when you could be using that power to live a joyous life, attract abundance, and improve the conditions of the world around you. An inability or unwillingness to forgive constricts you, draws you inward, whereas forgiveness gives you the opportunity to expand and open the channels of abundance in your life.

— Kathleen McGowan, The Source of Miracles, p. 125-126

The True Me

Core Value, God, Growth, Life 0

What is inside me, the thing I love with, and the thing I think about God with, and the thing I love poetry with, the thing I read the Bible with — that thing God keeps on making bigger and bigger. That thing is me, and God will keep on making it bigger to all eternity, though he has not even got me into the right shape yet.

— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 30

God’s Best

God, Growth, Love, Trials 0

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

Changes and Reinvention

Growth, Letting Go, Life 0

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

A House of Goodness

God, Growth 0

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

A Higher Way

God, Growth 0

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

God’s Surprising Kindness

Forgiveness, God, Growth 0

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