Head Knowledge
The greatest obscuration of the words of the Lord come from those who give themselves to interpret rather than do them.
— George MacDonald, Words to Live By, p. 155
Transformative Reconciliation
True reconciliation shows the innocent extending love and grace in a way that is truly transformative, and that mirrors the divine nature of self-giving love. True reconciliation means evil humans turning from evil ways and walking in a way of goodness. It shows the brokenness of the world, like a fractured bone, being set back into its rightful position. True reconciliation lets us glimpse a world where both the victim and the offender desire that the other be blessed and flourish. In our world we only get glimpses of such true reconciliation, but I believe that such glimpses are all that we need to take that vision back into the brokenness of our daily lives. That glimpse of shalom can change the way we act and react.
— Catherine Claire Larson, As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda, p. 263
Respect
There are many who think that to confess ignorance is to lose respect, and doubtless it is so with the ignorant who claim to know. There is a worse thing, however, than to lose respect — to deserve to lose it.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 153
God Can Handle It.
One bold message from the book of Job is that you can say anything to God. Throw at God your grief, your anger, your doubt, your bitterness, your betrayal, your disappointment — God can absorb them all. As often as not, spiritual giants of the Bible are shown contending with God. They prefer to go away limping, like Jacob, rather than to shut God out. In this respect, the Bible prefigures a tenet of modern psychology: you can’t really deny your feelings or make them disappear, so you might as well express them. God can deal with every human response save one. God cannot abide the response I fall back on instinctively: an attempt to ignore God or act as though God does not exist. That response never once occurred to Job.
— Philip Yancey, Grace Notes, p. 348
Why Libraries
The Commonwealth requires the education of the people as the safeguard of Order and Liberty.
— On the side of the Boston Public Library
Acting on Faith
It is faith’s noblest exercise to act with uncertainty of the result when the duty of obedience is certain.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 149
Tests of Faith
Often when we face a test of faith, it is because God’s will may run counter to our wishes. We want what we want, and we are unable to take the longer view that God’s will entails — for that matter, we may be unable to see the longer view. This is when we are being asked to demonstrate blind faith, that is, a faith in a larger benevolence, even though we ourselves are unable to see the higher wisdom at hand.
“God, I believe; help my disbelief” is the prayer for times of blind faith. We are asking for the grace to go along with the joke, and the joke may seem to us to have a very harsh punchline. We are asking, often, to accept an untimely death or the shattering of a cherished dream. We are asking for the courage to believe, in the face of our own human disappointment, that a silver lining might just exist and that if we stay faithful we might eventually come to see it. So much of what happens to us seems in cozy retrospect to have been designed for our best good. So little of what happens to us feels that way at the time.
— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 59
Heart Knowledge
Opinion is all that can result from argument, and opinion concerning God — even right opinion — is of little value when it comes to knowing God.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 148
Sharing the Burden
Faith makes the unbearable bearable. It renders the burden that is too heavy to be borne alone a burden that is shared. It brings the help of God to our side, and once it is there, that help becomes the walking stick by which we move forward.
— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 57
Where God Is Wanted
According to some estimates, Christians in developed Western countries now represent only 37 percent of believers worldwide. As I travel and also read church history, I have observed a pattern, a strange historical phenomenon of God “moving” geographically from place to place: from the Middle East to Europe to North America to the developing world. My theory is this: God goes where he’s wanted.
That’s a scary thought in a country like the United States, home to five hundred satellite TV channels for diversion and entertainment.
— Philip Yancey, Grace Notes, p. 349