We are all here for a single purpose: to grow in wisdom and to learn to love better. We can do this through losing as well as through winning, by having and by not having, by succeeding or by failing. All we need to do is to show up openhearted for class.
— Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, Kitchen Table Wisdom, p. 80
Hatred, anger, mistrust, and fear enter our lives every day in a thousand different ways. We’re all wounded by these evils, but we can all be healed through the power of love and forgiveness — a power readily available to all of us when we have faith….
Faith is a living thing that must be nurtured every day through prayer, kindness, and acts of love. It will lead us through our darkest days and restore love and light to even the most troubled soul in the most dire of circumstances….
Faith has transformed my life, and it can transform yours. In fact, it is powerful enough to transform the entire world.
— Immaculee Ilibagiza, Led by Faith, p. 192
He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another harder and better one.
— C. S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy
Not my idea of God, but God. Not my idea of H., but H. Yes, and not my idea of my neighbor, but my neighbor. For don’t we often make this mistake as regards people who are still alive — who are with us in the same room? Talking and acting not to the man himself but to the picture — almost the precis — we’ve made of him in our own minds? And he has to depart from it pretty widely before we even notice the fact. In real life — that’s one way it differs from novels — his words and acts are, if we observe closely, hardly ever really quite “in character,” that is, in what we call his character. There’s always a card in his hand we didn’t know about.
My reason for assuming that I do this to other people is the fact that so often I find them doing it to me. We all think we’ve got one another taped.
— C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
I’ve long since stopped feeling guilty about taking being time; it’s something we all need for our spiritual health, and often we don’t take enough of it….
When I am constantly running there is no time for being. When there is no time for being there is no time for listening. I will never understand the silent dying of the green pie-apple tree if I do not slow down and listen to what the Spirit is telling me, telling me of the death of trees, the death of planets, of people, and what all these deaths mean in the light of the love of the Creator who brought them all into being; who brought me into being; and you.
— Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water, p. 12-13
Trying to be what I am not, and cannot be, is not only arrogant, it is stupid. . . . If I make myself a martyr to appease my false guilt, then I am falling into the age-old trap of pride. I fall into it often. . . . If I am not free to accept guilt when I am wrong, then I am not free at all. If all my mistakes are excused, if there’s an alibi, a rationalization for every blunder, then I am not free at all. I am subhuman. . . . I do all kinds of things which aren’t right, which aren’t sensitive or understanding. I neglect all kinds of things which I ought to do. . . . One reason I don’t feel guilty is that I no longer feel I have to be perfect. I am not in charge of the universe, whereas a humanist has to be. . . this inability presents her with a picture of herself which is not the all-competent, in-control-of-everything person she wants to see.
— Madeleine L’Engle, Summer of the Great-Grandmother
As we are made in the image of the Great Creator — part of that is our imagination, to keep us excited with living. Never do I want to lose that!!!
— Colleen Jenks, letter, July 1, 1984
We are not here to wish to be somewhere or something we are not, but to do the thing that pleases Him exactly where we are, and as we are.
— Amy Carmichael, Thou Givest . . . They Gather
To accept the will of God never leads to the miserable feeling that it is useless to strive any more. God does not ask for the dull, weak, sleepy acquiescence of indolence. He asks for something vivid and strong. He asks us to co-operate with Him, actively willing what He wills, our only aim His glory. To accept in this sense is to come with all the desire of the mind unto the place which the Lord shall choose, and to minister in the name of the Lord our God there— not otherwhere. Where the things of God are concerned, acceptance always means the happy choice of mind and heart of that which He appoints, because (for the present) it is His good and acceptable and perfect will.
— Amy Carmichael, Gold By Moonlight
The message of our wounds nearly always is, “This is because of you. This is what you deserve.” It changes things to realize that, no, it is because you are glorious that these things have happened. It is because you are a major threat to the kingdom of darkness. Because you uniquely carry the glory of God to the world.
You are hated because of your beauty and power.
— John and Stasi Eldredge, Captivating, p. 85